Annual Benefit Statement (ABS)
Your Annual Benefit Statement (ABS) is issued annually and shows an estimate of your pension benefits, up to 31 March of the current year. The estimate is based on information provided by your employer.
Your Annual Benefit Statement (ABS) is issued annually and shows an estimate of your pension benefits, up to 31 March of the current year. The estimate is based on information provided by your employer.
For most members affected by 2015 Remedy (McCloud) with a Deferred Choice Underpin (DCU), they'll receive two Annual Benefit Statements (ABS) which together form their Remediable Service Statement (RSS).
*During the Remedy period (1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022), the Alternative Scheme Option is calculated using the alpha scheme rules, however the benefit accrued and paid during this period is legally part of your PCSPS benefits.
A few members may have a slightly different ABS. If any of the items below apply to you, please see the Remedy FAQs for more information.
For more information regarding 2015 Remedy McCloud visit the 2015 Remedy (McCloud) pages.
When members retire, they receive a choice of which pension scheme benefits they would prefer to take for the Remedy period. This is called a ‘deferred choice’.
To address the discrimination identified by the Courts, eligible members who were moved to alpha in 2015 (or later if they had tapered protection) have been moved back into the Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme (PCSPS - classic, classic plus, premium and nuvos) for the period during which the discrimination occurred, between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022 (the remedy period).
The choice is between PCSPS and alpha pension scheme benefits.
By deferring the choice until shortly before retirement, it allows individuals to make their choice of which pension scheme benefits are better for them, based on facts and known circumstances as opposed to assumptions on their future career, health, retirement, and other factors.
If you don’t yet have a Pension Portal account
You'll need to register for your Pension Portal account. Registering is easy and only takes a few minutes. Read or watch our helpful guide to registering for the Pension Portal to get set up.
Each month, your employer will deduct pension contributions from your pensionable earnings (salary including pensionable allowances and bonuses). Your contributions are used to cover the cost of the pension scheme. The full amount does not go into your pension.
See the current contribution rates and pay bands.
alpha - your statement estimate is the total pension you have built up as of 31 March. This is based on 2.32% of your pensionable earnings each year.
Find out more about how your alpha pension is calculated in the alpha scheme guide.
nuvos - your statement estimate is the total pension you have built up as of 31 March. This is based on 2.3% of your pensionable earnings each year.
Find out more about how your nuvos pension is calculated in the scheme guide.
Find out more about how changes in working patterns can affect your pension.
We use the following to produce your statement:
The following don’t count as reckonable service:
Part-time service will be calculated on pro-rata basis.
This means your reckonable service could be lower than your total qualifying service (the total amount of time you’ve served in your current Civil Service employment).
Find out more about how changes in working patterns can affect your pension.
Find out more about how your pension is calculated in your scheme guide.
If you’re a Pre-Fresh Start prison officer with reserved rights, your reckonable service is doubled after you’ve served more than 20 years. As a result, your qualifying service may be lower than your reckonable service.
Your statement should include any transferred in pension and added benefits, and only shows details of your current active service, including aggregated or linked service.
Any unclaimed pension or previous service that was not aggregated or linked, will not show on your statement. If you would like a current value for your unclaimed pension from previous Civil Service employment, contact us.
Your statement will only show reckonable service and pension from the day after you took partial retirement.
You must have more than 12 months of service to qualify for survivor’s benefits. If you have less than 12 months of service, your ABS will not include survivor's benefits.
If you are a man and you were in post before 1 June 1972, your service before that date will normally provide a widow’s pension equal to one third of your pension (unless you chose to pay increased contributions to increase this to half).
If you are a woman and were in post before 1 June 1987, you were only able to provide a widower’s pension if your husband was dependent on you.
When you contribute to an Effective Pension Age you build up an EPA portion of your alpha pension that is just like the main alpha pension. This is based on 2.32% of your pensionable earnings for each year of scheme membership.
The EPA portion of your pension can be claimed a number of years before your alpha NPA without an early payment reduction depending on the EPA option you have selected
Although you are an active member of alpha, your main alpha pension will only attract annual increases whilst you are contributing to the EPA.
Further information about EPA can be found in the alpha scheme guide
We strongly advise you check here first as they may answer lots of your questions before getting in contact with us.
If you're due to retire or you're leaving the scheme, please follow the usual process. A full review of your record will take place at this point. You don't need to wait for a response from an ABS query.
Please contact your employer’s HR department or Shared Service Centre with any questions about your personal details, for example:
For questions about your ABS not listed on this page, please get in touch using the ABS contact form below.