Posted by JIM WILSON on 25 October 2000 at 10:35:26:
A friend of mine in HSBC has offered to put some specific questions to one of their technical specialists on pensions for their opinion. I thought I might as well give it a go as it is atleast free - I can't guarantee how useful the output will be though.
My summary of the Site (Situation) is as follows:
a) 2 schemes in one fund - sounds very flaky; plainly the legislation did not expect this to happen & my friend found this very strange - HSBC themselves had moved from Non-contrib pensions to money purchase but the funds are totally separate. (is the M scheme actually money purchase - not I guess?)
a2) what the above arrangement means (ie movement of money - avoidance of funding payments - avoidance of otherwise statutory increases ?? etc)
b) change to Deeds (whatever they are called) - is this pukka ??
c) "mis-selling" of "N" to "C" ? (& promise of increases) - companies always deny giving advice but plainly some people may be worse off by the move and from my memory the promise of increases was quite a major factor
d) can we get the increases defined properly and funds split ??
f) IBM's record in the States (ie where they are coming from as a corporation) - is this relevant ?
Any other major bullets ??
At least it would (will I hope) be an opinion for free - plainly the minister does not want to enter into giving opinion and OPRA will do their own thing in their own way - it is plainly a complex area & I guess the new laws have not been fully tested (which is what I would say IBM is doing)so professional advice would be useful at some stage.
I guess I need to get a summary of the 3 schemes (N, C and M) and the summary of the Trust document to him as back-up.
The point about this exercise is that the HSBC will not spend any time researching our exact circumstances so the more precise the questions the more useful the answers.