Actuaries at Aon have warned changes to accounting rules and revised longevity assumptions will add an estimated £200bn to pension liabilities, threatening to plunge the UK back into a pensions crisis.

‘The double whammy of (accounting) proposals and the regulator's proposed mortality assumptions throw the future of final-salary schemes into further doubt. These proposals add more pressure on companies to close the schemes or find ways to terminate their liabilities,’ Marcus Hurd, a senior Aon consultant, told The Daily Telegraph.

Aon's findings co-incides with a separate report which underlines the widening gulf between private and public sector pensions. Research from the think-tank Policy Exchange reveales only 15% of private sector employees – 3.4m people – are in final-salary schemes and of those only 900,000 are in schemes still open to new members.

‘Tomorrow's (private sector) pensioners are being required to take risks themselves, whereas many companies had historically agreed to shoulder the responsibility. The current pensions environment punishes companies for demonstrating paternalism to their employers,’ Hurd said.

Further reading:

Regulatory changes alarm pension industry

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Read story in The Daily Telegraph