New Actuarial Standard on Pensions is Published
News types: Codes and Standards Announcements, Publications
Published: 21 October 2010
The FRC’s Board for Actuarial Standards (BAS) has today published its standard for pensions work.
The new standard will help to ensure that trustees and sponsors of pension schemes can rely on the actuarial information supplied by their advisors, and understand its implications for their decisions. It requires actuarial advisors to justify their assumptions and explain the uncertainty around any results. The information supplied will have to be understandable to users, and – in the case of the Scheme Funding reports – to pension scheme members.
Commenting on the new standard, Jim Sutcliffe, Chairman of the BAS, said:
“Continuing financial uncertainty, together with the increase in life expectancy, poses challenges to trustees and others involved in running pension schemes. They need accurate, high quality, clearly presented actuarial information to understand the risks they face and the implications of their decisions. The pensions standard sets a new benchmark in ensuring that users receive the actuarial information they need to make the best decisions.”
The BAS has also published a set of answers to FAQs on its website Answers to FAQs for Practitioners - version 1 Dec 2011, intended to help practitioners.
Notes to Editors
- The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is the UK’s independent regulator responsible for promoting high quality corporate governance and reporting to foster investment.
- The Board for Actuarial Standards has a primary objective of promoting competence and transparency of actuarial practice by establishing and improving actuarial technical standards and ensuring that they are coherent, consistent and comprehensive.
- The BAS has issued an amended version of the guidance note GN9: Funding Defined Benefits – Presentation of Actuarial Advice. This version allows compliance with GN9 by complying with the relevant BAS standards.
- The Actuarial Profession has recently sent a letter to its members setting out the way in which it considers that compliance with relevant BAS standards should be reviewed under its professional guidance note, GN48: Compliance review: Pensions.