Royal Mail Pension Plan review closed

The members’ consultation period on the future of the Royal Mail Pension Plan (the Plan) closed on Friday (10 March). In a notice published on the myroyalmail.com website today (13 March), Royal Mail said: “No decisions will be made until we have considered members’ views and have had an opportunity to discuss these with our unions. We will write to members once a decision has been made.

“We know how important pension benefits are to our colleagues. We are sorry we had to write to Plan members in January 2017 to say we believe that the current Plan will soon not be affordable.

“In the absence of an affordable alternative, from April 2018, we have proposed that future benefits for Plan members would be built up on a Defined Contribution basis. This could be either in a new section of the Plan or in the Royal Mail Defined Contribution Plan (RMDCP).”

As previously reported, Royal Mail launched the consultation in January because it believed that “the current Plan will soon not be affordable”.

Royal Mail has proposed changes which would mean that  – amongst other things – members would no longer build up future pension on a Defined Benefit basis, but would instead build up future benefits on a Defined Contribution basis.

More information on the 2018 Pension Review is available at www.myroyalmail.com/pensions.