Dictionary
Annual allowance
This is the yearly amount of tax-approved retirement benefits you can build up – in pension plans inside or outside the Unilever UK Pension Fund – without paying a special pensions tax charge on them. ('Tax-approved' means that you build up the benefits in a plan registered with HM Revenue & Customs.)
Dependant
This can mean anyone who (in the Trustees' opinion) wholly or partly depends on you either for financial reasons, or because of a disability.
Extra contributions
These are additional payments you can make on top of your normal contributions to add to your benefits. You can make them regularly, or as occasional 'one-off' payments, subject to the terms of the Investing plan.
Final pensionable salary
For most members, this is your pensionable salary over the 12 months before you retire, or leave. It may also include any fluctuating pensionable salary you receive normally averaged over the three-year period before you retire, or leave.
There are safeguards in place which can take account of salary in earlier years, should your pensionable salary go down in the 10 years before you retire.
Guaranteed Minimum Pension ('GMP')
Because the plan is "contracted out" of the second level of State benefit, it must provide a certain level of pension in its place. For pension you built up before 6 April 1997, this level was the GMP.
Inflation
This is the general rise in prices, normally shown by the 'Retail Prices Index' – a figure taken from measuring how costs increase across a range of goods and services.
Lifetime allowance
This is the total amount of tax-approved benefits you can build up over your working life without paying a special pensions tax charge on them.
Lower earnings limit
The lower earnings limit is an amount roughly equal to the basic State pension. It normally increases each April. You do not pay National Insurance, or pension contributions, on any salary below this limit.
When you retire, 1/80 of the lower earnings limit for each year of pensionable service is taken away from your pension. This allows for the basic State pension you would start receiving at State pension age, if you have paid enough National Insurance contributions.
Normal retirement age
This is age 65 for men and women.
Pensionable salary
This is normally your basic pay, but may include other earnings from time to time (your employer will tell you if this applies to you). If you take part in the Unilever Contribution Arrangement your pensionable salary is based on your pay before it is reduced.
Pensionable service
This is the length of time you have been a plan member, including any period you were in the Unilever Superannuation Fund, in years and months (worked out when you retire to the nearest month), plus any service credits you have bought or received. Pensionable service is normally restricted to 40 years.
Unilever
Unilever is the Unilever Group company that employs you and has agreed to take part in the Unilever UK Pension Fund. But, in some places in this website it means Unilever PLC.
Unilever Contribution Arrangement
This is the normal way of making contributions to the plan. Instead of you paying contributions from your salary, Unilever pays an amount equal to what your contributions would have been straight into the plan. You agree that your pay is reduced by the same amount. In this way, you and Unilever make savings on the National Insurance that would be payable if you made the contributions yourself.