How your pension is calculated
As a deferred member, your pension was calculated at the date you left the Plan, using:
- Your final pensionable salary and the pensionable service you had built up at your date of leaving; and
- The lower earnings limit over the last 12 months of your pensionable service.
To protect it against inflation, your pension is increased each year until retirement in line with inflation up to 5% a year.
The deferred pension increases that have been applied over recent years are as follows:
| 2010 | 3.7% |
| 2009 | 0.1% |
| 2008 | 4.1% |
| 2007 | 4.2% |
| 2006 | 2.4% |
| 2005 | 3.2% |
| 2004 | 2.6% |
Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP)
The plan is 'contracted out' which means that you and Unilever paid lower National Insurance (while you were an active member), and the plan must meet certain requirements relating to the second level of State pension (S2P – previously known as SERPS).
Between 6 April 1978 and 5 April 1997, the plan needed to provide a replacement benefit called the GMP. If you were building up benefits in the plan between those dates, your pension will include some GMP. The GMP receives increases each year between you dates of leaving and retiring in line with current pension law, while any pension you have on top of your GMP receives the plan increases shown above.