CARE is a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) defined benefit (DB) arrangement.
As a member of CARE, each year of membership builds your CARE pension and means:
- you’ll have a guaranteed income for life once you retire;
- you can exchange some of your CARE pension into a tax-free lump sum which you can take at retirement;
- you’ll be covered for valuable life cover and dependants benefits which means your loved ones will be taken care of when you die.
For each scheme year of CARE membership you will build a unit of pension, at 1/60 of your Pensionable Salary (Basic Pay plus any pensionable allowances such as London or South East allowance).
For every unit of pension you accrue, these are revalued in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) every April up until you retire. The revaluation increase only applies to full scheme years so if you retired mid-way through the year, the unit of pension accrued from 1 April to your date of leaving would not be increased.
For example, if you earnt £30,000 per annum and was a member of CARE for five years, leaving mid-way through the year, assuming CPI each year of 2%, your CARE pension would be calculated as follows:
CARE members do not automatically accrue a tax-free cash lump sum. However, at retirement you can exchange some of your CARE pension into a tax-free cash lump sum.
You can view the current value of your CARE pension by logging in to your CARE Member Account.