FAS news archive 2008
Government response to FAS consultation
20 June 2008
The Government has published its response to the consultation on the draft Financial Assistance Scheme (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2008. A final draft of the Regulations was also laid before Parliament on 18 June to:
- provide for early reduced payment of assistance from the FAS where a qualifying member is unable to work due to ill health. They also allow qualifying members of certain pension schemes which started winding-up with solvent employers to qualify for help from the FAS.
- include a number of measures aimed at speeding up payments to members, as well as provisions to protect the value of FAS scheme assets and measures to allow the Board of the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) to be more closely involved in the development of the FAS.
- remove the option for FAS qualifying members to be reinstated into the State Additional Pension.
You can read the draft Regulations (115KB) 
and the consultation response (66KB) .
Financial Assistance Scheme (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2008 came into force today
4 June 2008
The Regulations introduce the first key elements of the reforms to the FAS announced on 17 December 2007, allowing payment at 90% of a qualifying member's accrued pension (subject to the cap) and payment from a member's normal retirement age (or age 60 if normal retirement age is below 60). Where relevant, payments will be made in relation to past periods from the later of the member's normal retirement age or the 14 May 2004, the date that FAS was first announced. We will start to calculate payments in line with these changes immediately and we aim to reassess all relevant member and survivor payments by the end of August. You can read more information about how FAS payments for a past period will affect your income tax (65KB) .
When we calculate revised FAS payments under these Regulations we will be using the revised annuity factors that were proposed earlier this year. Today the Government published its response to the consultation on those revised factors. You can read the Government response to the consultation (118KB).
Read the Regulations in full.
Announcement of FAS Consultation - A Ministerial Statement from Mike O'Brien, The Minister for Pension Reform
27 March 2008
The Minister for Pension Reform, Mike O’Brien in a statement (24KB) today announced the publication tomorrow (28 March 2008) of draft regulations and a consultation document in support of the second stage of delivering the commitments made by Government in December 2007 regarding the extension to the Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS).
You can read the Financial Assistance Scheme (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2008 (357KB) consultation document.
First Solvent Schemes taken into FAS
11 March 2008
The Financial Assistance Scheme has released information on the First Solvent Schemes to qualify for assistance.
Announcement of FAS Consultations - A Ministerial Statement from Mike O'Brien, The Minister for Pension Reform
6 March 2008
The Minister for Pension Reform, Mike O’Brien issued a statement (19KB) today to outline the next steps to delivering the commitments made by Government in December 2007 regarding the extension to the Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS).
You can read the full Consultation documents for the draft Financial Assistance Scheme (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2008 (153KB) and the Revision of the annuity factors employed by the Financial Assistance Scheme (193KB) .