Access our online service Exchange.
When and how to create a recovery plan
Information you need to submit
When you submit a recovery plan using Exchange you need to select either the 'new' or 'amend' option. You should only select 'amend' if you want to amend an existing recovery plan that you have previously sent us through Exchange. All 'amend' submissions must have the same valuation date as the recovery plan that the submission is amending.
You will also be asked to:
- confirm the identity of the scheme's actuary and provide their contact details
- select a trustee to be the contact point for the recovery plan and ensure that they have registered their current email address and telephone number on Exchange
- fill out a breakdown of annual recovery plan contributions up to a maximum of 20 years
- confirm whether independent advice has been obtained on the employer covenant for the valuation and recovery plan being submitted – this is a ‘yes / no’ question and you don't need to provide a copy of covenant advice when making your online submission (though we may request a copy later)
- attach the scheme’s statement of funding principles as a PDF
- attach the scheme’s statement of investment principles as a PDF – if you’re exempt from producing a statement of investment principles you don’t need to submit this document.
If you provide this information, it will help prevent the need for us to ask you for additional information.
Providing us with the additional contact details will also allow us, in the majority of cases, to communicate the outcome of our review of the recovery plan by email to the relevant trustee and the scheme actuary. We send all emails securely and details of the outcome of the review are in an attached document. You will need a password to access the document which we send in a separate email.
Consumer Prices Index
The Government introduced new rules to move to using the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rather than the Retail Prices Index (RPI) to calculate inflation-linked statutory revaluation and pension increases. However, it also confirmed that it won’t introduce a statutory power to amend scheme rules to allow schemes to use CPI as the basis for revaluation and indexation of members’ benefits in cases where the scheme rules do not already contain such a power.
You may want to take legal advice if you are uncertain how the changes affect your scheme. We can’t advise on the effect of the changes on any particular scheme, as this depends on the wording of the scheme rules.
As part of the scheme funding regime and associated processes, you must provide us with a summary of the actuarial valuation, which amongst other things includes the principal assumptions on which the calculation of the technical provisions have been based. You also need to provide details of the CPI assumption.