Some highly significant #USS news from @JosephineCumbo re @TPRgovuk: She has elicited a clarifying statement from them which "tells us that USS's actions a fortnight ago enabled it to avoid a contribution plan being imposed on it by the Regulator." 1/
tPR also says: "we expect the valuation to be finalised and submitted after the contributions have been agreed". JEP is due to report by the end of September. The 60 day consultation on cost-sharing will conclude at the end of October. 2/
It sounds, therefore, like tPR is trying to prevent JEP from playing any significant role in challenging or revising the 2017 valuation. 3/3
Bill Galvin says this in his 25 July update on cost-sharing: "The statutory deadline for completing the 2017 valuation passed on 30 June 2018, and the Pensions Regulator has made its position clear:" 2/
"we are expected to present a credible plan for completing the process as soon as reasonably possible." 3/
uss.co.uk/how-uss-is-run…
uss.co.uk/how-uss-is-run…
So this is @TPRgovuk once again exerting pressure in relation to their statutory deadline. We've been through this before, however. At various points, what seemed like the date by which TPR would insist that the valuation has been finalised has come and gone. 4/
And note that tPR statement that "we expect the valuation to be finalised and submitted after the contributions have been agreed" is ambiguous in implying w/o explicitly saying that they expect the valuation to be submitted fairly soon after the cost-sharing consultation. 5/
It doesn't follow from anything I've said that I think tPR will SUCCEED in preventing JEP from having significant influence on the valuation. But they will exert pressure to wrap things up in less time than it would take to make extensive, radical changes to the valuation. 6/
So what point, you might ask, can JEP serve? It gives @UniversitiesUK a chance to correct their botched response to the February and September 2017 consultations, now that, rather than trying to make the case that DB is unaffordable in order to shift us all over to 100% IDC, 7/
they're committed to finding a way to make the provision of a meaningful level of DB affordable. It gives them a chance to get their members behind the level of investment risk that USS was originally willing to propose in February and September 2017. 8/
See this thread: 9/
See also this thread, starting here: 10/
And note the punchline: 11/11
