Thread by @cupofassam

A few facts on the #USSmess situation, which has brought strikes to HE institutions across the country. Thread:

In March 2020, the USS pension valued pension assets at £66.5 bn (in the midst of the Covid-19 stock market crash) and this valuation was used to predict that there would be a £17.9 bn ‘deficit’, using an assumption that there would be ‘0.0%’ growth of assets above CPI inflation;

by January 2022, however, the pension assets had an interim value of £92bn, or a £7.6bn surplus, even taking into account the ‘deficit’ that USS had predicted on its own disputed assumptions;

In reaching this level of asset value, we have seen a 30% growth in assets above inflation in under 2 years, demonstrating that the 0% asset growth assumption was an illustration of 'excessive prudence';

the actual growth of the assets demonstrably outperforms by a significant margin all the projections for the asset growth of the 2011, 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2020 valuations;

recent calculations of the necessary break-even rate on asset growth needed to sustain current benefits with no further contribution increases, based on current asset values, is for growth only of 0.23% below CPI;

it has recently been revealed that the Office for Students is itself a USS employer, broadening the scope of the covenant to, in effect, include the state;

the realisation of the current actual value of the assets of the pensions scheme (circa £90bn) was not predicted to occur within the USS 2020 valuation until the 22nd century.

Nonetheless, the current UUK proposals that our University currently supports are predicated upon this projection, despite that 22nd century asset value having been already achieved in January 2022;

no regulation mandated the assumption of 0.0% growth above inflation by USS managers, either in the Pensions Act 2004 section 226, or through the Pensions Regulator;

Professor Rau of the Judge Business School, Cambridge, has explained that if USS went through history’s worst periods of depression and war, it would still have a substantial surplus;

there is no regulatory block to requesting a new March 2022 valuation, which the UCU proposals include as a starting point;

the UCU’s proposals have already been deemed ‘viable and implementable’ by the USS scheme;

the UUK proposals will cause significant inter-generational unfairness, with many younger members of the scheme facing a cut of more than a third of their pension in retirement. This can be demonstrated using only USS’s own calculations and models;

Members earning over £100k will see negligible impact on their pensions from the UUK proposals;

The UCU proposal will cost around £780 more per USS member than the UUK adjusted proposal from now until April 2023;

the result of the USS consultation of members clearly demonstrated a fit with what UCU are proposing.

Happy to receive corrections or nuances to any of these statements.