The Govt are looking at a way to force pension transfers once a person leaves employment the FT reported this week.

Steven Webb, pensions minister, is looking for ways to halt the decline of “gold-plated” final salary schemes in favour of defined contribution plans, where members have no guarantees about their eventual pension income

With 11m workers expected to be automatically enrolled into workplace pensions over the next five years, the minister has been looking to create a “middle ground” for pensions that offer more certainty than defined contribution plans.

However, Mr Webb, has been vague on how such schemes would work: Thursday’s report was an attempt to start fleshing out his vision.

The most controversial proposal would allow employers to force staff to quit a defined-benefit scheme when they leave for a new job. The departing employee would be paid a lump sum to transfer to a new scheme.

“Allowing employers to insist on automatic transfers out of the scheme when an employee leaves would help prevent liabilities from becoming too large relative to the business and spare employers from taking pension risk for people now working for their competitors,” said Towers Watson, the consultancy.

We are deVere have looked at the problem for many clients and we understand that companies are having massive issues funding pensions for people that have left their employment.

When company schemes were set up they were intended to encourage people to stay with the same employer. In today’s World people change jobs 7 or more times. Look at these figures for two of the UK”s biggest pensions.

	Active Members	Deferred Members
BT	47,704	85,294
USS	141,093	93,591
Total	188,797	178,885