Is there any advantage to transferring into new pension scheme? (Public sector)

[User2638483]

I have about 15 years of local government pension scheme. Started 2006 so the first couple of years would be the final salary scheme before it changed to career average. At the moment they’re 3 separate little pots over 2 different councils.

I’m now going to the civil service and have the option of transferring them into the CS Alpha scheme. I know there might be some negatives but can’t get my head round if there are any potential positives from transferring in?
What information do I need to find out in order to decide?

If I’m reading it correctly then there may be some people in lgps who would benefit from the underpin being extended to them, if perhaps their salary has increased a lot? If I disregard part time working mine increased 50%

But I guess quite a bit of that is inflation anyway

The final salary element is calculated using FTE pay (and if you worked PT during this period, the service accrued us scaled down accordingly). However, CARE benefits are calculated on your actual PT pay. Therefore simply changing hours won’t affect whether the underpin ‘bites’ or not because your FTE salary would stay the same. But you’re right that if someone has a significant pay rise due to a promotion then they may have been better off under final salary rules and the underpin would bite. It would need to be a big pay jump though to offset both inflation and the difference in accrual rates (the accrual rate is higher in the CARE scheme - you get 1/49th of your pay as a pension for every year you’re in the CARE scheme whereas in the final salary scheme it was 1/60th).

@ChessieFL thanks for that very informative post. I wasn’t sure if it might affect OP, but thought I should mention it, despite not knowing much about the ins and outs 😁