How do I request a Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV)?

Your new pension provider will require a Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV) quotation from Merseyside Pension Fund. Under the provisions of the Pensions Act 1995, the Fund will guarantee this quotation for a period of three months from the date of calculation (known as the ‘Guarantee Date’).

You can request one free CETV quotation within a 12 month period. Any further CETV requests will incur a charge of £180 (Inc. VAT) per quotation.

You will not be eligible to request a CETV from Merseyside Pension Fund if:

you are within 12 months of your Normal Pension Age [1], or
you hold a current active membership as well as a deferred or pensioner membership in the LGPS.

If you would like to request a CETV of your pension benefits, please download, complete and return the form entitled 'Request a Cash Equivalent Transfer Value' [2].

Please Note: If you are an active contributing member, the Fund will need to request your current pay details from your employer. This will be requested once we receive your fully completed CETV request form.

The Fund aims to produce the CETV within 10 working days from receipt of all information essential to the calculations. Please note in these unprecedented times we would be very grateful for your patience. We are managing our workloads in priority order so our response times may be longer than usual .

CETV quotations are sent directly to members only, Merseyside Pension Fund will not send this information to third party companies.

On receipt of the CETV quotation, your new pension provider will advise you of the additional benefits the transfer will buy in their scheme. A written option to proceed with the guaranteed transfer value must be received within the three month guaranteed period.

If you opt to proceed with the transfer of your LGPS benefits to another scheme, the normal time limit for payment of the guaranteed transfer value will be six months from the ‘Guarantee Date’. If we are not able to make payment within this period, the Fund may need to restart the transfer process, and issue you with a new CETV quotation and paperwork.

You may have to take appropriate independent financial advice [3]

McCloud Judgement

When the Government reformed public service pension schemes in 2014 and 2015, transitional protections were introduced for older members. In December 2018, the Court of Appeal ruled that younger members of the judicial and firefighters’ pension schemes had been unlawfully discriminated against because the protections did not apply to them. This ruling is called the McCloud judgment.

Because of the ruling, there will be changes to all public service pension schemes that provided transitional protection, including the LGPS. The changes are called the McCloud remedy and are intended to remove the age discrimination found in the McCloud court case.

If you have service with us between 01/04/2014-31/03/2022, you may be affected by these changes which may impact your transfer calculations. If this is the case, please provide details of any other public sector or LGPS pensions you have elsewhere on your CETV request form so that we can investigate this for you. It is vital that you provide us with the service dates for your employments within these schemes for us to carry out the necessary checks.

You can find out more about the McCloud remedy on the website for LGPS members: www.lgpsmember.org/mccloud-remedy/ [4]

You may also wish to contact any other public service pension schemes you have to see how transferring your pension benefits may affect your qualification for the protections mentioned above.