Why bother with your annual benefit statement?

Your benefit statement is a key document when it comes to your retirement planning. It’s an annual snapshot of how much your pension savings are worth – and how much they could be worth when you retire.

We’ve uploaded your benefit statement to your Personal Account at MyPru so you can view it online. But why should you bother taking the time to look through it? Here are three reasons:

It’ll help you figure out if your retirement plans are on track.

Having a realistic and up-to-date view of how much your PSPS savings could be worth when you retire is crucial when planning for your future. It’s also important to consider your PSPS benefits alongside potential income from other sources (like your State Pension or benefits from other pension schemes).

To help you plan and see if you’re on track, use the Retirement Living Standards. These are published by Pensions UK, and are there to help you assess whether your income is likely to meet your needs. If it isn’t, you might need to rethink your plans for when and how to take your benefits, or consider how you can be saving more before it’s too late.

It’ll give you an idea of how your investments are performing.

As a DC member, the investment returns on your savings have a big part to play in determining your retirement income. Your benefit statement shows you investment growth over the last year, so you can see how the funds you’re investing in have performed.

Of course, pension saving is a long-term project, and investments can go up and down over time depending on market conditions. A disappointing one-year performance isn’t necessarily a reason to change your investment choices. The important thing is to understand your current position and priority, whether that’s long-term growth to boost your savings, or short-term stability to protect what you’ve already got.

Remember, you can check the performance of all the PSPS funds on the Scheme website.

It’ll help you assess your tax position.

Pensions are a very tax-efficient way of saving for the future, but there are certain limits that apply. These limits apply to the amount you can save in a tax year and the total amount you can take as lump sums. Reading your benefit statement and understanding these tax limits can help you avoid any unexpected tax charges.

If you haven’t yet read your annual benefit statement, you could log in to MyPru now and take a look. And even if you’ve already done so, why not read it again to make sure you’re making the most of it?