The overall shape of the UK’s final salary pension schemes took a turn for the worse last month.
Figures from the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) revealed that, in July, the shortfall in the UK’s 6,560 private sector final salary schemes had risen to £67.3 billion.
Of those schemes, some 4,684 registered a deficit; only 1,849 were able to show a surplus.
The PPF said that an increase in the value of UK government bonds, which put a squeeze on their yield and so put up the cost of paying for pensions, was the main driver behind the deficit.
