AstraZeneca | Pension Fund

These are ‘defined contribution’ (DC) savings, held within your Investment Account. 

These are ‘defined contribution’ (DC) savings, held within your Investment Account. 

These are ‘defined contribution’ (DC) savings, held within your Investment Account. 

These are ‘defined contribution’ (DC) savings, held within your Investment Account. 

This is an insurance policy which pays a yearly income (a pension) for the rest of your life. There are many different types of annuity.

The AstraZeneca Pension Plan, provided by Legal & General. This is a DC plan that is open to contributions.

This is a type of pension arrangement. The benefits at retirement can be calculated in advance or are ‘defined’. 

This is a different type of pension arrangement. The contributions that are paid in are known or ‘defined’.

This is age 60 for females and 65 for males.

Your Fund pension is made up of different parts, based on when you built up your benefits. Guaranteed Minimum Pension, or GMP, is one part.

It is linked to when there were two parts to the State Pension arrangement – the Basic State Pension and the State Earnings-Related Pension Scheme (SERPS, which later became the State Second Pension).

Workplace pension schemes had the option to ‘contract out’ of the State Second Pension. This resulted in National Insurance savings for the employer and its members, and many schemes took advantage of this option. 

In exchange, the scheme would promise to pay members at least as much pension as they would have received from SERPS. This is the part of your Fund pension that is known as GMP.

GMP was earned between 6 April 1978 and 5 April 1997 so if you were building up benefits in the Fund during this time, some of your Fund pension is GMP.

This is one way you can take your retirement benefits. It involves transferring your benefits out of the Fund into a suitable drawdown arrangement which allows you to take as much as you want from your drawdown fund whenever you want.

This is the DC part of the Fund.

Under current pensions law, this is age 55 unless you are retiring on ill-health grounds.

This varies according to which section you are in and when you joined the Fund. Your annual retirement statement will confirm your Normal Retirement Age, or contact the Pensions Team.

This is a DB part of the Fund.

If you have an Investment Account, this is one option for taking these savings – as a one-off cash sum or as two payments over two tax years (known as an Uncrystallised Funds Pension Lump Sum).

 An independent financial adviser appointed by the Company to help members understand their retirement options.