Pensions Act (Northern Ireland) 2015

PART 2 MERGER OF PENSION ACCOUNTS

13.—(1) The Department may by regulations make provision for the purposes of requiring dormant pension accounts of a qualifying member of an automatic transfer scheme to be merged into a current pension account of the member.

(2) The regulations may not require a dormant pension account to be merged unless the accrued rights to benefits to which the account relates would be transferable benefits of the member if—

(a) all other accrued rights to benefits of the member, and any relevant contributions, were ignored, and

(b) any other prescribed matter were ignored.

(3) The regulations may in particular—

(a) make provision for determining into which current pension account (if the member has more than one) a dormant pension account is to be merged;

(b) provide that the rules of the scheme that are to apply to a merged pension account are those that apply to the current pension account into which a dormant pension account is being merged;

(c) require the trustees or managers of the scheme to make a transfer of assets representing the accrued rights to benefits to which a dormant pension account relates;

(d) include provision corresponding or similar to any provision which may be made by regulations under Part 1.

(4) In this paragraph “pension account”, in relation to a member of a scheme, means an account relating to the member’s accrued rights to benefits in respect of a particular period of employment; and a pension account—

(a) is “dormant” if relevant contributions in relation to the period of employment to which the account relates have ceased; and

(b) is “current” if such contributions have not ceased.

(5) In this paragraph—

(a) references to “accrued rights to benefits”, in relation to a member of a scheme, are to accrued rights to benefits under the applicable rules (within the meaning given by paragraph 1(6));

(b) “employment” has the prescribed meaning;

(c) “relevant contributions”, in relation to a member of a scheme, means contributions to the scheme by, or on behalf or in respect of, the member.