Information for independent financial advisors (IFAs)

To request information about a specific member, you'll need to submit a Letter of Authority addressed to NHS Pensions. 

The Letter of Authority should include:

• the member’s name
• their membership (SD) number or National Insurance number
• their date of birth
• their full address
• details of the individual or organisation being given authority (if the organisation has a head office the postal address must be included on the letter)

The letter must be clearly signed and dated by the member and by the individual or organisation they're nominating to communicate with us.

A Letter of Authority can specify what information the member would like us to share on their behalf or a general request and what format this information is provided in. For example, letters, calls or emails.

A member may have more than one Letter of Authority in effect at a time. Each will be valid for 3 years from the date received, unless authority is withdrawn earlier by the member.

You can email the letter to nhsbsa.pensionsmember@nhsbsa.nhs.uk

If you're emailing a Letter of Authority, you should provide the member (SD) number in the title of your email. This will help us to locate the member record quickly.

The NHS Pension Scheme is an annual update scheme, with the scheme year running from 01 April to the following 31 March each year.

The annual update must be provided to NHS Pensions:

• 2 months after the scheme year end for employed staff (31 May each year), excluding salaried GPs (known as officers)
• 11 months after the year end for practitioners, GPs and non-GP providers (28 Feb each year) through Primary Care Support England (PCSE) or their local health board (LHB)

If your query is about contributions in the current scheme year, you should contact the employer or local administrator for your client (the member) in the first instance.

A scheme overview is available on our Membership of the NHS Pensions Scheme page.

All requests for information should be submitted to nhsbsa.pensionsmember@nhsbsa.nhs.uk
 

Total Reward Statement (TRS) or Annual Benefit Statement (ABS)

A TRS is provided to members each year through Electronic Staff Record.

An ABS is provided to members each year through GOV.UK Verify.

Members must access their TRS or ABS first before we can issue copies to third parties.

If the statement is unavailable after accessing, you can then request a free age estimate only on behalf of the member directly from NHS Pensions by using the estimate request form on our Getting an estimate of your pension page.

You can find more information about TRS and ABS on our Total Reward Statement pages.
 

Service history and pensionable pay history

Once received, service history and pensionable pay history requests will be sent to the service and membership teams for them to action.  

PIA amounts for the previous 7 tax years

We can only provide copies of pensions savings statements if they were produced at the time and are already showing on the record for previous years. These requests will be sent to the annual allowance team to action and will be sent directly to the member.  

There are some common factors you may find helpful. 

These include:

• retirement factors, which can be found on our Retirement page
• annual allowance limit, which can be found on our Annual allowance page
• lifetime allowance limit, which can be found on our Lifetime allowance page
• divorce or dissolution of a civil partnership and transfer out non club factors, which can be found on our Divorce or dissolution of a civil partnership and your pension page, under 'Factors'
   

Scheme pays arrangements

You can find more information on scheme pays and how this works on our annual allowance webpage.

If you want to estimate scheme pays reductions from pension benefits, you can use the total amount owed and convert this into a benefits reduction by using the factors available on our Annual allowance page. The Scheme Pays Recovery factors can be found in the scheme pays section of this page, under ‘Making a scheme pays election’.

You'll also find a copy of our pensions savings guide on this page, which includes detailed explanations and examples about our pensions savings statements.

Each month, we provide a pensions update for scheme employers. This includes latest news, updates on recent projects or initiatives and any process changes.

Although the update is mainly aimed at employers, you can subscribe to this to stay up to date with the latest information by emailing us.

We also have a member newsletter that is sent out 2 or 3 times a year, or when relevant information needs to be shared that may be of interest to your organisation.

To subscribe, complete the subscription form on our Useful information page, under member newsletter.

We provide a pensioner newsletter annually. This informs pensioners of any relevant news about their benefits and payments.

To subscribe, complete the subscription form on our Useful information for pensioners page, under 'Keeping in touch'.