Unlike insurance companies, pension schemes do not have the benefit of explicit
solvency capital to protect members‘ accrued benefits. Historically this was just
accepted as part of the ‗deal‘ but in recent years this has changed, due to a combination
of many pension funds now being in run-off mode and the impact of legislation in
2003 which made it impossible for employers voluntarily to walk away from their
obligations without paying an exit price sufficient to bring the scheme‘s funding level
up to insurance buy-out levels.