> With a pension, you promise your employees they will get a certain amount of money in retirement. No, that's not how it works for most workplace pensions in

> With a pension, you promise your employees they will get a certain amount of money in retirement. No, that's not how it works for most workplace pensions in the UK now that we have a statutory system for them. There are statutorily-specified percentages of the employee's paycheck that get paid into a workplace pension account by the employer - one percentage as a deduction from the employee's paycheck, the other out of employer's pocket on top of the employee's paycheck. Then the employer's duty is done; the money is now in an account controlled by the employee, they're free to move the money to a different provider if they want to, and if they don't and the provider they're using fails, that's not the employer's problem any more. As I understand it, the agreement the employer and employee had in this case worked in essentially the same way. However, retroactive statutory changes to the rules governing the scheme type had the effect that: 1. The employer retroactively became a guarantor for the liabilities of the scheme 2. The scheme became obligated to have a greater amount of capital on hand to ensure solvency, which the employer was then liable for