Baptist Pension Scheme

The Baptist Pension Scheme is the workplace pension scheme for people connected with Baptist churches and organisations, and it is organised in three sections: Ministers, Staff and Basic. It works like any other workplace pension: your money goes in while you are working, it is invested, and it pays out when you retire. The rules on tax relief, the options for taking your money, the protections if things go wrong and the routes for complaint are set by UK pension law, not by the church.

What that means in practice is that most of your questions about the scheme have answers that apply to UK workplace pensions generally. This page sets out how those rules work, section by section: how contributions and tax relief are handled, who can join, how your pot is invested and charged, what your choices are at retirement, how death in service cover works, and what to do if you have a complaint. For anything specific to your own benefits, the scheme's own statements and its administrator are the authoritative source, and this page points you to the general rules that sit behind them.

What the Baptist Pension Scheme offers

The scheme provides retirement saving through its three sections, each aimed at a different group of people connected with Baptist life: Ministers, Staff and Basic. Broadly, the sections reflect the different kinds of work people do and the different ways their earnings are structured, and the benefits you build up, and the rules that apply to them, depend on which section you belong to.

As a workplace pension, the scheme sits within the framework described in the site's guide to pensions. Workplace pensions come in two main kinds, and the distinction matters for almost everything that follows. In a defined contribution scheme, you build a pot based on what you or your employer paid in, and the options at retirement depend on how that pot has grown⁵. In a defined benefit scheme, the pension you get when you retire is usually based on a fraction of your salary, multiplied by the number of years you were a member of the scheme⁶. The Baptist Pension Scheme's history includes both kinds of arrangement, and the difference between them shapes how your benefits are calculated, how they are protected and what choices you have later.

The scheme also provides cover that sits alongside the pension itself, including death in service benefits, which pay a lump sum or income to your family if you die while an active member. That cover is described in its own section below. If you want the scheme's current benefit terms, contribution rates or scheme-specific rules, those are published by the scheme itself, and its administrator can confirm which section you are in and what it provides.

How contributions and tax relief work

Contributions to the scheme come from you and, where applicable, from your employer, and the government adds tax relief on top. Under a relief at source arrangement, your pension provider claims tax relief from the government at the basic 20% rate and adds it to your pension pot². So for every £80 you pay in from your take-home pay, £20 of relief is claimed back and added, making £100 go into your pot. If you pay tax at a higher rate, you can normally claim the extra relief back through your tax return or by contacting HMRC, because the provider only claims the basic rate automatically.

In Scotland, income tax rates and bands are set by the Scottish Government, and the reliefs and allowances that apply are administered accordingly². The principle is the same: pension contributions attract relief, and the mechanism for higher-rate taxpayers to claim their full entitlement runs through the tax system rather than through the scheme.

There are limits on how much you can contribute each year while still getting the full tax treatment. The annual allowance caps the amount of pension savings that benefit from tax relief in a year, and a charge applies to savings above it. The relevant pension tax charges, as defined in legislation, include the annual allowance charge, the lifetime allowance charge, and the unauthorised payments charge or surcharge where paid by a member rather than a scheme administrator⁷. If you have a large income or have flexibly accessed a pension before, ask the administrator or a financial adviser how the allowance applies to you, because excess contributions trigger a tax charge rather than simply losing relief.

Who can join and how to apply

Membership is organised through the scheme's own eligibility rules for each section, and your employer or the organisation you work for normally arranges membership. Under automatic enrolment, employers have workplace pension duties, and among other things they must let you leave the pension scheme (called opting out) if you ask, and refund money you have paid if you opt out within one month⁸.

There is also a legal right that sits behind auto-enrolment. Under the Pensions Act 2008, a worker without qualifying earnings, aged 16 to 75 and working in Great Britain, may by notice require the employer to arrange for the worker to become an active member of a pension scheme that satisfies the requirements of that section⁹. In practice this means that even people who are not automatically enrolled, perhaps because their earnings are low or irregular, can ask to join a workplace pension and the employer must arrange it. If you think you fall outside the scheme's normal joining route, it is worth raising this right with your employer as well as with the scheme.

To apply, contact the organisation you work for in the first instance, or the scheme administrator directly. You will need your personal details and details of your employment, and the administrator will confirm which section you join and what your contribution rate will be. If you have pensions from previous jobs, you can also ask about transferring them in, which is covered in the section on leaving and transferring later in this page.

How your pension pot is invested

If your benefits are in a defined contribution arrangement, your pension pot is put into various types of investment, such as shares¹⁰. The value of your pot then goes up and down with the investments it holds, and the income you eventually receive depends on how those investments perform, the charges deducted along the way, and the choices you make when you retire. Normally, when you retire you take some of your pension pot as a tax-free cash lump sum¹⁰, with the rest used to provide income.

If your benefits are defined benefit, the investment risk is carried differently. The pension is usually based on a fraction of your salary multiplied by your years of membership⁶, so the amount does not depend directly on investment performance. The scheme's trustees remain responsible for the day-to-day running of the scheme, including how the assets are invested to make sure the promised benefits can be paid¹¹.

Most schemes offer a default investment approach for members who do not make an active choice, and many offer a range of funds with different levels of risk. The scheme's annual benefit statements show where your money is invested and how it has performed. If you are unsure whether your benefits are defined contribution or defined benefit, the administrator can confirm which applies to you, because the two types are reviewed in different ways.

How the charges work

Running a pension costs money, and those costs come out of your pot. Pension providers may charge for starting and running a pension, and usually they take a percentage from your pension fund¹². In a defined contribution scheme, the provider investing your pension may charge an amount based on the value of the pension¹⁰, so as your pot grows the charge in pounds grows with it, even though the percentage stays the same.

The scale of typical charges is well documented. Schemes charge, on average, around 0.3% on pension pots, according to a government consultation published in June 2026¹³. An earlier policy statement put the average pension charge at 0.57%¹⁴. The two figures come from different documents and different points in time, and both are stated here because the documents differ; what matters for you is the charge on your own scheme, which must be disclosed to you.

For defined benefit members, charges work differently: the cost of running the scheme is met by the scheme's assets overall rather than deducted from an individual pot, and the benefit you were promised is not reduced by an annual percentage. Either way, the scheme must tell members what it costs. Ask the administrator for the current charge levels for your section, and check your annual statement, because charges compound over decades and small differences add up.

Taking your pension: the options at retirement

When you reach the scheme's pension age, the options depend on the kind of benefits you have. For money purchase (defined contribution) savings, the only types of pension that can be paid are scheme pensions, lifetime annuities or drawdown pensions¹⁵. In other words, you can take a scheme pension, which is a secured pension for life paid out of the scheme assets or purchased from an insurance company; buy an annuity; or draw an income directly from your pension fund as a drawdown pension⁵. Normally you also take some of the pot as a tax-free cash lump sum at retirement¹⁰.

If you buy an annuity, you do not have to buy it from your pension provider: you have the right to shop around¹⁶. Annuity rates vary between insurers, and the income an annuity pays can differ materially between providers for the same pot.

Taking your pension early reduces it. Official guidance gives a worked example: Michael, a scheme member with a retirement age of 60 who retired at 58, has his pension reduced by 10 per cent because it is paid two years early⁶. The same principle applies broadly: benefits taken before the scheme's pension age are reduced to reflect the longer period they will be paid for.

Free help is available before you decide. Pension Wise appointments, however, are only available to people who are over 50 with a defined contribution pot¹⁷, so members with defined benefit benefits, or those under 50, need to look elsewhere for guidance, such as MoneyHelper. Whatever your section, ask the administrator for a retirement illustration well before your intended retirement date.

Older defined benefit pensions and insurers

The Baptist Pension Scheme, like many long-standing schemes, has closed or restructured parts of its defined benefit arrangements over the years, and some older defined benefit pensions are no longer held within the scheme itself. When a scheme winds up or buys out its defined benefits, the assets are typically transferred to an insurer, which then takes on responsibility for paying the promised pensions.

Just is one of the insurers active in this market. It describes itself as the largest provider of individually underwritten guaranteed income for life products, a leading provider of equity release lifetime mortgages, de-risking solutions for defined benefit pension schemes, care funding solutions and retirement-focused advice¹⁷. If your older Baptist defined benefit pension has been bought out, the insurer that now holds it is the body that pays you, and your first point of contact for those benefits changes accordingly. The scheme administrator can tell you whether this applies to you.

Defined benefit arrangements remain a significant part of the UK pension landscape. Occupational defined benefit schemes had a total membership of 5,766,000 in 2024¹⁸. Looking at individuals rather than memberships, people were more likely to only pay into a defined contribution pension (26%) than a defined benefit pension (23%), according to official statistics covering Great Britain from April 2018 to March 2020¹⁹.

If a defined benefit scheme cannot meet its promises, the Pension Protection Fund steps in. A DB pension scheme will only transfer into the PPF once it has assessed that the scheme cannot afford to buy benefits for its members from an insurance company which are equal to, or more than, what the PPF pays¹¹. The PPF is run by an independent Board which is responsible to Parliament through the Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions¹¹.

Death in service and cover for your family

The scheme provides death in service benefits, which pay out if you die while you are an active, contributing member. Death cover of this kind is one of the standard types of insurance people hold without always realising it: official guidance on debts after a death lists death cover for a mortgage, payment protection cover for personal loans or credit cards, and death in service from a pension as things to check carefully²⁰. If you die, your family should check whether the scheme's death benefits apply, alongside any other cover you held.

The tax treatment of these benefits is changing. All death in service benefits payable from a registered pension scheme will be excluded from the value of an individual's estate for Inheritance Tax purposes from 6 April 2027⁴. A government consultation response confirms this applies regardless of whether the scheme is discretionary or non-discretionary, and that death in service benefits paid by non-discretionary pension schemes, such as the NHS and other public sector schemes, which are currently in scope of Inheritance Tax, will be brought out of scope from that date²¹.

Some death benefits also have their own income tax rules. Under pension tax legislation, no liability to income tax arises on a pension protection lump sum death benefit paid under a registered pension scheme, subject to certain conditions²². And where a death benefit has been flexibly accessed, a claim can be made to HMRC to claim back income tax on a death benefit payment, known as P55(DB), where only part of the death benefit pension pot has been taken and no regular payments will follow²³.

Two further points are worth knowing. The Pension Protection Fund does not protect schemes that only provide death in service benefits²⁴, because those schemes hold no ongoing pension promise to protect. And for the families of armed forces and certain emergency services personnel whose death was caused by injury or disease on active service, there is a complete exemption from Inheritance Tax on the estate passing on death²⁵.

Leaving the Baptist Pension Scheme or stopping contributions

You can leave the scheme at any time: employers must let you leave the pension scheme (called opting out) if you ask, and refund money you have paid if you opt out within one month⁸. After that first month, money already paid in normally stays in the scheme and continues to be invested. Leaving does not mean losing what you have built up: if you stop paying into the scheme, you will still get that pension when you reach the pension scheme's age¹.

If you move to a new employer, you can leave your benefits where they are, transfer them, or in some cases keep contributing. You can transfer your UK pension pot to another registered UK pension scheme²⁶, and in some cases it is also possible to transfer to a new pension provider after you have started to draw retirement benefits²⁶. The statutory right to transfer, under Part 4ZA of the Pension Schemes Act 1993, applies UK-wide subject to certain conditions¹⁴.

To transfer your pension, you usually need to check your current scheme allows transfers out, make sure you will not lose any benefits, decide which scheme to transfer into, check if you need to pay for financial advice, ask your current provider for a transfer value, and then ask the new scheme to start the transfer²⁷. Transfers out of defined benefit schemes above a certain value require financial advice before they can proceed, a rule that was applied to members of the British Steel Pension Scheme, where members thinking about taking their money out of the scheme were required to take financial advice²⁸. That requirement exists because transferring out of a defined benefit scheme is irreversible and gives up guaranteed benefits.

Complaints and how members' savings are protected

If something goes wrong, there are two routes, and which one you use depends on what the problem is. The Pensions Ombudsman can look at complaints about how personal and occupational pension schemes are run³⁰. So a complaint about the administration of your benefits, a calculation you disagree with, or a delay in paying you belongs with the ombudsman, after you have first complained to the scheme itself and given it a chance to respond.

Concerns of a different kind are handled by The Pensions Regulator, the public body that oversees workplace pension schemes. It takes reports of concerns relating to a workplace pension, including dishonesty or fraud in the scheme, or significant concerns about how the scheme is being run³¹. It does not award compensation to individuals, but it can act against schemes and trustees.

Complaints about pensions are common and often succeed. The Financial Ombudsman Service, which handles complaints about personal pension providers, recorded 931 new complaints about personal pensions in the first quarter of 2026/27³², and upheld 49% of the personal pensions complaints it resolved across 2025/26³³. Across the pensions sector as a whole, the uphold rate was 48% in 2024/25³⁴. Those figures are about the wider market rather than this scheme, but they show that persistence in complaining pays off when the complaint is justified.

On protection, the rules are specific about who guards what. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme's protection does not include defined benefit pension schemes themselves, which are protected by the Pension Protection Fund³. So if you have defined benefit benefits in the scheme, the PPF is the safety net if the scheme fails; the FSCS covers other things, such as activities around personal pensions. A separate redress scheme exists for people who were advised to transfer out of the British Steel Pension Scheme between 26 May 2016 and 29 March 2018³, which illustrates how compensation schemes are created when a specific group of savers has been harmed.

For free, impartial help, MoneyHelper provides pension guidance and The Pensions Ombudsman handles disputes about how personal and occupational pension schemes are run. Reports about dishonesty, fraud or significant concerns about how a scheme is being run go to the public body that oversees workplace pensions. The scheme's own administrator remains the first stop for questions about your own benefits, and the site's guide to consumer protection explains the wider framework.