The financial market collapse at the start of 2020 was, on the face of it, a disaster for the world’s pension funds. The value of stocks and some bonds worth trillions of pounds plummeted as the extent and depth of the global recession caused by Covid lockdowns became clear. The UK’s biggest private pension scheme, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), was no different: the custodian of the retirement savings of 470,000 university and college workers lost billions of pounds.
At its latest valuation, actuaries came up with an alarming conclusion: the assets of USS were only worth £67bn, leaving a huge deficit of £18bn compared to the liabilities it has promised to pay out in the future.
