Financial advisers

A guide just for you

We understand that as a financial adviser, you may need a lot of information from us. So we’ve created a handy guide to provide you with the details you need and answer your all-important questions. It covers everything from historic and current member contributions to what happens when a member dies, and lots more.

A guide for IFAs

Need details on a specific member?

If you need specific information about a particular member, please send us a letter of authority (LOA). This will need to be addressed to Universities Superannuation Scheme Limited and be signed by the member. Once we have this on file, you’ll hold this authority for up to 12 months.

There is certain information that must be included on an LOA before we can accept it. Please find a list of the criteria below:

• It must state Universities Superannuation Scheme or USS (it must be clear that the LOA applies to USS)
• Your client’s full name
• The date the LOA was signed
• Your client’s wet signature
• Your client’s National Insurance number
• Your client’s date of birth, and
• Your client’s address.

You can email the LOA to correspondence-team@uss.co.uk, fax it to 0151 236 3173 or post it to us at:

Universities Superannuation Scheme Limited
Royal Liver Building
Liverpool
L3 1PY

If you are emailing a LOA you must provide the member number in the title of your email in order for us to locate the file quickly.

Important note: We cannot accept LOAs that have been DocuSigned or digitally signed. We cannot update our record with new member addresses detailed on LOAs.

What we can provide

The member's Annual Member Statement contains the information below. But if the member can't provide you with a copy, we can provide this on request. We’ll usually issue this within four weeks.

Value of their pension and one-off, tax-free (up to a certain limit) cash lump sum: This is the value of benefits a member has in the Retirement Income Builder at 31 March.

Value of their Investment Builder pot: This is the current value of the member’s Investment Builder pot.

Lifetime Allowance (LTA): This is the LTA a member has used up (in respect of their USS benefits and savings only).

Annual Allowance (AA): This is how much AA a member has used up (in respect of their USS benefits and savings only).

Member’s salary: This will be based on the last full month’s pension contribution a member made.

Working out a member’s pension

There’s a a range of modellers and tools to help you get a clearer idea of what a member’s pension may be. These will help you estimate a member’s benefits, Annual Allowance and the cost of applying for Scheme Pays.