Bosses' pension provision growing, says TUC

The TUC has regularly accused directors of enjoying much better pension terms than staff

Directors of the UK's largest companies have seen their average pension provision grow sharply in the last year, the TUC has claimed.

It said their provision was up in the last year and would provide an annual pension in retirement of £240,191.

The group analysed the pension arrangements of 351 directors from FTSE 100 companies.

These had grown faster than most pension schemes for regular employees, it said.

The TUC claimed that the most common normal retirement age for senior executives was 60, although it was 65 for most other scheme members.

It wants to see the system change to that seen in the public sector, where all staff are members of the same scheme, and it has called for more transparency in annual reports about directors' pension provisions.

This was backed to a degree by Darren Philp, director of Policy of the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF).

"It follows that people who earn more will accrue bigger pensions. But investors may have important questions about fairness if the pensions of directors are disproportionately more generous than those of other staff," he said.

"More transparency is needed around boardroom pensions. Boards need to be open about their pension arrangements so that shareholders such as pension funds can hold top management to account."