Minister encouraging members to pullout of savings scheme
Mallard says that if teachers and non-teaching staff don’t join the new scheme “you won't receive the government subsidy.”
The GRT – a specialist provider of savings packages to the public service since the early 1990s – was initially selected as one of the four providers for the new scheme but withdrew in April, citing rule changes by the State Services Commission.
That left the field to three private providers – ASB, AXA and AMP.
GRT ran the primary teachers’ savings scheme, which was set up in 2002 as a pilot for the wider state sector savings scheme.
One of the issues in GRT’s withdrawal appears to be that public servants in the existing schemes run by GRT are being encouraged to withdraw from those schemes and go into the new one.
Even if they are not being actively encouraged by their employer to migrate (and there is some evidence large agencies such as the Inland Revenue Department are actively encouraging staff to migrate over) there is a strong financial incentive to move.
Public servants joining the SSRSS get a 1.5% subsidy from their employer – the taxpayer, rising to 3%. The working party on the scheme also suggested lifting that to 6% in a few years’ time.
Existing GRT scheme members, some of whom have been with GRT since the early 1990s, do not get that kind of subsidy.