60-second summary: DB Annual Funding Statement 2025

On 29 April 2025, the Pensions Regulator issued its Annual Funding Statement for 2025, concerning private-sector defined benefit (DB) schemes. Its main themes are endgame planning, use of surplus, and market volatility; and it provides helpful guidance on questions arising from the new funding rules on matters such as the assessment of employer covenants and supportable risk, and what ‘proportionality’ might mean in practice.

The Statement is most relevant to schemes producing valuations at dates in the period from 22 September 2024 to 21 September 2025, which will be the first to be conducted under the Pension Schemes Act 2021 reforms and the new Funding Code of Practice.[1] However, many of the themes will be of interest more widely.

In this 60-second summary, we explore:

• The state of play
• Submitting valuations 
• Supplementary guidance

Download the report below to read our insights. If you have any questions or would like to discuss further, please get in touch with us. 

1. The Regulator would previously have described this collection of cyclical valuations as belonging to ‘Tranche 20’, but has made a slight change in its nomenclature. It refers to it instead as ‘Tranche 24/25’, making it easier to locate a particular tranche in time than was the case under the historical sequential-numbering system.