When you leave a final salary pension scheme as a deferred member you can consider the possibility of doing a DB transfer. When you leave the DB or ‘Defined Benefit’ Scheme you are given by the DB / ‘Defined Benefit’ or Final Salary pension scheme a cash equivalent transfer value or CETV (CETV). The concept is difficult, like anything in pensions.

To explain, with a final salary pension your pension benefit is calculated (defined) as a per annum pension amount (£x per annum pension). An amount you will get every single year after retirement until you die. So, to put that into a ‘cash’ figure and not its current ‘per annum pension’ figure the final salary pension scheme Trustees converts that pension into a cash amount and calls it a cash equivalent transfer value or CETV (CETV).