Commentary on Sections Part 2 – Collective Benefits Section 19: Valuation reportsSection 20: Valuation process
Section 19 gives a regulation-making power which may require those schemes offering collective benefits to obtain a document, prepared by an actuary, which values the assets held by the scheme for the purposes of providing collective benefits and assesses the probability of the scheme being able to meet any targets in relation to those benefits.  This document is defined in the Act as a “valuation report”.  Among other matters, the regulations may make provision about the content and frequency of valuation reports, may require that the actuary preparing the report must have particular qualifications or meet other requirements and may require the actuary to certify whether the probability falls within the required probability range or not.
Section 20 provides for a power to make provision about the methods or assumptions to be used by an actuary when drawing up a valuation report.  Regulations made under this section may require an actuary to have regard to guidance when preparing the valuation report and may impose other requirements on the actuary.
The section also contains a power to require the trustees or managers to decide the methods or assumptions to be used by the actuary and a power for regulations to set out matters that the trustees or managers must take into account, or principles they must follow, when making that decision.  These principles might, for example, state the parameters of the economic and actuarial assumptions must be used.