Single Public Service Pension Scheme - AVC

You can't really, with any accuracy unless you are in your final working years as there are too many moving parts… What you should do every few years is a couple of "back of a cigarette packet" calculations to get a feel for how you are getting on.

• How much would you need to retire now based on current out goings? Here people tend to under estimate the figure as they assume they will do very little in retirement, when in fact they will still be healthy and want to do a lot or are sick and want to have extra comforts not covered or limited by healthcare. I would not accept a figure below say 70% of your current salary less the current state pension.
• What capital value is needed to generate your required income and is the projected capital value of your pension fund in line with that value. The consensus return for a professional manager on a well balanced portfolio is about 8%, with the real return being about 3% over a 40 year period. People will argue they can do better, but it is almost always a flawed calculation.
• Is the reported return on the fund (not your actual return) in line with the benchmark. This should actually be easy, but EU law does not require it and asset managers in the British Isles are notoriously shy about displaying it. However a compentent financial advisor should be able to give you an approximation or better, be able to identify the underlying "white listed" fund and use that.

All of this is very subjective, but given the objective of ensuring you will have enough at retirement, it is very advisable to be conservative in your estimates.

For DB type pensions you can use the buy in value as an alternative. And if you have say 30 years to go you probably should because there is always the possibility you want to leave or the structure of your fund may change. And given the fact that governments continue to kick the pension funding issues down the road it is very possible that there will be some serious restructuring to come.