AFPS 75 vs 05 vs 15: the Armed Forces pension schemes explained

Which scheme am I in?

A quick word on what this guide is and isn't. We're an independent education site. We are not affiliated with the Ministry of Defence, Veterans UK or JPAC, and nothing here is regulated financial advice. The numbers below are estimates to help you understand the schemes. For an official forecast you request a quote from Veterans UK, using form 12 if you're still serving or form 14 if you hold a preserved pension. With that said, the rules themselves are public, and once you grasp the shape of each scheme the rest follows.

The single most important fact about your Armed Forces pension is which scheme your service was built in, because that decides almost everything else. It comes down to your join date.

• Joined before 6 April 2005 means you started in AFPS 75.
• Joined 6 April 2005 to 31 March 2015 means you started in AFPS 05.
• Joined on or after 1 April 2015 means you're in AFPS 15.

There's a twist that catches a lot of people out. From 1 April 2022 everyone still serving builds new pension in AFPS 15, whatever scheme they started in. So a soldier who joined in 2001 has AFPS 75 service up to a point, then AFPS 15 service after the move. Your pre-2022 service stays under the old scheme rules and is paid when it was always going to be paid; only future build-up changes. Service between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022 is the remedy period covered by McCloud, which we come to below. You normally need at least 2 years' qualifying service before any of these schemes pay out.

Final salary vs CARE

AFPS 75 and AFPS 05 are final-salary schemes. AFPS 15 is a career-average scheme, often written CARE, which stands for Career Average Revalued Earnings. The difference matters, so here it is in plain English.

In a final-salary scheme your pension is worked out from your pay near the end of your career and the number of years you served. It doesn't matter much what you earned in year three; what counts is your final pensionable pay or, in AFPS 75, the representative pay for your final rank. Because of that, late promotions can lift the value of every earlier year of service. Final-salary schemes tend to reward people who climb the ranks and finish on a high.

A career-average scheme works differently. Each year you serve, the scheme takes a slice of that year's pensionable pay and banks it in a running pot. Your final pay doesn't reach back and reprice your earlier years. To stop those banked amounts losing value over a long career, the pot is revalued each year you're still serving. AFPS 15 revalues in line with average earnings while you serve, then with CPI inflation once your pension is deferred or in payment. The practical upshot is that AFPS 15 rewards total earnings across a whole career rather than your finishing salary, which is fairer to people who serve a long time without a steep climb in rank.

AFPS 75

AFPS 75 is the oldest of the three and, for a full career, the most generous. It is a final-salary scheme based on the representative pay for your final rank rather than your exact salary, which means two people of the same rank and length of service generally get the same pension. Build-up runs to a maximum of 48.5% of final pensionable pay over a full career, which is 34 years for officers and 37 years for other ranks. Reach that ceiling and your pension is set at just under half of your representative pay for life.

On top of the annual pension, AFPS 75 pays an automatic tax-free lump sum of three times the annual pension. You don't have to give anything up to get it; it comes as standard. The normal pension age is 60. AFPS 75 has no Early Departure Payment in the modern sense. Instead it has the Immediate Pension and resettlement arrangements for long servers, so members who reach the relevant service point can draw their pension and lump sum well before 60. If you leave without reaching that point you hold a preserved pension paid later. The pension is broadly flat until age 55, then catches up for past inflation and rises each year afterwards.

AFPS 05

AFPS 05 is also final-salary, but the maths is simpler to picture. You earn 1/70th of your final pensionable pay for each year of service, up to a maximum of about 57% of final pay. So the formula is final pay, multiplied by years, divided by 70. Because the cap is higher than AFPS 75 and it uses your own final pay rather than a representative rate, a long server who finishes strongly can end up with a larger percentage of pay than under AFPS 75, though the comparison depends on rank and service.

As with AFPS 75, there's an automatic tax-free lump sum of three times the annual pension. The normal pension age is 65, higher than AFPS 75. To bridge the gap for those who leave earlier, AFPS 05 offers an Early Departure Payment (EDP) for members who leave at age 40 or over with at least 18 years' service. EDP 05 pays a tax-free lump sum of three times the preserved pension plus a monthly income broadly equal to half the preserved pension, flat until 55 then uprated for inflation, with the preserved pension itself coming into payment at 65.

AFPS 15

AFPS 15 is the scheme everyone serving now builds in. Each year it banks 1/47th of that year's pensionable pay into your pot, and revalues the pot to keep its value up over time. There is no automatic lump sum. If you want tax-free cash you commute part of your pension, that is, you give up some annual pension in exchange for a one-off sum. The commutation rate is a fixed 12:1, so every £1 of annual pension you surrender buys about £12 of lump sum, and you can commute up to 25% of your pension this way. The reduction to your annual pension is permanent.

The normal pension age equals your State Pension age, which for most serving personnel today is in the late sixties. That is later than both legacy schemes, and it is the main reason people feel AFPS 15 is less generous, even though the build-up rate of 1/47th is strong for a public-service scheme. AFPS 15 has its own Early Departure Payment from age 40 with at least 20 years' service, the so-called 20/40 point. EDP 15 pays a tax-free lump sum of 2.25 times the deferred pension plus a monthly income starting at 34% of the deferred pension, rising by 0.85% of that pension for each year served beyond 20. The deferred pension itself is then claimed at State Pension age.

Schemes compared

Here is the same information side by side. Read it as a map, not a verdict: the right scheme for any individual depends on rank, length of service and when they leave, which is exactly why a calculator helps.

One thing the table can't show is the value of an early, inflation-protected income. A pension paid from 60, or an EDP bridging income from 40, is worth a great deal more in real terms than the same headline figure paid from State Pension age, simply because you collect it for longer. That timing difference often matters more than the build-up rate.

Worked examples

These are illustrative. They use only the published build-up rates and rounded figures to show the shape of each scheme, not a promise of what you'll receive. Your own pension depends on your actual pay, rank and service, and only Veterans UK can confirm it.

AFPS 75 example

Take an officer whose representative pay at the finish is £50,000, who serves the full 34 years. The build-up reaches the 48.5% ceiling, so the annual pension is 48.5% of £50,000, which is about £24,250 a year, with an automatic lump sum of three times that, about £72,750. Serve only half a career, around 17 years, and you have built roughly 24.25% of pay, about £12,125 a year plus a lump sum near £36,375. Officers cap at 34 years and other ranks at 37, so building beyond the cap adds nothing.

AFPS 05 example

Take a member with final pensionable pay of £45,000 and 25 years' service. Pension is £45,000 multiplied by 25, divided by 70, which is about £16,071 a year, plus an automatic lump sum of three times that, about £48,214. Now suppose someone leaves at age 42 on £40,000 with 20 years in. They qualify for EDP 05. The preserved pension is about £11,429 a year, the EDP income is roughly half of that, about £476 a month, and the EDP lump sum is three times the preserved pension, about £34,286, with the full pension following at 65.

AFPS 15 example

Take current pensionable pay of £40,000 and 20 years' service. As a rough estimate the banked pension is £40,000 multiplied by 20, divided by 47, which is about £17,021 a year before any commutation. Commute the full 25% and you give up about £4,255 of annual pension to buy a tax-free lump sum of roughly £51,064 at the 12:1 rate, leaving an annual pension near £12,766. If that same person leaves at 40 or over at the 20/40 point, EDP 15 pays a bridging income of 34% of the deferred pension, about £482 a month, plus a lump sum of 2.25 times the deferred pension, about £38,298, with the deferred pension claimed at State Pension age.

2022 move and McCloud

When AFPS 15 launched in 2015, older members were given transitional protection and stayed in their legacy scheme, while younger members were moved straight onto AFPS 15. The courts ruled in the McCloud and Sargeant cases that protecting only older members was age discrimination. The fix has two parts.

First, from 1 April 2022 the legacy schemes closed to future build-up and everyone still serving now banks pension in AFPS 15. Your pre-2022 service keeps its old scheme rules and is paid when it always would have been. Second, the McCloud remedy deals with the discriminatory window of 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022. For that remedy period, eligible members get a choice, at the point their pension comes into payment, between having that service treated as legacy benefits (AFPS 75 or 05) or as AFPS 15 benefits. You receive a Remediable Service Statement setting out both options so you can see which is worth more for your circumstances.

How to check your scheme

If you're unsure, work it out from your join date using the rules above, then confirm it rather than rely on memory. The quickest confirmation is your annual benefit statement, which for serving personnel is on the Defence Gateway, and for many members the Discover My Benefits service on gov.uk lays out the scheme you're in. For anything official, including a precise forecast or a Remediable Service Statement, contact Veterans UK and request a pension quote using form 12 if you are still serving or form 14 if you hold a preserved pension. Keep in mind that most serving members today have two slices of pension: legacy service up to 2022 and AFPS 15 service after it, with the 2015 to 2022 window subject to the remedy choice.

Which scheme suits whom

You don't usually choose your scheme; your join date does. But understanding which scheme favours which kind of career helps you read your own statement and make sense of the remedy choice. As a rough guide:

• Long full careers that finish on a high rank tend to do best under the final-salary schemes, AFPS 75 and 05, because a strong finishing pay lifts every year of service and an automatic 3x lump sum comes for free.
• AFPS 75 in particular rewards reaching its service points, with an early Immediate Pension from age 60 and resettlement arrangements for long servers, which is valuable income collected over many years.
• Steady careers without a steep climb in rank, or people who serve a long time at a similar level, are treated fairly by AFPS 15, because CARE values total earnings across the career rather than the finishing salary.
• Early leavers at the 18 or 20 year points around age 40 lean heavily on the Early Departure Payment, so the EDP rules in AFPS 05 and AFPS 15 often matter more to them than the headline build-up rate.

None of this makes one scheme universally best. AFPS 75 is generally the most valuable for a full career, then AFPS 05, then AFPS 15, but AFPS 15 remains a strong defined-benefit scheme that most private-sector workers would envy, and its later pension age is partly offset by a generous build-up rate and earnings revaluation. The honest answer is that it depends on your numbers, which is what the calculator is for.

One last point that applies whichever scheme you're in: pensions already in payment rise each year with inflation. From April 2026 they increase by 3.8%, in line with CPI. That annual uprating is a real part of the value of these schemes and is easy to forget when you only look at the starting figure.