How much is an army pension after 16 years?
How much you get after 16 years depends on your scheme and final pensionable pay. As a guide, 16 years on a £45,000 final salary gives roughly £10,286 a year on AFPS 05, plus a tax-free lump sum of around £30,857. Use the calculator for your own figures.
Key takeaways
- On AFPS 05 (£45,000 final salary), 16 years gives about £10,286/yr plus a £30,857 tax-free lump sum.
- AFPS 05 pension = final pay × years ÷ 70; the lump sum is three times the annual pension.
- AFPS 15 builds 1/47th of career-average pay a year, with no automatic lump sum, so you commute for cash.
- Leaving this early usually means a preserved pension (or an EDP if you qualify), not an immediate pension.
Your details
Scheme, pay & service
Your estimate
Pension, lump sum & EDP
EDP 05 (left before 65)
How this is worked out
AFPS 05 accrues 1/70th of final pensionable pay per year, up to a maximum of 57%. Figures use published AFPS rates. See our methodology. Estimate only, not financial advice.
What 16 years of service is actually worth
Sixteen years is a real chunk of a career, but in pension terms it sits in an awkward middle ground. You are well past the two-year point that earns you a pension at all, yet on most schemes you are short of the service that unlocks money paid straight away. The honest headline is this: on a final salary of £45,000, sixteen years on AFPS 05 builds a pension of about £10,286 a year with an automatic tax-free lump sum of around £30,857. That is the figure most people land on, because AFPS 05 is the scheme a lot of soldiers who joined between 2005 and 2015 spent their middle years in.
The size of the number is driven almost entirely by two things: which scheme the service was built in, and your pensionable pay. Sixteen years is a fixed input, so the lever that moves the result is pay. The same sixteen years on £35,000 gives about £8,000 a year on AFPS 05, and on £55,000 about £12,571 a year, with the lump sum always running at three times the annual pension. Rank, time in role and any specialist pay all feed into that pensionable figure, which is why two people who both did sixteen years can come out with very different pensions.
Just as important as the amount is the timing. At sixteen years most people do not get an immediate pension or an Early Departure Payment, so the money is preserved and paid later. That delay matters as much as the headline figure, because a preserved pension still revalues for inflation in the years before you draw it. Treat the numbers below as illustrative and built only on the scheme rules and pay levels shown; for a figure tied to your own record you need an official forecast from Veterans UK.
AFPS 05: the 1/70th maths in full
AFPS 05 is a final-salary scheme, so it cares about your pensionable pay when you leave, not an average across your career. The accrual rate is one seventieth of final pensionable pay for every year of reckonable service. The whole calculation for sixteen years is therefore: final pay, multiplied by 16, divided by 70. On £45,000 that is 45,000 times 16, divided by 70, which comes to £10,285.71, rounded to about £10,286 a year.
The tax-free lump sum is bolted on automatically and is always three times the annual pension. So the £10,286 pension carries a lump sum of about £30,857. You do not have to do anything to claim it and you do not give up any annual pension to get it, which is a genuine difference from AFPS 15 where any cash has to be carved out of the pension. The lump sum scales with pay in exactly the same way: £24,000 at a £35,000 salary, £37,714 at £55,000.
There is a ceiling on the scheme of 57% of final pay, reached at 40 years, but nobody hits it at sixteen years, so the cap never bites here. The figure simply rises in a straight line with both pay and service. This is the cleanest of the three schemes to estimate by hand, which is why our worked examples lean on it, but the same logic of pay times years, divided by the accrual rate, underpins the comparisons below.
AFPS 75 and the 16-year immediate pension trap
AFPS 75 is the old final-salary scheme and it treats sixteen years very differently depending on who you are. For officers, sixteen years' service from age 21 is exactly the point at which an Immediate Pension becomes payable, so an officer leaving at this stage can get a pension and lump sum paid straight away rather than waiting. For other ranks the immediate pension point is 22 years from age 18, so a soldier in the ranks with sixteen years gets a deferred pension held to age 60, not an immediate one. The same number of years, the same scheme, two completely different outcomes.
The amount builds towards a maximum of 48.5% of representative pay over a full career, which is 34 years for officers and 37 years for other ranks. The calculator builds to that ceiling in a straight line, so sixteen years for an officer is roughly 16 divided by 34 of the way to 48.5%, which works out at about 22.8% of pay. On £45,000 that is around £10,271 a year, with the usual lump sum of three times the pension, about £30,812. Note that AFPS 75 is based on the representative pay rate for your final rank, not your actual salary, so the calculator uses the pay you enter as a proxy and flags that on screen.
AFPS 75 has no Early Departure Payment at all. Its early money route is the Immediate Pension described above, so if you do not reach your immediate pension point, an officer at 16 years or an other rank at 22 years, the benefit is simply preserved to pension age. One more quirk worth knowing: the AFPS 75 pension is held flat until age 55 and then increased for all the inflation since you left, so the figure you are quoted is not eroded in real terms, it just catches up in one step at 55.
AFPS 15: career average, no automatic lump sum
Most people serving today are building AFPS 15, the career average scheme, and from 1 April 2022 every serving member accrues in it regardless of when they joined. Instead of a final-salary calculation, each scheme year the MOD banks one forty-seventh of that year's pensionable earnings into a pot, then revalues the pot to keep its value. Because that in-service revaluation broadly tracks earnings, entering your current pensionable pay and multiplying by years over 47 gives a sound estimate of the whole pot.
On that basis, sixteen years on £45,000 builds a deferred pension of about £15,319 a year, which is noticeably more headline pension than AFPS 05 produces on the same pay. The catch is that AFPS 15 pays no automatic lump sum. If you want tax-free cash you commute, that is, you give up annual pension at a fixed rate of £12 of lump sum for every £1 of pension surrendered, up to a limit of 25% of your benefits. Commute the full 25% of that £15,319 pension and you free up a lump sum of about £45,957, but your annual pension drops permanently to roughly £11,489.
That trade is the single biggest decision AFPS 15 members face. The 12:1 rate is fixed, so the question is simply whether you value cash now more than a higher guaranteed income for life. There is no right answer, but it is worth running both versions before you commit, because the reduction to your pension is permanent and the lump sum, once spent, is gone. The calculator lets you slide the commutation percentage so you can see the swap in pounds for your own pay.
Do you get a preserved pension or an EDP at 16 years?
For most people leaving at sixteen years, the answer is a preserved pension, not money paid now. An Early Departure Payment is the bridge that pays a tax-free lump sum plus a monthly income until your pension age, but it has service gates that sixteen years does not clear. On AFPS 05 you need broadly 18 years' service and to be age 40 or over. On AFPS 15 the gate is broadly 20 years and age 40, the so-called 20/40 point. Sixteen years falls short of both, so there is no EDP on the table.
A preserved pension is not lost money, it is simply parked. On AFPS 05 it is held and paid from age 65; on AFPS 15 it is a deferred pension claimable at State Pension age, paid on top of your State Pension, and it can be drawn from 55 with a permanent actuarial reduction. While it waits, the preserved pension is revalued each year so inflation does not eat it, and the AFPS 05 lump sum of three times the pension is still paid when the pension comes into payment. The only scheme where sixteen years can mean immediate money is AFPS 75, and only for officers at their 16-year immediate pension point.
The practical takeaway is to separate two questions: how much have I built, and when do I get it. At sixteen years you have built a solid pension on any scheme, but unless you are an AFPS 75 officer the cash is deferred. If you are close to a gate, for example sitting at sixteen or seventeen years and approaching 40, it can be worth understanding exactly when EDP eligibility would kick in, because a couple more years can change a preserved pension into an immediate income.
A worked example at 16 years (illustrative)
Take a soldier leaving on a £45,000 final pensionable pay with exactly sixteen years of reckonable service. This example is illustrative and uses only the scheme rules and pay shown. On AFPS 05 the pension is 45,000 times 16, divided by 70, giving about £10,286 a year, with an automatic tax-free lump sum of three times that, around £30,857. They do not get an EDP because they have not reached 18 years and age 40, so the pension is preserved to age 65.
If that same person had built the sixteen years in AFPS 15 instead, the pot is 45,000 times 16, divided by 47, giving a deferred pension of about £15,319 a year with no automatic lump sum. To get cash they would commute: surrendering the full 25% frees a lump sum of around £45,957 and leaves a pension of about £11,489 a year. As an AFPS 75 officer, the same sixteen years from age 21 would instead trigger an Immediate Pension of roughly £10,271 a year plus a lump sum near £30,812, paid straight away rather than preserved.
Lining those up shows the point clearly: the same service and pay produce a different pension and a different payout date depending on the scheme. Most real careers cross more than one scheme, especially around the McCloud remedy period, so your actual outcome is usually a blend. Use these figures to understand the shape of the result, then run your own pay and years through the calculator for numbers that reflect your situation.
McCloud, mixed service and what changes the figure
Very few people spend a clean sixteen years in a single scheme, and that is where the McCloud remedy comes in. The remedy period runs from 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022. If you served during that window and were affected, you get a choice between your legacy scheme, AFPS 75 or 05, and AFPS 15 for that period, made through a Remediable Service Statement when your pension becomes payable. From 1 April 2022 onwards everyone builds AFPS 15, so a sixteen-year career today is almost always a mixture of legacy and 2015 service.
Beyond the scheme split, the things that move your sixteen-year figure are pensionable pay, rank progression and exact service dates. Final-salary schemes reward late promotions because they latch onto your pay when you leave, whereas AFPS 15 values each year as it was earned and then revalues it, so a steady climb feeds the pot evenly. Specialist pay, recruitment and retention payments and the like can count as pensionable, lifting the figure, while unpaid periods can trim reckonable service. None of these change the formula, they change the inputs you feed into it.
Pensions already in payment also move with inflation. From April 2026 pensions in payment rise by 3.8%, in line with CPI, which is the annual Pension Increase. That uprating, plus the revaluation applied to preserved and deferred pensions, is why a pension built at sixteen years does not stand still in real terms while it waits to be paid. When you model your own figure, change one input at a time, pay, then years, then scheme, so you can see which lever is actually driving the number.
How to check your own position and what to do next
Start by working out which scheme or schemes your sixteen years sit in, because that decides almost everything else. If all your service is from April 2022 onwards it is pure AFPS 15. If any of it predates that, you likely have legacy service and a McCloud choice for the 2015 to 2022 window. Once you know the scheme split, you can apply the right maths: pay times years over 70 for AFPS 05, the build to 48.5% over 34 or 37 years for AFPS 75, and pay times years over 47 for AFPS 15.
The most common mistakes we see at this length of service are assuming an EDP applies when you have not reached 18 or 20 years and age 40, expecting an automatic lump sum on AFPS 15 when there is none, and treating the pay you enter for AFPS 75 as your actual salary rather than the representative rate for your rank. It is also easy to forget that a preserved pension is still revalued, so people undercount what it will be worth by the time they draw it. Getting these right turns a rough guess into a realistic estimate.
For a quick, private estimate, put your own pensionable pay, years and leaving age into the calculator on this page and switch between schemes to compare. Remember this site is independent and not affiliated with the MOD, Veterans UK or JPAC, and it provides estimates, not regulated financial advice. When you need a figure you can rely on for a real decision, request an official forecast from Veterans UK using form 12 if you are still serving or form 14 if your pension is already preserved. Use our estimate to get oriented, then confirm it with the official paperwork before you commit to anything.
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Frequently asked questions
James Hartley
James Hartley spent 22 years in the British Army, including unit personnel administration and pensions and records duties, and now writes the scheme guides and scenario pages on this site. He is not a regulated financial adviser, so the content is general information rather than personal advice.
Sources: gov.uk · GAD factors · Veterans UK · Forces Pension Society · MoneyHelper.