I'm in Plan 18

The company’s pension changes (which will apply to you if you provide your consent) are as follows:

• Close Plan 18 on 31 July 2018. This means you will stop building up new pension savings in the C & J Clark Pension Fund on 31 July 2018 and you will become a deferred member of Plan 18 and your pension savings up to the closure date will be preserved in the Fund and will be available to you at retirement.
• Other benefits currently provided in Plan 18, like death and ill-health benefits, will still be provided but may be different. We have improved our original proposal in relation to ill-health benefits following your feedback, as explained in more detail below.
• Launch a new defined contribution pension plan, the Clarks Flexible Savings Plan, with generous matching company contributions and full flexibility at retirement, which will be open to all our employees. The new Clarks Flexible Savings Plan will be run by Aviva. You will automatically become a member of the new Plan from 1 August 2018.
• Offer flexibility over how people save their contributions and take their benefits to help all our employees to build up savings and take benefits in a way that works best for them. For example, once a minimum amount has been saved into a pension, people can pay some contributions into a workplace ISA with Aviva.
• Increase your death-in-service lump sum benefit to eight times your Basic Pay, when you join the new Clarks Flexible Savings Plan.

The company has decided to improve its original proposals and protect the terms which currently apply for providing an incapacity pension due to ill-health for active members of Plan 18, if you provide your consent to the company’s pension changes (including by agreeing to opt out of Plan 18) by 5pm on Friday 25 May 2018 (see below for details on how you can provide your consent).

This means if you retire from service at Clarks because of ill-health and the Trustee decides that you satisfy the eligibility criteria for an incapacity pension paid from the Fund, you will still be entitled to an immediate, unreduced pension from the Fund. The pension will be calculated (subject to certain limits) assuming that you remained in pensionable service until your 65th birthday and by reference to your ‘Final Pensionable Pay’ as at 31 July 2018, adjusted to take account of inflation (subject to certain caps/limits) between then and the date of retirement. The consent of the company is also required.

If you consent to the company’s pension changes you will be enrolled into the Clarks Flexible Savings Plan on 1 August 2018. Clarks has appointed Aviva, a trusted and well-known UK pension provider, to run the new Plan on behalf of Clarks.

In conjunction with Aviva, we will provide more information about the new Plan in due course, including:

• full details of how the new Plan works;
• your contribution and investment options;
• more information on the new additional savings options including ISAs.

We will also hold presentation/video sessions in May and June, to give you more information about the Clarks Flexible Savings Plan and answer any questions you may have.

We and the Fund’s Trustee are discussing the possible transfer of existing defined contribution pension accounts from the Fund to the Clarks Flexible Savings Plan. We will be in touch again shortly about this.

As we outlined in our original communications, and for the reasons set out in those communications, we wish to make these changes to Plan 18 by asking for your agreement to them (which will include you agreeing to opt out of Plan 18).

You can provide your agreement to the company’s pension changes, by signing the consent form that was posted to you and returning it to the Pensions Department by 5pm on Friday 25 May 2018 in the pre-paid envelope provided.

If you have lost your form, you can request a new one from the Pensions Team in Street.

It is really important that you understand these changes. The protection to Plan 18 incapacity pensions explained above is only available to those members who provide their agreement to the company’s pension changes by 5pm on Friday 25 May 2018. If you wish to continue to be eligible for this protection, please make sure therefore that you sign and return the consent form by this date.

If you do not provide your agreement to the changes by signing and returning the consent form, you will not receive the protection to Plan 18 incapacity pensions. In addition, we would then have to engage with you further regarding our intention to close Plan 18 to future accrual. This could include discussions with you over the potential termination of your current contract of employment and reengagement on a new contract with new pension terms (all other terms of your employment would stay the same).