I have heard similar stories of high-fliers within companies claiming to ‘retire’ to secure their pension – but I reckon that this is more likely to be a bit of a cover for other reasons for jumping ship.
Having said that – once a pension scheme is wound up, current pensioners are at the front of the queue to claim monies from any remaining funds. So it is possible for a scheme to be judged to have just enough money to cover its liabilities to current scheme pensioners – and those paying into the scheme for their pension get nothing.
But remember that the UK government guarantees to pay out 90% of what you would have got – should your pension scheme go belly-up. A further downer on this figure of 90% is that it is not indexed linked – it is fixed at the time you take it, for the rest of your life.
Very few companies still offer final salary schemes to new starters – so if your company is still offering this – I would suspect that this will end, with new starters being offered a money purchase scheme, whereby they build up a pot of money with which to buy an annuity.
Whether it is worth retiring early might well depend on the pension reduction (for taking it early). Should you continue to pay into your pension for another 4 years – you will have 24 years of contributions. Assuming you earn 1/60 of your pensionable salary per year – you will get 24/60 (0.4) of your pensionable salary – as a pension.
Assuming that your pensionable salary is £25k, this will equate to a £10k per annum company pension + your State pension(s).
When you come to retire you can take 25% of your pension fund as a tax free lump sum, but you will give up 25% of the pay out in taking this.
Notionally, for every £1 of indexed pension – the pension pot must hold £20. Therefore to buy a £10k indexed pension – your company pension scheme should have £200k – in theory you could be looking at having around £50k tax free in a few years time.