The total deficit of all corporate defined benefit funds covered by the London-based Pension Protection Fund’s 7800 index fell 29.4% in November, to £194.7 billion ($245 billion).
Over the year ended Nov. 30, the deficit also fell, by 12.1%.
The funding ratio of these pension funds improved to 88.1% as of Nov. 30, compared with 84.1% as of Oct. 31 and 85.3% as of Nov. 30, 2015.
A 5.7% decline in assets in November to £1.443 trillion was more than offset by a 5.7% drop in liabilities, to total £1.638 trillion as of Nov. 30. Of the decrease in liabilities, 4% was attributable to market movements and 1.7% to an update by the PPF of the data it uses in these calculations. For the year ended Nov. 30, assets grew 12.6% and liabilities increased 9%.
The new data cover 5,794 pension funds, of which 73.7% were in deficit as of Nov. 30. That compares with 78.8% in deficit as of Oct. 31. A year earlier, 77.5% of the 5,945 pension funds covered as of Nov. 30, 2015, were in deficit.
