AFPS 15 explained: the Armed Forces Pension Scheme 2015 in plain English

If you are serving in the UK Armed Forces today, AFPS 15 is the pension you are actually building. The Armed Forces Pension Scheme 2015 is the statutory, non-contributory, defined benefit pension for everyone in the services, and whatever scheme you first joined under, every pound of new pension you build now goes into it. It works differently from the AFPS 75 and AFPS 05 schemes it replaced, and a lot of serving personnel have never quite been shown how it works.

Two things make AFPS 15 stand out among UK public service pensions. You pay nothing into it: it is non-contributory, and the Ministry of Defence funds the entire cost. And while you are serving, it grows with earnings, not just prices. Hold those two facts, because they are the reason AFPS 15 is worth more than a quick glance suggests.

This guide covers AFPS 15 on its own, in plain English, for the 2026/27 tax year: how the career average pension builds up, when you can take it, the Early Departure Payment, the lump sum rules, ill-health and death benefits, and where the McCloud remedy leaves you. For how AFPS 15 sits alongside AFPS 75 and AFPS 05, see our full Armed Forces Pension Scheme guide.

AFPS 15 at a glance (2026/27)

Here are the AFPS 15 headline facts for the 2026/27 tax year.

What AFPS 15 is, and who is in it

AFPS 15 is a defined benefit occupational pension. You are promised a known income in retirement, worked out from your service and your pay, rather than a pot of money whose value rides on investment returns. It sits alongside the other UK public service pensions, but with one feature none of them share: you pay nothing towards it. A civil servant pays around 5%, a teacher 7.4% to 12%, a police officer up to about 14%. In AFPS 15 the figure is 0%.

It opened on 1 April 2015 under the Armed Forces Pension Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/2336), made under the Public Service Pensions Act 2013 that reformed every public service scheme after the Hutton review. From that date, everyone joining the Armed Forces went straight into AFPS 15. Following the McCloud remedy, all serving members, whenever they first joined, have built pension in AFPS 15 only since 1 April 2022. The legacy schemes (AFPS 75, AFPS 05 and the reserve schemes) closed to new accrual on that date.

AFPS 15 also brought reservists in from the cold. Before April 2015, part-time reservists had no pension scheme at all. Since 1 April 2015 all reservists, full-time and part-time, build AFPS 15 pension on the same terms as regulars. The scheme is administered by Defence Business Services, the part of the MoD that runs pensions and compensation, working under the Veterans UK brand for anything member-facing.

How AFPS 15 builds up: the 1/47 career average

Every scheme year (1 April to 31 March), AFPS 15 adds 1/47 of your pensionable earnings to your pension account. So if you earn £47,000 in a year, you add exactly £1,000 of annual pension. Earn £40,000 and you add £851. That amount is banked as pension, not as a lump of cash, and it stays on your record until you take your benefits.

Here is the part that most serving members underrate. While you are still serving, everything in your pension account is revalued every April, and AFPS 15 does this using Average Weekly Earnings, the whole-economy measure of pay growth published by the ONS. Most other career average schemes (NHS, Teachers’, Civil Service alpha, the LGPS) revalue using the Consumer Prices Index, sometimes with a small top-up. Earnings usually rise faster than prices, so AFPS 15 quietly gains ground on the others year after year. The in-service revaluation for April 2026 is 4.8%. It was 4.5% in 2025 and 7.7% in 2024.

Once you leave the Armed Forces, the earnings link stops. Your deferred AFPS 15 pension then grows by CPI, not Average Weekly Earnings, until it comes into payment.

When you can take your AFPS 15 pension

The Normal Pension Age for AFPS 15 is 60. If you serve to 60 with at least two years’ qualifying service, your pension comes into payment immediately when you leave, with no reduction. That age-60 point is unusual: most reformed public service schemes tie Normal Pension Age to the State Pension Age, which is higher.

If you leave before 60 with at least two years’ qualifying service, your pension is preserved and becomes payable at your State Pension Age (currently 66, rising to 67 between April 2026 and April 2028). You can apply to draw that deferred pension early, from age 55 (rising to 57 from April 2028), but it is cut for early payment. The reduction is significant, roughly 35% if you draw it at 60 against a State Pension Age of 68, and around 48% at 55, and it is permanent.

The AFPS 15 Early Departure Payment (the 20/40 point)

The Early Departure Payment (EDP) is the feature that matters most to anyone leaving before pension age. The Armed Forces cannot offer most people a career to 60, so the EDP provides an income between the day you leave and the day your pension starts. It exists precisely because a normal age-60 pension does not fit most service careers.

You reach the AFPS 15 EDP point, often called the 20/40 point, when you leave with at least 20 years’ regular service and are at least age 40. At that point you receive a tax-free lump sum of 2.25 times your deferred pension, plus a monthly income of 34% of your deferred pension. If you have served more than 20 years, the income rises by a further 0.85% of the deferred pension for each extra year. The EDP income is paid until your State Pension Age. In AFPS 15 the “deferred pension age” that the EDP runs to is your State Pension Age, not the Normal Pension Age of 60, which is a common source of confusion.

Pin down two things about the EDP. First, it is separate from your pension. It does not reduce your eventual pension; the pension is preserved in full and comes into payment at State Pension Age, at which point the EDP income stops. Second, the EDP is for regular service only. Reservists build AFPS 15 pension on the same 1/47 basis as regulars, but reserve service does not count towards the EDP.

The lump sum: none automatic, but you can commute

This is one of the biggest changes from the legacy schemes. AFPS 75 and AFPS 05 both paid an automatic tax-free lump sum of three times the pension, with nothing to decide. AFPS 15 pays no automatic lump sum at all. If you want tax-free cash at retirement, you have to create it by commuting some of your pension.

You can give up (commute) up to 25% of your pension value in exchange for a lump sum, at a rate of 12 to 1: for every £1 of annual pension you give up, you receive £12 of tax-free cash. The decision is permanent, so it is worth modelling carefully rather than taking by default. The 12 to 1 rate is reasonable, though not as generous as the commutation rates in some private sector schemes.

Ill-health and death in service

If you are medically discharged, AFPS 15 pays an ill-health benefit set by one of three tiers, according to how much your capacity for work is affected.

• Tier 1 applies if you are unfit for further service but your ability to earn a living in civilian life is not judged to be significantly impaired. It is by far the most common outcome, around 85% of medical discharges. It pays a tax-free lump sum only: 1/8 of your final pensionable earnings for each year of AFPS 15 service, with a floor of six months’ pay and a ceiling of two years’ (24 months’) pay. No pension is put into payment, and your normal deferred pension is retained.
• Tier 2 applies if your capacity for gainful employment is significantly impaired. Your pension is paid immediately, and your service is enhanced by one third of your prospective service to age 60 before the pension is worked out.
• Tier 3 applies in the most serious cases, a permanent breakdown in health preventing any full-time work. The pension is paid immediately and enhanced by one half of your prospective service to age 60.

The death-in-service lump sum under AFPS 15 is four times your final pensionable earnings, paid tax-free. That is the most generous multiple of any major UK public service scheme; the others pay two or three times pay. A surviving spouse, civil partner or eligible partner receives a pension for life, with no cut on remarriage, and eligible children receive pensions too. If a death or injury is caused by service, the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme pays on top of anything from AFPS 15; it is a separate scheme with its own rules.

How AFPS 15 differs from AFPS 75 and AFPS 05

If you served before 2015 you will also hold benefits in a legacy scheme, and they work on a completely different basis. The quick comparison:

The headline is that AFPS 15’s 1/47 accrual, zero contributions and earnings-based revaluation make it the most generous career average scheme in the UK public sector on paper. Whether it beats the legacy schemes in practice depends on your career: for shorter careers, the AFPS 75 Immediate Pension and the legacy lump sums often deliver more total value. For the full picture of the older schemes, see our Armed Forces Pension Scheme guide, and for the AFPS 75 age-55 uplift specifically, our note on why your AFPS 75 pension increases at 55.

McCloud and your Remediable Service Statement

If you served between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022 and had legacy scheme membership, the McCloud remedy affects you. When AFPS 15 started, members close to retirement were allowed to stay in their old scheme while younger members were moved across. The courts ruled that unlawful age discrimination. The fix: for service in that “remedy period”, affected members are rolled back to their legacy scheme, then get to choose between legacy and AFPS 15 benefits for those years when their pension is paid. Service before 1 April 2015 and after 31 March 2022 is not affected by the choice.

The document you need to make that choice is your Remediable Service Statement (RSS), which sets out both options for your own case. Getting these out has run badly late. The MoD missed its deadline of 31 March 2026 for the remaining complex cases, and as of the Forces Pension Society’s most recent update (5 May 2026) no firm new completion date has been given; the next update is expected in August 2026. In the meantime Veterans UK is issuing “information” RSSs to serving members, which need no action. If you left between 1 April 2015 and 30 September 2023 with a pension already in payment, you are in the “immediate choice” group and have 12 months from receiving your RSS to make your election.

If you are affected and waiting, your benefits are not at risk. They are still building up, and you will get whichever calculation you elect when the time comes. You just cannot finalise the numbers until the RSS lands. For how McCloud works across all the public service schemes, see our McCloud remedy explainer, and for the running status the Forces Pension Society sitrep is the best public tracker.

AFPS 15 and the Annual Allowance

A non-contributory pension still counts towards the Annual Allowance, the cap HMRC puts on how much your pension can grow tax-free in a year. The standard allowance is £60,000 for 2026/27. For most service personnel the yearly growth is well inside it, but senior officers, and anyone with a large promotion, a bespoke pay arrangement or added pension, can go over, especially in a year with a big earnings-based revaluation. If you are caught, Defence Business Services issues a Pension Savings Statement and you can either pay the charge or ask the scheme to pay it in return for a permanent reduction in your pension. Carry-forward of unused allowance from the previous three years often absorbs a one-off spike.

Pension Plain’s take

AFPS 15 gets underrated because the headline 1/47 does not shout. The value is in the combination: a strong accrual rate, zero contributions, and earnings-based revaluation while you serve, which no other major public service scheme offers. The single most overlooked feature is that Average Weekly Earnings link. Over a long career it compounds into a materially bigger pension than a CPI-linked scheme on the same accrual rate would produce, and it is the reason “stay in and keep serving” carries real financial weight. The trade-off is the loss of the automatic lump sum and the age-60 rather than age-55 pension point, which is why, for shorter careers, the legacy Immediate Pension can still win on total value.

Common questions

Fact-checked: 3 July 2026