The Pension Protection Fund (PPF), the statutory body that pays compensation when a company pension scheme fails, put its 7800 index at 133.0% funded at 31 July 2026, up from 131.1% at the end of June1. The index is the standard monthly read on the 4,838 remaining defined-benefit schemes in the United Kingdom, the kind that promise a set retirement income rather than a pot of investments. In cash terms the aggregate surplus reached £271.3bn, against £264.0bn a month earlier, or roughly £1.33 of assets behind every £1 promised.
The PPF attributes the move to a 30 basis point rise in ten-year fixed-interest gilt yields over July, which cut the measured value of scheme liabilities by 3.1% while the value of their assets fell 1.7%2. A scheme's liability is a set of payments falling due over decades, and it is valued by discounting those payments back to today using a market yield. Raise the yield and the same promise costs less to carry now, so the funding ratio improves without a penny changing hands.
That is worth stating plainly for anyone whose pension statement looks healthier this month. The promised payout does not change when the index moves; what changes is the price of carrying it. A scheme funded at 133.0% still owes exactly what it owed in June.
This desk declared its trigger on the pensions ledger at a funding ratio below 110%, and the July reading sits 23 points above it3. The same yield move that lifted it landed on the government's own borrowing in the opposite direction, at the auctions the Debt Management Office ran through the window.
