Understand your member benefit statement

Your Member Benefit Statement is a vital tool for retirement planning. Learn more with this guide.

1. Regular members or on-call ambulance paramedics

3. Part-time or full-time ambulance paramedics

5. Limited members

2. Correctional officers

4. Members with regular and public safety service

Part-time or full-time ambulance paramedics

Regular part-time and full-time ambulance paramedics work for BC Emergency Health Services and are members of CUPE Local 873. Ambulance paramedics are designated as public safety members.

If you are a part-time or full-time ambulance paramedic and have past service as a regular member or correctional employee, it’s important that you review the section of this guide for members with both regular and public safety service. There are different considerations for your pension.

On-call ambulance paramedics are currently considered regular members. If you are an on-call ambulance paramedic, please review the section for regular members.

Your annual Member benefit statement shows your information in several sections.

Your personal information

This includes:

Your name
Your Person ID number
Your date of birth
The date you began contributing to your pension
If you have a spouse, your spouse’s name and date of birth

You can review your personal information by signing in to My Account.

Your beneficiary

This shows the beneficiaries you have named for a pension benefit if you die before you retire. If you have a spouse, your spouse is automatically your beneficiary unless they sign a waiver.

You can update your beneficiary by signing in to My Account.

How to read the pension estimates in your statement

There are three things to know about the pension estimates in your statement:

The service and salary information is based on everything you have earned or accrued in the last fiscal year, up to March 31
The service projected into the future presumes you will continue to work in your current job, at your current pay, uninterrupted, until you retire
The earliest unreduced pension age you see listed is when you are eligible for an unreduced pension on all your service. This means if you have both public safety service and regular service in your work history, the regular service has a later early retirement age and that is the age you will see in your statement.

This section also shows estimates of your lifetime monthly pension if you stopped working last March 31 for a plan employer, left your contributions in the plan and retired on one of the dates listed.

Your estimated lifetime monthly pension is specific to the length, type and dates of your service. For more information on how the early retirement reductions apply to the different types of service for ambulance paramedics, visit Ambulance paramedics (under Plan changes).

Learn more about early retirement

Read the early retirement guide for ambulance paramedics in Planning for retirement to learn more.

Your pensionable earnings and service

This section shows:

Your pensionable earnings—the portion of your salary used to determine your contributions to the plan
Your pensionable service—your actual working time as a plan member over the plan’s fiscal year and since you began contributing to the plan (you earn one month of pensionable service for each full month of full-time work you complete)
Your contributory service—the number of months you and your employer contributed to the plan (you earn one month of contributory service for each month you contribute)

Your contributions

This shows the amount you have contributed, plus interest earned on contributions:

Over the plan’s fiscal year to March 31
Since you began contributing to the plan

Your contributions do not reflect the value of your pension. The value of your lifetime monthly pension is based on:

Your pensionable service
The average of your five highest years of salary (not necessarily the last five years)

Go to My Account to view your historical service and salary information (under the Statements tab). This will show your reported service by the employer, as well as any finalized purchases and reciprocal transfers.

Here are two examples:

Meet Bob

Bob has worked for 15 years as a full-time ambulance paramedic. His normal retirement age is 65.
Because Bob has service before and after April 1, 2020 (the date the new rules came into effect), the dates he is eligible for an unreduced pension are different:
- For Bob’s service earned up to March 31, 2020: age 60
- For Bob’s service earned after April 1, 2020: age 55
- Bob’s estimate for an unreduced pension includes the age he is unreduced on all his service, so age 60.
If Bob needs to retire early, he can retire with a reduced pension as early as age 50. Reduction factors would apply to each year before Bob reaches the unreduced ages listed above.

Meet Rosslyn

Rosslyn has worked for 26 years as a full-time ambulance paramedic. Her normal retirement age is 65.
Because Rosslyn has at least 25 years of service, she can retire with an unreduced pension at age 55.
If Rosslyn needs to retire earlier than that, she can retire with a reduced pension as early as age 50. Reduction factors would apply to each year before Rosslyn reaches age 55.