Thousands of Longbridge workers are set to get 90 per cent of their pensions despite the firm's collapse, but could face a two-year wait.
The MG Rover workers facing the loss of their jobs who belong to the company pension scheme, will be eligible under the Government's new Pension Protection Fund.
The company crashed into administration just a day after the PPF was launched, enabling MG Rover to become the first company to form an aid application.
The 6,000-strong workforce are eligible for a maximum pension of £25,000 a year, or 90 per cent of their benefits.
The MG Rover pension fund will now be handed over by the Pensions Regulator to an independent trustee.
Kenneth Donaldson, of London-based pensions consultants Higham Group, who helped set up the PPF with the Department for Work and Pensions, said: "The Insolvency Practitioner has notified the PPF and the next step is to ask the Regulator to appoint an independent trustee to come in and take over the running of the fund.
"During the assessment period of a couple of years, the trustees will carry out a full audit of the scheme and at the end of that period, they will do a full valuation.
"But, at this stage, it is not clear whether the members of the fund will be able to take early retirement during that assessment period.
"If an employee's normal retirement age was 65 and he or she was 63 and a half, they may have to wait 18 months, for example.
"On the whole, the workers at Longbridge will be far better off than they might have been."
The new pension scheme was set up following the May 2000 rescue by John Towers' Phoenix consortium but the car firm has admitted a £40 million shortfall.
