By Simon Challis, European Insurance and Funds Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - Blue-chip UK firms are offering higher payments to employees enrolled into defined-contribution (DC) company schemes to ensure they get a reasonable income in retirement, a survey by pension consultant Watson Wyatt said.

The survey released on Tuesday, which was based on 94 companies within the FTSE 100 at March 31, showed "a step change in how the DC issue is being tackled," Gary Smith, a senior consultant at Watson Wyatt told journalists. "Big firms are taking it seriously."

The equity market plunge in the early 2000s, coupled with longer life expectancy, among other factors, prompted many firms to close their defined-benefit (DB) pension schemes in favour of defined-contribution schemes for new employees.

Politicians and pensions experts have warned that many members of DC schemes are not saving enough to pay them a reasonable pension, compared to their colleagues in more lucrative DB schemes.

DB schemes guarantee the level of income employees will receive when they retire, whereas DC schemes simply provide workers with a pot of money, the size of which is dependent on conditions in the investment markets.

But the Watson Wyatt survey showed that contribution rates into DC schemes had been increasing over the past four years and that firms were willing to reward workers who chose to put in extra personal payments, by offering them extra top-up payments.

The average overall contribution rate to DC pensions was up by 1 percentage point to 14.7 percent in 2007 -- edging towards the key figure of 15 percent quoted in the Turner Report on pensions reform and a level regarded by experts as being the minimum to offer individuals a reasonable level of pension.

But this figure assumes workers are paying in the maximum personal contribution to take advantage of matching extra employer payments. Watson Wyatt said it had no means of working out whether workers were paying in this much to their schemes.