moving a frozen pension

suecha

Can anyone help me.

I opted out of Serps about 10 yrs ago have been living in Mallorca Spain for 8 yrs and have not been able to pay into this pension at all as now live abroad so I have a pension that I cannot do anything with, I have tried to transfer it to mallorca but no body seems to be able to help me.

EdInvestor

How old are you? If over 50 you can activate it to pay out 25% cash and an income.

jonathon_hart

Hi.

To transfer a pension abroad it needs to be transferred to a Qualifing Recognised Overseas Pension scheme (QROPs), a non exhaustive list of current ones of these is http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/pensionschemes/qrops.pdf (note this is not a recommendation of any of these schemes) note any scheme as long as it meets certain rules can be a QROPs. If you transfer to a scheme that is not a QROPs you will face a tax xharge of 55% of the transfer value.

If you transfer it it will then be entirely subject to Spanish pension law and taxation (so you will need to establish whether or not this is beneficial to you).

The best idea is to contact a pension provider in Spain and find out whether or not they have a QROPs then get them to contact your pension provider in the UK (you will need to give them a letter of authority to do this).

Alternatively then pension can be left in the UK until you retire.