cashing in avc's

wkenefick

I was wondering if it was possible to cash in avcs? Can anyone help?

withabix

You can't.

exil

Well, you can get some of it in cash if you're age 55 plus. But the purpose of AVCs is to buy a pension.

McKneff

Its a pension for your retirement, once its in there it no longer belongs to you.

Like exil says, you can get 25% of your lump sum and of your AVCs if you are over 55.

bunciedog

I guess this thread answers my question, the question being , I have £4500 in avcs with an employer I no longer work for and was wondering if I could get the cash back as it will only produce £240 per anum .
Question two, in the event I cannot get the cash back can I transfer the full amount to a new avc account with my new employer ??. Regards John

dunstonh

question 1 is already answered.
question 2: yes you can, providing the new employer scheme accepts them. If they dont others will. Or you can leave them in place.

MrChips

At the point of retirement it is actually possible to take 100% of your AVCs as tax free cash as long as your pension is large enough to be able to pass the HMRC test.

If you have a defined benefit pension, as long as your AVCs are not more than 6.67 times your starting level of annual pension you can take them all as cash (rather than commuting some of your pension for a tax free lump sum).

If you have a money purchase pension, you can combine your AVC pot with your money purchase pot and take 25% of the value as tax free cash (so as long as your AVCs are not bigger than 1/3 of your money purchase pension pot you can take them all as tax free cash).

dunstonh

At the point of retirement it is actually possible to take 100% of your AVCs as tax free cash as long as your pension is large enough to be able to pass the HMRC test.

Theoretically yes. However, you need the scheme to allow it. A small number do but most don't.

Theoretically, you can do it with personal pensions as well but I doubt there is a single occupational scheme that will do it.

jem16

dunstonh wrote: »

I doubt there is a single occupational scheme that will do it.

The LGPS is the only one I know of.

MrChips

I work with about 8 defined benefit schemes and most of those will allow it - admittedly not a statistically significant sample!

dunstonh

MrChips wrote: »

I work with about 8 defined benefit schemes and most of those will allow it - admittedly not a statistically significant sample!

I assume you mean AVCs to main scheme and not PPP.

I find its more of a minority but its a significant minority when it comes to AVC/main scheme.