lol: Transferring my final salary pension

lol_4

First time I have asked question so if this sounds stupid, I am sorry!! I am 48 years woman, working part time. I have nine years final salary pension plus AVC with Merryl Lynch frozen with previous employer. I am now working for local government in their final salary scheme. Want to pay extra as obviously part time pension will not provide me with much of a pension when I retire. Used to pay up to full AVC contributions (into Equitable Life at that time!) when trouble with Equitable Life I transferred the AVC to Merryl Lynch but have paid no more in. Feel I really need to pay extra now. Would it be advisable to transfer previous pension to local government pension now as I will have to transfer AVC as well. Local government have variety of Standard Life AVCs so could add transferred AVC to one of these and just pay full extra contributions, or is there a better way? Very confused and a bit wary due to Equitable Life. I would be very grateful for any views.

<Edit by Pal: Title extended to make it easier for other forum readers>

dunstonh

You are not going to get an answer you want here. What you are asking for requires research comparing the benefits of the old the scheme with the new one.

It requires research by a G60 qualified IFA and I would recommend you refer to an IFA, rather than do it yourself or rely on the internet. Occupational transfers are considered high risk and back in the pension miss-selling days, they accounted for many of the cases.

lol_4

Thank you for replying. However, what's a G60 qualified IFA!?! I have approached IFA's in the past but because my pension is so small I wonder if they are really interested.

Pal

Welcome to the boards LOL!

I have edited the title slightly to make it easier for people browsing the forums.

Cheers

Pal

lol_4

Thanks Pal. Hope I wont get any more bad posts! Do you know what G60 qualified IFAs are and would they have special letters after their name?

dunstonh

G60 is the qualification level required to provide advice on occupational pension transfers. It is above the normal qualification level of an IFA.

When seeing an IFA it is important to make sure in advance that they are G60 qualified. Otherwise, it is a waste of time for both of you. Some IFAs will have access to a department who deal with specialised business that would include G60 business if they don't have it themselves. They will gather the information and pass it on to someone that has.

As for cost, you should expect to pay for the advice as there is unlikely to be any commission on this class of business. I would expect anything around £500 to £750.

purplepatch

Hi lol - I used to work in FS scheme admin. Have you asked your current employer to provide you with a transfer-in illustration? A lot of the schemes I used to administer were not accepting transfers in at that time, so if you haven't already done so, I would ask the administrators of your current scheme a) if it's possible and if so, b) to provide you with an illustration of what benefits would be secured by the transfer value from your previous scheme - they can also provide AVC illustrations that Standard Life would prepare. You could ask for the illustration to include figures at a given retirement date.

This in turn can then be compared with the deferred benefits in your previous scheme - again you should contact the administrators of that scheme and ask them to provide an illustration of the benefits you have secured at the same given retirement date, to include AVCs.

This may give you sufficient information to make a decision yourself.

As previously mentioned it is usually best to consult an ifa, but it is expensive. There are no hard and fast rules about whether it is beneficial to transfer benefits as all schemes have different rules and treat both transferred in and deferred benefits in different ways. I'm not sure how ifas charge, but would imagine that if you at least get the benefit illustrations yourself in the first place, that will save them some work and therefore save you some money.

YorkshireBoy

lol wrote:

I am now working for local government in their final salary scheme. Want to pay extra as obviously part time pension will not provide me with much of a pension when I retire.

<Edit by Pal: Title extended to make it easier for other forum readers>

Can't help with any of the IFA/transfer stuff but your part-time situation is the same as my wifes. We sent for some information from the local government scheme and have decided to buy "extra years" service.

I think there was an option to add AVC's with Scottish Widows but we decided (after review) that the additional years bought, coupled with our other financial planning would be OK for us.

HTH
YB

lol_4

Thanks to all who replied. Have spoken to pensions department and they are to ask for details of deferred pension with previous employer also asked about 'extra years', but they say they are an expensive option so I need to look into this further.

Pal

Re Extra years: see your other thread here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=334842#post334842