options for small pension pot

cwgt

Hi All

This is a first post so please bare with me.

I am trying to get some advise for my mother. She has a small pension 'pot' which has just been valued at £18,198 (total transfer value). There are no payments going into it, in fact it has been sitting for at least 20yrs. It was paid into when she was a co-director of a ltd company (with her brother). The company was wound up maybe 10 yrs ago, possibly more. As far as I am aware she never took a salary from the company and has since lived on her war widows pension and a disability allowance.

Her brother has just cashed his (similar) pension pot in and she decided that she would like to do the same. However on speaking to the company that hold the pension she is not able to do this because the value is over £18k (ie 1% of £1.8M)

I presume my uncle was able to do this because he would have taken a salary from the Ltd company and as I understand it this would have raised the £18K limit.

I'm not sure if cashing in would have been the best thing to do but now that we are told that she cant anyway I am wondering what the other (best) options for her are.

She is 68yrs old and not in good health. Being brutally realistic anything more than another 5yrs would be a real bonus. So long term planning would be less beneficial for her.

Any advise on her options would be most welcome....

dunstonh

I presume my uncle was able to do this because he would have taken a salary from the Ltd company and as I understand it this would have raised the £18K limit.

No. That would have no impact. You can only exercise triviality if your total pensions are under 1% of the lifetime allowance or the pension is classed as a stranded pot.

She could change the investments into something a bit more volatile. If it goes down below £18000 then she can exercise triviality. If it goes up then she gains that way.

redb_2

taking the dunstonh suggestion further why not transfer the pension to another provider - have the fund hit by charges and that might bring it down below the £18k limit

if not then transfer it again and get hit by more charges until its below

sounds odd but anybody recommend a scheme with high charges ?

ffacoffipawb

redb wrote: »

taking the dunstonh suggestion further why not transfer the pension to another provider - have the fund hit by charges and that might bring it down below the £18k limit

if not then transfer it again and get hit by more charges until its below

sounds odd but anybody recommend a scheme with high charges ?

Or transfer to a sippdeal sipp and let the dealing charges do the job by buying and selling straight away and repeat until under £18k?

cwgt

thanks for the comments. The Sippdeal option looks interesting. I will look into this.

If anyone has any other options or sees a problem with Sippdeal I would be interested to hear.

Regards