Opting Back Into SERP's

Beccy77

I must admit that I'm very confused by the whole SERP's thing.

I started a pension when I was 19, and was advised to opt out of SERP's, I stopped contributing to this pension when I was about 22 and haven't made any pension contributions since then. (foolish I know)

I'm now 29 and about to enter into a pension scheme through work. Apparently they will only opt in to SERP's so if I wish to opt out it should be through a personal pension fund??

I'm very confused - I don't think I should be opting out but I don't know how to opt back in. I also asked about transferring my current fund (for what it's worth) into my new work scheme. However, they said that I could only transfer my contributions and not the SERP's.

Somebody please help me

david78

Hi Beccy77.

Welcome to MSE.

Theres a useful article here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/10/23/cmpen25.xml

If you opted out via a personal pension (called an Appropriate Personal Pension or APP) when you were 19, and have been working since, you should have had rebates of National Insurance paid into the "protected rights" part of your policy each tax year. From April they are going to pay much less in making contracting out poor value for a lot of people, so they might consider opting back in. You will also have your payments made between aged 19 and 22.

Opting back into SERPS/S2P is easy. Your pension company should have been writing to you once a year reminding that you might like to consider opting back in and enclosing a form to complete and send to off if you want to opt back in.

Edit: You can download form CA1543 for contracting back in from the web at:

http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/nic/forms/ca1543.pdf

You can't transfer the "protected rights" part of your pension (that's the part made up of the national insurance rebates) to your company scheme. You can transfer the other part (your contributions) if you want, but it may be better to leave it where it is.

EdInvestor

Could I suggest you contact your old pension provider (who is it?) and ask them to tell you this info:

The transfer value of the pension
The fund split between protected and non protected rights
What the money is invested in
What charges you are paying


Then come back and report the info here and we can make a suggestion about what to do.

clairehi

david78 wrote:

Theres a useful article here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/10/23/cmpen25.xml

.

Interesting article but what I would like to see for comparison purposes is a calcuator for individuals to work out how much S2P they could accumulate in any one year, so you could make an informed choice about whether to contract in or not.