Pension cashing in

tekman

I am an Englishman who since 2011 moved to South Africa.
I have two pensions, one with BT and the other with Xerox.
The value of the two combined I'm not sure of yet as it has been difficult to find a relevant email address for Accenture who manage the BT scheme to contact hem regarding the value of said pension.
I also contacted Xerox to ask for a detailed statement including the current value of my pension to which they answered

In addition to your annual benefit statement, you are entitled to one free valuation a year, additional valuation requests within any 12 month period are charged at £140.00 (incl. VAT). Requests for valuations have to be put in writing to us, as we verify members original signatures..

This is fair enough as the annual benefit statement is always sent through but unfortunately I no longer live in the UK and despite informing them, I haven't received any annual benefit statements for a while.

I now work for myself but was considering based on information supplied by Xerox to move both pensions or effectively cash them in and reinvest the money in another investment here in Cape Town but am not sure if this is the sensible route to follow as I'm sure there will be various financial penalties.

Xerox states

Exchanging a 'trivial pension' for cash

If you have only a ‘trivial’ pension entitlement, it may be possible for you to give up your pension from Xerox FundXtra in exchange for a cash sum.
A ‘trivial’ pension entitlement is defined by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) as being when your pension entitlement from all private pension arrangements of which you are, or have been, a member is
valued at less than £18,000.

Now both my pensions combined probably fit the above description and are not going to be much use to me at retirement age A- because the payout will so small and B- because I live in South Africa and it would be a pain to set up transfer options etc.
If anyone can give me some clear direction or have any pertinent advice to share it will be greatly received. Also does anyone please have email contact details for Accenture if they still manage the BT pension scheme please.
Regards

wallpaperman

Short answer to a long question is that unless you have reached the age of 60, the triviality rules that you have quoted do not apply.

Living abroad, even permanently, is irrelevant I'm afraid.

tekman

Thanks for that wallpaperman I had a gut feeling this may be the case, but it was worth asking cheers

mgdavid

you don't say how long, or when, you worked for the two UK employers; but if the BT one is a final salary scheme, however small, it's probably well worth leaving where it is as it will appreciate at RPI or CPI year on year. Check with both schemes' administrators, see if you can manage / monitor your pot online, keep tabs on them.

atush

I agree, any final salary pension you should keep untouched and where they are.

Another thing is what you expect to retire on, if you did 'cash them in'.

As an expat, you probably could, but if there is nothing better or safer to invest in there, then maybe you should not. you could invest in some scheme and lose the lot. Being poor in retirement is bad enough here, don't know what it would be like in SA.

tekman

I worked for BT for 6 years leaving in 1992 and the scheme at that time was called the BT new pension scheme. Xerox was for seven years so both pensions are somewhat small anyway. Under £18,000.
SA has plenty of opportunities to invest wisely and besides my wife works in the Financial planning industry and understands this far better than I. Oh and just for the record, Pensioners get a state pension or I should say grant if they dont have any private pensions and the payout is around R1250 a month which is less than R100.
But then houses are vastly cheaper to purchase and imho you get better bang for your buck or in our case the rand. So yes it is very important to invest for one's retirement here.

mgdavid

have you asked your wife (quote: my wife works in the Financial planning industry and understands this far better than I) if you should try to cash in 6 years' worth of a final salary pension?

taking_stock

tekman wrote: »

I worked for BT for 6 years leaving in 1992 and the scheme at that time was called the BT new pension scheme. Xerox was for seven years so both pensions are somewhat small anyway. Under £18,000.
SA has plenty of opportunities to invest wisely and besides my wife works in the Financial planning industry and understands this far better than I. Oh and just for the record, Pensioners get a state pension or I should say grant if they dont have any private pensions and the payout is around R1250 a month which is less than R100.
But then houses are vastly cheaper to purchase and imho you get better bang for your buck or in our case the rand. So yes it is very important to invest for one's retirement here.

just to be clear - the £18k is the total transfer value of all pensions (excluding state pension). It's NOT the annual figure.

it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY your BT and Xerox pensions are worth less than this, given the time-frames. As a rough guide, multiply the annual pension by 20 to get the transfer value. ie in this case your BT and Xerox pensions would each have to be worth less than £500 pa, again not likely even if you had been on minimum wage.

tekman

mgdavid, as I stated in a previous post the BT pension scheme I belong to is the BT New Pension scheme so I pretty sure it isn't the Final salary pension type but thank you for your advice I have followed up with my wife and she is looking into this today for me.

taking stock - Thanks for the heads up. Yup I did realise that the less than £18,000 was the total transfer value and my BT pension at 2011 figure was pretty lousy at around £559 per year but then at that time I wasn't in a well-paid position. When I was I wasn't in my job for long before being made redundant due to the cut backs in 1992. It was at that point I jumped across to Xerox.
At the moment this all seems a little pointless to pursue as it looks likely based on the first post response and communications I have received from Xerox there isn't a clear path to either amalgamate and transfer my pensions to cash for re investment here in Cape Town. It is probable that I'll just have to leave them alone until retirement age which is a little way off. It won't be much but at least it is something. The object of this exercise was merely to re-invest the capital where I can make it really work properly for me.

traineepensioner

Hi tekman,

Try peopleline.pensions@accenture.com

Tel: 0800 731 1919 (BT Pensioners or BT Ex Employees)

International number: +44 203 0233 420

Good luck :beer:

tekman

Hello traineepensioner or it appears I should drop the trainee part now.
The information you provided was what I needed but I did find this the other day and am waiting on a response from them, so thanks for your help. Every little bit hey