Moving a Royal Mail pension

suitable69

Ive been working for Royal Mail for 22 years and I want to move my pension because of whats going on at the moment.
Is it possible?

Cheers

molerat

[STRIKE]Highly unlikely that you would[/STRIKE] You will not find an IFA who will sign off the transfer of a gold plated pension into something which will undoubtedly be inferior. Why do you think Mr Mug Taxpayer had to take over responsibility for the pension scheme before RM was sold off ?

quotememiserable

I agree, it would be exceptionally good financial sense to leave it just where it is.

somethingcorporate

I thank you on behalf of all tax-payers to transfer it somewhere, no anywhere else!

Seriously, you could not make a worse financial decision than what you are contemplating. Your current pension is gold-plated with bells and whistles on!

BobQ

suitable69 wrote: »

Ive been working for Royal Mail for 22 years and I want to move my pension because of whats going on at the moment.
Is it possible?

Cheers

Even if it were, what are you hoping to achieve by doing this? Some kind of protest?

Ignore the RM brand, you have a long standing pension with a pension fund that the Government has agreed to underwrite come what may and guarantee you will get your pension paid in full. Do you realise how lucky you are?

mania112

suitable69 wrote: »

Ive been working for Royal Mail for 22 years and I want to move my pension because of whats going on at the moment.
Is it possible?

I'll be the first one to actually answer your question:

Yes if you have left their employment, No if you're still there.

jamesd

As mania112 wrote, it's possible only if you are not working there any more. The reasons for which it might be possible include such things as being diagnosed as likely to die within a year or substantially lower life expectancy than normal. You will be required to get an IFA to recommend the transfer and an IFA will not do that unless there are factor like those, because otherwise it would make you massively worse off than not transferring. And that would leave the IFA with a large liability to pay you redress for wrong advice.

You're in one of the best pensions available today, one that most in the private sector would love to be able to have because it's so generous and safe.

scott_lithgows

I,ve got 25 years in the Postie funded Government backed pension,which I wish to leave alone.

However RM wish to take 50% of the funds in the post rescued pension scheme and spend or prob waste.

Rm wish to keep the scheme open poss to have some cash lying about to pay shareholders.

Can you withdraw from such a scheme and go to auto-enrolement instead?

I,m thinking RM cant touch cash put into that,and it might be better to get something from an inferior pension scheme than nothing from a better scheme.

Thoughts?

jamesd

scott_lithgows wrote: »

However RM wish to take 50% of the funds in the post rescued pension scheme and spend or prob waste.

Do you have some reliable source saying that? It's something that was generally restricted following the Robert Maxwell activities during the 1990s.

scott_lithgows wrote: »

Rm wish to keep the scheme open poss to have some cash lying about to pay shareholders.

That is not a permitted activity.

scott_lithgows wrote: »

Can you withdraw from such a scheme and go to auto-enrolement instead?

The existing pension meets the requirements for auto-enrolment and Royal Mail has no obligation to offer an alternative that also does.

scott_lithgows wrote: »

Thoughts?

It appears that you need better sources of information about what Royal Mail and other companies are allowed to do with the money that has been paid into the pension schemes of their employees.

The new scheme is a good deal. If you're being told otherwise, you need to reduce the reliability rating of whoever's telling you otherwise.

dasherman

suitable69 wrote: »

Ive been working for Royal Mail for 22 years and I want to move my pension because of whats going on at the moment.
Is it possible?

Cheers

As a Royal Mail employee of 20 odd years myself I cannot believe anyone would even consider doing such a thing! Your pension up to 2012 is now the responsibility of the government who have taken over the deficit of, depending on which report you read, anything up to £10 Billion. They stand a much better chance of paying your pension when the time comes than Royal Mail ever did.

In 2008 the final salary scheme closed for all and was replaced by a career average version for existing staff and a defined contribution scheme for new entrants. So at the moment you have accrued final salary benefits and have an ongoing valuable salary based pension with the company contributing about 18%. Why on earth would you want to change that?

The pension going forward under a private Royal Mail is likely to change sooner or later in my opinion. Probably to some sort of DC scheme, but your salary based pension will still be worth a lot more by keeping it where it is than moving it.

Somebody has said that it’s not possible to move your pension while you’re still employed. That is wrong! You can move it to another pension assuming you can get an IFA to sign it off. Or it’s also possible to transfer your benefits to a ‘buy-out’ policy with an insurance company. But if you took either of these options you would frankly and no offence, be a complete fool.

dasherman

scott_lithgows wrote: »

I,ve got 25 years in the Postie funded Government backed pension,which I wish to leave alone.

However RM wish to take 50% of the funds in the post rescued pension scheme and spend or prob waste.

Rm wish to keep the scheme open poss to have some cash lying about to pay shareholders.

Can you withdraw from such a scheme and go to auto-enrolement instead?

I,m thinking RM cant touch cash put into that,and it might be better to get something from an inferior pension scheme than nothing from a better scheme.

Thoughts?

My thoughts are that you really don't know what you're talking about.