Offshore pension advice

ahe-g

Can anyone advise (ideally from personal experience) on a good offshore pension plan.
It has to totally unlike the one I'm invoved in now, i.e. no massive charges, reasonable bid to offer spread,no penalty charges if you cease payments because it is not performing, etc. etc.!

EdInvestor

Hi ahe-g

The attraction about saving in the pension format in the UK is the tax relief. But it is very unusual for an expat in a foreigh country to be able to get tax relief on his investments.

Thus it is usually better for expats to save in other ways, not pensions.

Why don't you open an account with one of the onshore UK discount houses such as Comdirect or Cavendish or Hargreaves Lansdown and invest your money in funds through them?They will rebate initial charges etc and won't charge you a fee.

I am not sure about HL/Cavendish, but Comdirect will open accounts for expats as long as they have a UK bank account. These days you can do all this online and it really doesn't matter much where you are

dunstonh

UK pensions have no bid/offer spread and are now some of the lowest charged investment products around. They have no penalties to stop/start/increase/decrease payments. There is also no charge to switch to another provider and in most cases some or all fund switches are free.

There is no reason to go with an offshore investment with no tax relief and higher charges plus virtually no consumer protection

EdInvestor

Hi dunstonh


Please advise how an expat with overseas earnings can obtain UK tax relief on pension contributions.

Many people will be interested in such a wheeze, if available

dunstonh

He didnt say he was an expat with overseas earnings

At least not when I had posted my response. The post suggested that he was in an old style PPP and was looking at offshore pensions as an alternative (which isnt possible at this time).