Can I make LTD Company contributions to existing pension plan or must I setup anew?

dava444

I am a Limited Company director with several legacy pension plans from various providers. I want to save money for a pension. I understand it is advantageous to make my company make contributions for me.
Now, all I need to know is, can I make contributions from my company into one (or more ) of my existing personal pension plans OR must my company setup a brand new plan (presumably marking it as a company scheme or something).
My motivation is to (a) Consolidate all my plans into 1 to save me hours of processing paperwork and (b) avoid setup costs of yet another plan if I dont need to.
I can't find anyone who knows the answer online anywhere ?
I'll buy the drinks for anyone who can tell me.

xylophone

http://www.hl.co.uk/pensions/sipp/how-much-can-i-invest/employer-contributions/employer-case-study

http://www.hl.co.uk/pensions/sipp/how-much-can-i-invest/employer-contributions

Open a SIPP for your company and transfer the old pensions into it?

dunstonh

Can I make LTD Company contributions to existing pension plan or must I setup anew?

most individual pensions will accept employer contributions.

OR must my company setup a brand new plan (presumably marking it as a company scheme or something).

If you have an employee, then you will likely have to put in place an auto-enrolment scheme. However, if you don't and there are just officers of the company then you dont.

dava444

Thanks for that, xylophone !
So one is allowed to open a new SIPP, put a lump sump from my LTD company.
AND then transfer in my old personal plans all into the same SIPP ?

I had expected HMRC would need some kind of separation of company conturbutions from personal contributions you see.

xylophone

Why not explore the position with a telephone call to your proposed provider?

HL are very helpful on the phone - you could also try other providers -

http://monevator.com/find-the-best-online-broker/

http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/#comment-771148

You could also explore your position with an Independent Financial Adviser.

https://www.unbiased.co.uk/

dunstonh

I had expected HMRC would need some kind of separation of company conturbutions from personal contributions you see.

No. They both go into non-protected rights.

ex-pat_scot

I did exactly as you are seeking.
I set up a SIPP, into which I transferred lots of legacy pots.
I then arranged company contribution (NB i had to indicate to the SIPP provider that it was a company rather than personal contribution, otherwise they would have applied for basic rate tax relief).


As Dunstonh notes, your DC pot is agnostic to the source of funds, as long as you respect the Annual Allowance (in which case the HMRC can ask for the excess tax relief back)

System

ex-pat_scot wrote: »

as long as you respect the Annual Allowance (in which case the HMRC can ask for the excess tax relief back)

Remember that company contributions are not limited by your annual salary, only the total upper limit.
You can also use carry-forward to exceed that limit if you have unused contribution limits from 3 previous years.

CFrog

Dava444. I think I was / am in a similar position to you.

I'm 58 and up until 2007 I was a salaried employee (IT consultant) working for a number of well known IT companies. During this time I was a member of a number of company DB / DC pension schemes.

I decided to go contracting in 2007 and set up my own limited company using the 'typical' model with me and my wife being directors. At the same time I set up separate SIPPs for me and my wife with Hargreaves Lansdown and have over the last 10 years made regular (but varying) pension contributions from the company into our SIPPs as company circumstances allowed. Although I have not done so, our SIPPS will also take personal contributions (ie out of my bank account and not the Company bank account).

Separately, I have moved the money accrued in 2 of my DC pensions pots (from previous roles where I was a salaried employee) into my HL SIPP without any trouble. I decided to move my DC pensions across to my SIPP about 7 years ago as I am a keen investor and was confident I could achieve better returns than those being delivered by the administrators of the DC schemes. To move the 2 DC schemes across I was only required to contact the scheme administrators and fill in a number of simple documents, the scheme administrators then sold the units / funds held in the 2 DC pensions and transferred the monies to my HL SIPP; everything went through smoothly in a few weeks. In turn, once the monies were credited to my HL SIPP account I invested the monies in a range of funds of my choosing. I now actively manage SIPP myself.

If you're comfortable managing the SIPP yourself, then I'd do it.

As a bit of a post script, I'm looking to move one of my DB pensions into a SIPP but this is more problematic. Finding an IFA to do this is proving to be a pain.