Drawing down a small pension pot

atush

This seems to be an old DB pension, yet you continually say you want to enter a Drawdown arrangement- you cant. It isnt that sort of pension. It will give you an income for life from scheme age.

Are you 55 or older? Are you still working?


Questions for AON

What is the scheme age for deferred members?

How much is the pension currently worth PA and what will it pay you when you reach Scheme age?

Questions for Prudential

How much is the AVC ppot worth today?

Do they have a DD scheme or will you have to transfer?

jojorose

I dont actually know what an old DB Pension is. To me its just a pension and an AVC..

What I do know is that i drew down a small pension in its entirety last year from another company last year on my 55th birthday and there was no problem. So I assumed I would be able to do the same with this one.

Thanks for clarifying a few things for me. Needless to say having phoned twice more since my last post and being promised various things none of it has transpired.

It would be nice if someone actually said no they cant provide drawdown as opposed to not doing anything at all.

What I now know is that in addition to the DB pension i had also been paying extra into the AVC. Ive had a statement for that. As i thought not worth a lot.

I will now write and ask the questions because phone calls are getting me nowhere. Thanks.

xylophone

I dont actually know what an old DB Pension is.

See your answer in post 11 - you indicate that there was such a Defined Benefit Pension scheme and that you were in it for 2.5 years?

You also indicated that you made AVCs.

You therefore had a defined benefits pension and an AVC scheme.

You left the company so had a deferred DB pension and an AVC plan.

You refer to Current Value of preserved benefits statement


This sounds to me like the deferred main scheme pension.

Is the case that the Prudential have nothing at all to do with either part of your pension and that AON are the sole administrators?

https://www.pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk/content/publications-files/uploads/Taking_small_pensions_Detailed_SPOT008_V1.5.pdf

Incidentally, I believe that PSPSDB stands for Prudential Staff Pension Scheme DB (Section).

jamesd

They do have an obligation to respond but the timeframe is only whatever is reasonable. That can be many months, particularly if there is a need to trace old records that are needed to work out the correct pension entitlement. Payments for an older defined benefit pension are normally based on final salary and something like years of service divided by sixty. There's usually an option to reduce the income in exchange for a lump sum, typically at a bad exchange rate. There may also be the valuable option to use all of the AVC to fund a tax free lump sum without reducing the income. The tax free lump sum that is allowed might be higher than the current 25%. There's normally no way to take it all as a lump sum with no ongoing income but for the very smallest it can be possible. There are normally big reductions for taking anything before the normal retirement age of the scheme and that can be any age but it's usually 60, 55, 65, or 50, in roughly most likely to least likely order.

For defined contribution pensions it's much simpler because there's just a pot of money to track. So those can normally be paid out very quickly. If you take all of one of these as a lump sum you may have more income tax deducted than you should and may need to claim a refund from HMRC. The P60 should give details of the tax deducted.

I read a complaint decision from the pensions regulator that was similar to your concern about different times a month or so ago. They said that the delay was OK because of the amount of work involved and the time it took to get the information needed to work out the correct pension payment.