West Yorkshire Pension Fund to NHS Pensions

Johntea

I worked at an employer in Bradford from 2007 to 2016 and was a member of the West Yorkshire Pension Fund (WYPF) throughout.

After taking a year out of work I am now working for the NHS and am a member of the NHS Pension Fund.

Would there be any pitfalls in transferring my West Yorkshire Pension Fund across to the NHS Pensions scheme?

To be honest all this pension stuff confuses the living daylights out of me!

Silvertabby

You can always ask to see some figures so you can compare the benefits offered by each scheme. Tell NHS pensions that you have WYPF benefits that you may want to transfer in to get the ball rolling.

Don't leave it too long - the NHS has a window of just 12 months for transfers in.

Dazed_and_confused

What if op was the high up the ladder in Bradford and was earning say £50k/year with defined benefit scheme.

Would transferring this to a NHS defined benefit scheme make sense now the op is taking life easy and is NHS band 1 earning £12.5k/year. Losing a lot of final salary pension there!

Probably not possible now with changes to NHS pension schemes but have seen it happen in the past with some very unhappy pensioners who haven't understood the full consequences of what they were doing and have lost a lot of pension from moving years to lower salaried scheme.

hyubh

Johntea wrote: »

Would there be any pitfalls in transferring my West Yorkshire Pension Fund across to the NHS Pensions scheme?

Your LGPS pension basis is partly final salary, partly CARE. Given between leaving the LGPS and joining the NHS scheme is less than 5 years, you benefit from special protections that mean the final salary part would transfer over as final salary benefits in the NHS scheme (basically, you would get a 2008 NHS scheme service credit).

As Dazed and confused says, if you have a lower rate of pay in the NHS, and realistically won't come to shoot up the pay scales to eventually beat your old LA rate of pay (allowing for inflation), then transferring would be a bad thing as your final salary service would now be against a lower final salary. However, if your NHS rate of pay will likely end up higher than your LA one (again, allowing for inflation), then transferring would be a very good thing.

The CARE part, in contrast, will be much of a muchness, despite the 2015 NHS scheme having a better active member revaluation rate than LGPS 2014. This is because you will keep the LGPS revaluation rate for the transferred in part.

xylophone

If you are ever likely to want to transfer into a DC scheme, while this is possible with LGPS it isn't with NHS.

Johntea

My 'final' rate of pay at LGPS job was slightly under what I started on at the NHS, which is Band 6.

System

Hi

Pitfalls? IMHO No.

Things to consider as mentioned above.

Your LGPS will get revalued with inflation, this could a reason to leave it where it is.

Your LGPS could be transferred out to a "private pension" in the future, this could a reason to leave it where it is.

Your LGPS pension provides a Death Benefit and Ill Health Cover (pension paid out if you are too ill to work), this could a reason to leave it where it is.

As it is a higher salary then a transfer comparison could be a very good idea, this could then be a reason to move it.

Consider the merits of the new scheme and evaluate them against the LGPS, this could then be a reason to move it.

Promotion and general salary increases, this could then be a reason to move it.

Silvertabby

Your LGPS pension provides a Death Benefit and Ill Health Cover (pension paid out if you are too ill to work), this could a reason to leave it where it is.

Death and ill-health benefits for deferred pensioners are only based on the deferred pension, and not the 3 x salary/enhanced pensions that could be awarded to current members.

Johntea

Thanks for all your advice, starting to become a bit more clear now!

I know that if I stay in my role over the next 9 years I get incremented each year until I hit the top of Band 6, obviously if I stay within the NHS I keep my increments too.

So I've sent off the form to at least get a estimate then I can decide