pension - less than 2k or 2 years contributions.

pennypenny99

Hello, my understanding of pensions has always been that there is absolutely nothing you can do to get money out of a pension unless you are 50+, but recently I was told that it is possible to get money out of pension (even if you are below 50) if:

that pension has less than 2k in contributions, or
that pension has less than 2 years contributions.

The reason I'm asking this is that when I was younger I had a number of short-term jobs (< 1 year) where I paid into a pension. I then (eventually) settled down and have now had the same job for more than 20 years and have built up a reasonable pension. I had completely forgotten about those long-ago pensions, but not any more!

thanks.

EdInvestor

If you have contributed to a company pension for less than 2 years you may be offered a refund of contributions net of tax when you leave a job.

But not after 20 years.The pensions (assuming they were final salary type) will be rising in value over the years by inflation or 5%, so they will usefully do the job when you retire.But you can;t get the moeny out.

There is no rule about less than 2k contributions.There is a rule about less than 16k in total pension contributions, but it's not applicable until age 60.

KittyVentura

Yeah as mentioned above the 2 year rule applied to Occupational pensions and then AVCs linked in. I.e If you worked for one company and contributed to their pension or 18 months before moving on you could have that refunded on both the company pension and any AVC.

For AVCs the A-day changes to pensions 05/04/06 abolished the rule that AVCS had to be linked to an occ scheme and from that date no refunds would be made on AVCs if the payments came in after Aday - even if you were only in your occupational pension for 1 month.

On AVCs you effectively could claim back any ineligable contibutions as a refund. They had very complex eligability rules linked in. Again if you made ineligable payments before A-day these could be refunded also!