LGPS refund

Studentpostgrad

Hi,

I worked for a year with a local government and started paying in my contributions to my pension fund. I then decided to go study for a year postgraduate, with the intention of returning to my job after I had received this training. However I've now been told that my pension cannot stay with its current provider and I need to give them details of my new scheme or get a refund minus the 20% that HMRC takes. Now as I'm a student right now I have no other pension to give so it looks like I have no choice but to take a refund. But I'm not exactly happy that I'm losing £200 just because I'm taking a year out. Does anyone know how I can fight this or keep my pension safe?

Andy_L

Open a private pension and transfer the lgps to it

AlanP_2

As above, then if you rejoin the LGPS after study (or any pension scheme come to that) you can transfer the PP pot back into it.

Apodemus

AlanP wrote: »

As above, then if you rejoin the LGPS after study (or any pension scheme come to that) you can transfer the PP pot back into it.

Are you sure that is correct? When I joined the LGPS it seemed to be a pretty narrow range of schemes that could be transferred in and I was told that neither my private pension nor my USS pension qualified.

hyubh

Studentpostgrad wrote: »

However I've now been told that my pension cannot stay with its current provider and I need to give them details of my new scheme or get a refund minus the 20% that HMRC takes. Now as I'm a student right now I have no other pension to give so it looks like I have no choice but to take a refund.

As the others have said, much better than taking the refund will be transferring out.

However, there is a third option: don't do anything now, and rejoin the LGPS later. If you did that, then the 'preserved'/'deferred'/'frozen' refund (names equivalent) will be cancelled, and the old period effectively opened up again and aggregated with the new membership.

Caveat with that third option though: you may need to rejoin within five years of leaving (this never used to be the case, but the CARE scheme regs added a line that effectively gives a 5 year limit on CARE-only frozen refunds).

hyubh

Apodemus wrote: »

Are you sure that is correct? When I joined the LGPS it seemed to be a pretty narrow range of schemes that could be transferred in and I was told that neither my private pension nor my USS pension qualified.

Non-Club transfers-in are an administering authority discretion. Most allow them, but the biggest (GMPF) doesn't (or at least, didn't - it will be in the policy docs on their website either way).

AlanP_2

hyubh wrote: »

Non-Club transfers-in are an administering authority discretion. Most allow them, but the biggest (GMPF) doesn't (or at least, didn't - it will be in the policy docs on their website either way).

Apologies if I misled earlier I didn't realise it was a discretionary policy. I transferred 2 private pensions into mine when I joined Lgps.