Moving Virgin Stakeholder Pensions

Marcuspd

Hi, I could do with a bit of help if anyone has had similar.
After seeing poor performance for years on my Virgon Stakeholder Pension, I've decided to move it to Aviva, via Cavendish for cheaper annual fees.

My confusion is that I seem to have two Virgin pensions both investing in their Virgin Pension Growth Fund. One is a standard Virgin Stakeholder Pension, which I pay into via Direct Debit with an increase of 10% a year and the other is what was originally a Virgin Contracted Out Pension.

Obviously SERPS and now SP2 finished years ago, so this separate pension sits losing money with no extra payments or tax relief going in to it.

Does anyone know why and if this old "Opted Out" one needs to be kept separate from my main stakeholder pension when I move it or can the two be combined as one fund? I presume what happened is that I got opted back in to the New State Pension Scheme whenever this started and SERPS/SP2 finished as no payments or tax relief has been paid into this Opted Out Pension for some time now.

Does anyone understand how this works? If I'm opted back into the government State Additional Pension scheme, should this money not be returned to them?

Sorry if that sounds a bit daft, but no matter how much reading up online, I'm struggling to understand it.

If it makes a difference, I'm a director of a one man band, so pay myself under the LET, but above the LEL (ticking the contributions box apparently), so have a low salary but pay all my tax on dividends taken as 19% corporation tax and now as an additional 7.5% tax on top taken from me as personal dividend tax. I have to be limited as many suppliers wont touch me unless I am. Going for a higher PAYE and less taxable dividends works out only very slightly cheaper now and is not worth the extra admin and hassle, due to me having to pay both employer and employee NIC and PAYE.

Many thanks.

xylophone

Obviously SERPS and now SP2 finished years ago,

Additional State Pension (aka SERPS/S2P) did not end years ago unless by that you mean in 2016......

See https://adviser.royallondon.com/technical-central/pensions/general/state-second-pension-explained/

I can't see why there would be a problem transferring both your Virgin pensions to your new scheme.

nick74

I did exactly the same in 2017 and both my former Virgin Stakeholder pension and Virgin Contracted Out pension are now combined together in one single pension pot with Aviva.

Marcuspd

nick74 wrote: »

I did exactly the same in 2017 and both my former Virgin Stakeholder pension and Virgin Contracted Out pension are now combined together in one single pension pot with Aviva.

Many thanks. That's very helpful! :beer: