Transferring Personal Pension to a Flexible Drawdown Fund

DaveW65

I have been in Australia for the last 16 years, intend to stay here, and have now reached 65.


I have a UK Virgin Personal Pension totalling 60,000 pounds. I would like to take this money flexibly, probably over the next 5 years, varying amounts as required to minimise tax both in the UK and Australia.


Unfortunately Virgin in the UK do not offer any sort of drawdown option, just 100% withdrawal (which would result in paying tax at high marginal rates), so that means I will need to transfer it to a different provider. This itself could be tricky as I do not have a UK address, though I could use my brother's address in the UK for postal purposes.


I am just looking for a low cost option to get this done.

newatc

I don't understand why the lack of a UK address would stop you transferring your pension to an Australian provider. This must be reasonably common for those migrating from the UK to have a pension here which will need to be transferred abroad. Have you talked to UK Virgin about this?

Paul_Herring

I don't understand why the lack of a UK address would stop you transferring your pension to an Australian provider.

I get the impression that they want to transfer to a different UK provider.

DaveW65

Sorry, perhaps I wasn't very clear. I need to be able to transfer the pot out of Virgin to a different UK pension provider that offers more flexible drawdown option. In particular, I think I need the new provider to offer the use of uncrystallised funds pension lump sums, something that Virgin bizarrely don't offer.


Just after some suggestions of who to enquire with. I've just had a chat with Hargreaves Lansdown, but they tell me that they can't offer me a service because I am not UK resident. I have also spoken to PensionBee who say they can help.

DaveW65

Apparently it used to be possible to transfer a UK personal pension to an Australian super fund in the past as long as it was QROPS certified. Unfortunately HMRC have disqualified all the Australian super funds, so they are no longer classed as QROPS compliant. This makes it very difficult for ex-pats to access their personal pensions.

Dox

DaveW65 wrote: »

I have also spoken to PensionBee who say they can help.

Then why not let them help?

DaveW65

I was just trying to get a few options so that I could research further and compare.

squirrelpie

I know nothing about the subject but a search for transfer uk pension to australia brought up several good hits. One point that might be a worry is that if you're 65 or over, you apparently can't transfer a pension to Australia because they're treated as new contributions. Harding Wealth Management offered that titbit.


It seems like it might be worth having a chat with one or more firms just to find out what the options are and the right questions to ask.

DaveW65

I have pretty much ruled out transferring my pot to an Australian fund. I am looking for a simple option to move it to a more flexible UK pension provider that will allow me to draw down on the money as I see fit.

Ideally I just want to move to something like the Virgin Pension Growth fund (a UK share index tracker) that I’m in at the moment but with the added flexibility of drawing down.

xylophone

https://www.youinvest.co.uk/faq/am-i-eligible-sipp

May be worth an enquiry.

mgdavid

whether you transfer to a SIPP (HL, CStanley, AJBell etc etc) or another Personal pension I think you are going to need to appear to be based at your brother's address to do it.