Guernsey personal pension plan

Inomad

I have a pension "left over" from when I worked in guernsey over 30 years ago which I would have liked to consolidate with my other uk and irish plans I have collected over the years. I am now resident in the UK. The provider of my plan Clerical Medical (owned by Scottish widows another of my UK plan providers) does not offer an ICTA  and guernsey tax authority approved scheme to which I can transfer  this guernsey plan(go figure? ) I want to be able to take my tax free lump sum and then invest remainder in drawdown and not annuity. If I stay with the guernsey scheme I will only have lumpsum/ annuity option as guernsey does not allow for drawdown option. Policy matures in June when I'm 60 so would like to be sorted before then. Any ideas anyone please?

Marcon

Inomad said:

I have a pension "left over" from when I worked in guernsey over 30 years ago which I would have liked to consolidate with my other uk and irish plans I have collected over the years. I am now resident in the UK. The provider of my plan Clerical Medical (owned by Scottish widows another of my UK plan providers) does not offer an ICTA  and guernsey tax authority approved scheme to which I can transfer  this guernsey plan(go figure? ) I want to be able to take my tax free lump sum and then invest remainder in drawdown and not annuity. If I stay with the guernsey scheme I will only have lumpsum/ annuity option as guernsey does not allow for drawdown option. Policy matures in June when I'm 60 so would like to be sorted before then. Any ideas anyone please?

Does this help: https://guernseypress.com/news/business/2019/10/09/im-moving-to-the-uk-and-i-have-a-guernsey-pension--am-i-able-to-transfer-this-to-a-uk-pension-scheme-and-is-there-any-downside-if-i-dont/

Albermarle

From the link , I think this statement is misleading .

If your UK employer provides a pension scheme under the UK auto-enrolment system, check that they can accept a transfer from a Guernsey-approved pension. This would allow you to consolidate your pension savings into one scheme, keeping costs to a minimum. Your employer would cover scheme expenses.

As far as I know it is not normal that an employer pays the fees for a workplace DC pension .

atush

You may be be to transfer the guernsey pension to another Guernsey one that allows drawdown.

Another factor is, lump sum.  We have several Jersey pensions and IOM pensions and they have 30% tax free lump sums, so Guernsey is probably similar.  If you could transfer it, you could lose that.

Inomad

I don't believe there is the option to drawdown  a guernsey pension in the same sense as in the UK . Once the tax free lump sum  of 30% is opted for either the balance must be applied in purchase of an annuity or you take the net balance as taxed and the provider deducts the tax (20%)and pays this to the guernsey controller of tax.
 In an ideal world I would like to take the more generous 30% tax free lump sum and transfer the balance to an approved UK scheme, but finding a UK provider who can accept a transfer from a guernsey scheme is my problem . I would rather avoid the cost of an IFA if possible.