New job in last 2 months with new pension...and 3 old pensions

StevenWaning

We were recently taken over and old work pension ceased contributing. My new pension seems good to be in and was going to transfer in my old pensions. Tried one of them and it seemed to have a problem and new pension wants a call to continue. I noticed my 3 older pensions all have the retirement age set at 65 as it was when they were taken out and my new one obviously now has 67. Would this have an effect on the transfer? The others have the option to change the age to 67 but the wording seems to imply it COULD have serious effects on the payout. Is this something to worry about or just what pensions have to mention. Never been a financial whizz to fully understand rates. TIA

xylophone

The new pension is a standard DC pension? Who is the provider?

And the other three? Providers?

Marcon

StevenWaning said:

We were recently taken over and old work pension ceased contributing. My new pension seems good to be in and was going to transfer in my old pensions. Tried one of them and it seemed to have a problem and new pension wants a call to continue. I noticed my 3 older pensions all have the retirement age set at 65 as it was when they were taken out and my new one obviously now has 67. Would this have an effect on the transfer? The others have the option to change the age to 67 but the wording seems to imply it COULD have serious effects on the payout. Is this something to worry about or just what pensions have to mention. Never been a financial whizz to fully understand rates. TIA

The new pension may want a call simply as a security measure. Give them a ring and find out - just ensure you check you are ringing a 'real' number, taken from existing paperwork or their legitimate website, or another trusted source.

If these are all defined contribution pensions (which is likely), the retirement age is purely notional - insurers have to ask for several reasons: giving projections to your chosen retirement age, and switching funds if you are in some sort of 'lifestyle' fund which automatically switches you to different funds as you approach retirement.

If you change your preferred retirement age, and make it younger, then the payout will be lower because the funds have less time to build up investment returns, and you (and possibly your employer) will be contributing for a shorter time.

StevenWaning

New provider is standard Life. Old pensions are DHL pension and Now pension (both were payed into for about 3 years) and ongoing standard life private pension. I did think it would be better if changing age to be older would be ok.  I'll be honest all my works put me in their pension schemes and it just went out of wages. I never really looked into it beyond that. I suspect it's the same for a lot of people. Oh and I'll be 50 this October. Thanks for your quick responses

Albermarle

What matters is how the money is invested within the pensions.
If it is a 'normal investment fund ' it does not change in relation to your age . It may grow or shrink with movements in financial markets but the make up of the investment does not change.

If it is a so called 'lifestyle' investment fund , the make up the fund changes as you get nearer the retirement age that they have for you in their system( effectively your money is moved progressively to safer funds) This can be  good or bad, dpending on your future plans for taking the pension.

MallyGirl

It may be that the fund(s) you are invested in with the old pensions are not offered by the new one so you would need to transfer as cash and decide what to invest in once the cash gets there. They may just need you to provide them with the authority to contact these old providers on your behalf.

xylophone

New provider is standard Life. Old pensions are DHL pension and Now pension (both were payed into for about 3 years) and ongoing standard life private pension.

You now have two pension plans with SL, a personal pension and  the new workplace scheme?

Nest was the old workplace scheme?

Is the DHL pension DC or DB?