CETV questions

AlanRoberts29

Hi I am coming up to 55 and have a deferred final salary pension which is worth £7103 as of April 2021 which was the last time I asked what the value was. Using a CETV calculator it gives a range between £15000 and £23500. The pension was with a private company that I finished working for in 2007.

My questions are:
Must private final salary pension providers allow you to transfer your money out?
How long does it take?
Am I right in saying that I need to transfer the money out into another pension pot and then withdraw some on the money from the new pot?   

Dazed_and_C0nfused

AlanRoberts29 said:

Hi I am coming up to 55 and have a deferred final salary pension which is worth £7103 as of April 2021 which was the last time I asked what the value was. Using a CETV calculator it gives a range between £15000 and £23500. The pension was with a private company that I finished working for in 2007.

My questions are:
Must private final salary pension providers allow you to transfer your money out?
How long does it take?
Am I right in saying that I need to transfer the money out into another pension pot and then withdraw some on the money from the new pot?   

Something must be wrong with your figures as why would anyone give up a pension of £7,103 for £23,500?

Pat38493

Normally it’s very difficult to transfer a final salary pension and requires expensive financial advice which could very well result in a recommendation to not do it.

However I think that if your  CETV value really is less than 30K, it will be much easier but…

You need to double check your figures and get a proper specific estimate for your pension because if it’s worth 7K per year I doubt that the CETV value is that low - it will be. 6 figure sum unless it’s a very unusual pension with highly restrictive conditons

AlanRoberts29

Dazed_and_C0nfused said: Something must be wrong with your figures as why would anyone give up a pension of £7,103 for £23,500?

Sorry I missed a zero out of both amounts, the range is £150,000 to £235,000

Dazed_and_C0nfused

AlanRoberts29 said:

Dazed_and_C0nfused said: Something must be wrong with your figures as why would anyone give up a pension of £7,103 for £23,500?

Sorry I missed a zero out of both amounts, the range is £150,000 to £235,000

Even for £235,0000 (which would be £5-£10k less after IFA costs) I wouldn't be tempted.

That £7,103 presumably had some element of inflation protection so will be slightly more now and will continue to increase both now and when in payment.

Say it's£7,400 from April 2023.  Coupled with a full new State Pension of £10,600 that £18,000/year would make a pretty good foundation for your retirement years.

Linton

AlanRoberts29 said:

Hi I am coming up to 55 and have a deferred final salary pension which is worth £7103 as of April 2021 which was the last time I asked what the value was. Using a CETV calculator it gives a range between £15000 and £23500. The pension was with a private company that I finished working for in 2007.

My questions are:
Must private final salary pension providers allow you to transfer your money out?
How long does it take?
Am I right in saying that I need to transfer the money out into another pension pot and then withdraw some on the money from the new pot?   

You are right that the process is to transfer into a DC-type pension from where you can withdraw the money.

It is a legal requirement that you receive financial advice before transferring out of a DB pension with a CETV of more than £30K.

If the financial advice is not to do it there is nothing in the law to stop you transferring anyway.  With current interest rates it is very likely that the advice will be negative unless there are special circumstances eg life shortening ill health or possibly where you have a very high guaranteed income so that the pension is not required for your future well-being,

Without positive advice you will have very great difficulty in finding a provider who will accept a transfer-in because of the risk that you will sue them for a mis-sale if you foolishly lose all your money.

sammyjammy

As has been said your quest is likely to end in a negative result which will cost you £££, what are you planning to use this lump sum for and what other pension provision do you have?

Albermarle

You should type 'DB transfer' into the search box above as there are a lot of threads on the difficulties involved.

Most of these threads are from over a year ago when CETV values were much higher than they are today. So the argument for transferring out is now subsequently weaker.

Marcon

AlanRoberts29 said:

Hi I am coming up to 55 and have a deferred final salary pension which is worth £7103 as of April 2021 which was the last time I asked what the value was. Using a CETV calculator it gives a range between £15000 and £23500. The pension was with a private company that I finished working for in 2007.

My questions are:
1. Must private final salary pension providers allow you to transfer your money out?
2. How long does it take?
3. Am I right in saying that I need to transfer the money out into another pension pot and then withdraw some on the money from the new pot?   

1. You have a statutory right to transfer out if you have at least a year to go to reach the scheme's normal retirement age (NRA). Many schemes will allow non-statutory transfers (i.e. you are within a year of getting to NRA, and in some cases have reached/gone past NRA). You cannot transfer out once you have started to draw your benefits from the scheme in question. 
2. You need to make a formal request for a CETV. The scheme has 3 months to provide this, but in practice this is likely to be much quicker. The CETV is guaranteed for 3 months from the date of calculation and you need to accept it within this timeframe/provide details of the receiving scheme if the transfer is to proceed. Make sure you have a suitable IFA lined up ready to go before you request the CETV - they have a huge amount of ground to cover to meet that deadline. The scheme has another 3 months to actually make the payment (so a total of 6 months from the time the CETV was calculated), but again, this could be quite a bit quicker, depending on how speedily they can complete all the necessary checks such as ensuring you've received financial advice from an appropriately regulated individual, and that the scheme to which you intend to transfer doesn't raise any red or amber flags under the Statutory Transfer Regulations introduced at the end of 2021. 
3. Yes.

AlanRoberts29 said:

Dazed_and_C0nfused said: Something must be wrong with your figures as why would anyone give up a pension of £7,103 for £23,500?

Sorry I missed a zero out of both amounts, the range is £150,000 to £235,000

That's a huge range - a CETV is one number calculated at a particular date, so it's impossible to understand how you could get something which varies so much, unless you've used the calculator repeatedly over a fairly long period.

AlanRoberts29

Marcon said:

AlanRoberts29 said:

Hi I am coming up to 55 and have a deferred final salary pension which is worth £7103 as of April 2021 which was the last time I asked what the value was. Using a CETV calculator it gives a range between £15000 and £23500. The pension was with a private company that I finished working for in 2007.

My questions are:
1. Must private final salary pension providers allow you to transfer your money out?
2. How long does it take?
3. Am I right in saying that I need to transfer the money out into another pension pot and then withdraw some on the money from the new pot?   

1. You have a statutory right to transfer out if you have at least a year to go to reach the scheme's normal retirement age (NRA). Many schemes will allow non-statutory transfers (i.e. you are within a year of getting to NRA, and in some cases have reached/gone past NRA). You cannot transfer out once you have started to draw your benefits from the scheme in question. 
2. You need to make a formal request for a CETV. The scheme has 3 months to provide this, but in practice this is likely to be much quicker. The CETV is guaranteed for 3 months from the date of calculation and you need to accept it within this timeframe/provide details of the receiving scheme if the transfer is to proceed. Make sure you have a suitable IFA lined up ready to go before you request the CETV - they have a huge amount of ground to cover to meet that deadline. The scheme has another 3 months to actually make the payment (so a total of 6 months from the time the CETV was calculated), but again, this could be quite a bit quicker, depending on how speedily they can complete all the necessary checks such as ensuring you've received financial advice from an appropriately regulated individual, and that the scheme to which you intend to transfer doesn't raise any red or amber flags under the Statutory Transfer Regulations introduced at the end of 2021. 
3. Yes.

AlanRoberts29 said:

Dazed_and_C0nfused said: Something must be wrong with your figures as why would anyone give up a pension of £7,103 for £23,500?

Sorry I missed a zero out of both amounts, the range is £150,000 to £235,000

That's a huge range - a CETV is one number calculated at a particular date, so it's impossible to understand how you could get something which varies so much, unless you've used the calculator repeatedly over a fairly long period.

Thanks for that detailed response, very helpful. Yes I used an online calculator I seen posted on this forum, was on the Telegraphs website.

dunstonh

Thanks for that detailed response, very helpful. Yes I used an online calculator I seen posted on this forum, was on the Telegraphs website.

Those calculators are usually wrong by a fair margin.   They are largely guesswork and totally unreliable.   I am not even sure some are being maintained after the significant drop in gilt yields and the drying up of DB transfers.

Must private final salary pension providers allow you to transfer your money out?

No.   Some public sector pensions will not allow you to transfer out.

The usual blocker with transfers is that an IFA will tell you that it is unsuitable to transfer and there are no known pension schemes that will take a transfer when the advice is not to transfer the pension.

How long does it take?

6-9 months

Am I right in saying that I need to transfer the money out into another pension pot and then withdraw some on the money from the new pot?   

Yes but that makes it sound far too easy and you are missing out a lot of hoops you need to jump through in the process.

CETVs have fallen by about a half since November 2021.    At peak CETVs, around 6 in 10 could be suitable for transfer.    Now, its back to the more historic norm of around 1 in 10 being suitable for transfer.         

So you could end up paying around £5,000-£15,000 to be told its unsuitable for transferring and being unable to transfer it.