Moving EU pension to the UK

rememberthehedgehog

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone has ever moved a pension from the Netherlands (or other EU country) to the UK?

I'm British but lived in the Netherlands for 3 years and contributed to a Dutch pension with Aegon NL while I worked there. When I moved back to the UK in 2017 I did ask Aegon NL about transferring the balance into my British pension and the answer was that it was incredibly difficult (if not impossible). I've been looking at this again recently and spoke to my British pension company (Nest) as well as Aegon UK and both companies seemed to think it wasn't possible, as Aegon NL aren't Qrops registered.

I feel like there must be some way to move my money back over to the UK, but have no idea who to speak to next about it. Has anyone done anything like this? Or know what kind of person I need to talk to about it?

Any advice welcome - thank you!

bostonerimus

In general cross border pension transfers are not possible and be thankful that you aren't in a QROPS. However, you should be able to leave the pension where it is and take payments and then pay tax on them according to the the treaty and local laws.

Suhusa

Does your Dutch pension pay to overseas accounts? If yes, I wouldn't worry that much because with 3 years of contributions the pension is probably more of a top-up so fluctuations in exchange rates will merely be a minor annoyance. Sorry, it's a bit of a non-solution, but speaking as someone who did transfer a pension internationally (out of the UK) it's a lot of hassle, so you might want to first think whether you really need to have to do a transfer. Things that prompted me to transfer my pension were tax (really fiddly to declare due to the UK tax year not being identical to the calendar year) and the payment mode (likely to UK accounts only - and who knows whether I'll still get one as a non-resident in 30 years). I could have lived with the exchange rate fluctuations though.