Sorry serps question again.

palyniam

Hi could someone make this an easy answer. I have a company pension and I want to transfer my Abbey life to that, but my company wont except my serps pension, so do I need to opt back in and if so how do I go about it.
I am 46 now so is it worth it.
according to my abbey life it says I have 24thou protected rights...whats that mean too.

Hope you can help, sorry for the long queston.
Paul:beer:

dunstonh

according to my abbey life it says I have 24thou protected rights...whats that mean too.

It means £24k of your pension fund is made up of protected rights. Ordinary rights or non-protected rights come from your contributions. Protected rights comes from contracting out.

The decision to contract in or out will make no difference on the ability to transfer this pension to your employer's scheme. However, at age 46, you should be contracted in now.

palyniam

Thanks for the answer, so do I ask abbey life to change it to "contract in" or do I move it to someone else?

wotsthat

You can transfer the pot to the company pension but will have to leave the serps element also known as protected rights where they are.

i.e. you can only transfer your pot minus 24 thousand to your company pension.

Opting in or out is a separate decision and worth discussing with your company to see whether they operate an opted in or opted out scheme.

I think it's better to be contracted out but this stops in 2012 anyway so doesn't make too much difference.

EdInvestor

Having contracted out in the past, you can't retrospectively contract back in in respect of that money, only in respect of future contributions.

So if you want to transfer a pension which contains a mix of PR money and non-PR money, you will need to split it into two pensions, transferring the non PR money to your company scheme and either leaving the PR money where it is (if allowed) or opening a new pension to receive the money.