Transfer NHS pension Scotland to England ?

Cee_Kaybe · 24 September 2018 at 1:41PM

Hi,

We've recently moved from Scotland to England and my wife works for the NHS.

We've been able to find information on here about HOW to transfer her Scottish pension (10 years service) to the England scheme but we've not been able to see anything on WHY?

Are there any benefits either way?

Thanks

Brynsam · 24 September 2018 at 5:09PM

Both schemes belong to something called the Public Sector Transfer Club. That means your wife will quite legitimately get 'better treatment' than someone asking to transfer in benefits from a non-Club scheme. If her new salary is on a par with her old one, she is effectively going to get a year for year credit in terms of the 10 years she has in the Scottish scheme and will then get the benefit of any salary increases on the whole of her service (including the Scottish years transferred in) while she is contributing to the English NHS scheme.

Ask the England scheme to give you details of how such a transfer in would be treated.

Cee_Kaybe · 24 September 2018 at 7:57PM

Thanks Brynsam,

Am I correct that if she doesn't transfer, she'll get 2 pensions - 1 from Scotland NHS and 1 from England NHS?

What is the benefit in transferring the Scottish one to the English system? Will she end up with more money in the end?

Thanks again

Thanks again

Brynsam · 24 September 2018 at 8:38PM

Cee_Kaybe wrote: »

Am I correct that if she doesn't transfer, she'll get 2 pensions - 1 from Scotland NHS and 1 from England NHS?

What is the benefit in transferring the Scottish one to the English system? Will she end up with more money in the end?

Yes.

The benefit of a club transfer is that the whole pension continues to increase in line with. her earnings, rather than just the 'English' part.

Kynthia · 24 September 2018 at 9:23PM

Cee_Kaybe wrote: »

Thanks Brynsam,

Am I correct that if she doesn't transfer, she'll get 2 pensions - 1 from Scotland NHS and 1 from England NHS?

What is the benefit in transferring the Scottish one to the English system? Will she end up with more money in the end?

Thanks again

Thanks again

The main reason people transfer is if they are moving to a job that has a higher salary, or anticipate promotions in the future, so any final salary pension element of their existing pension will be linked to the new salary and then all of it will be increased. So you are guessing whether your salary when you leave your new job will be higher than the salary you had when you left your old job (adjusted up to account for the passage of time). If you don't think that will happen then you are unlikely to transfer.

Another reason might be that the deferred pension will increase less than if it was part of an active pension. However some might find their old pension will increase more each year left where it is due to the lack of annual pay rises/cost of living increases in the public sector.

There may be other reasons which would be based on the differences between the two particular schemes, however the transfer usually aims to give you credit of equal value between the two schemes, so if the new schemehas an earlier retirement age or greater spousal benefit the annual pension will be lower.

I don't know if the transferred in pension would count towards better terms for any redundancy, ill-health retirement, etc. If yes then they could be reasons to transfer.

You can only transfer in the first year of employment, but you can get a quote before deciding.

Transfer NHS pension Scotland to England ?

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free