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Pension transfer advice & consolidation

For Expert Financial Solutions Ltd Chartered Financial Planners and independent financial advisers, pension transfer advice and pension consolidation advice is a significant part of our client work. Clients come to us for advice on previous employer’s pension plans, old personal pensions, retirement annuities and stakeholder pensions because we are renowned specialists in the field.

Our highly qualified and professional financial planners are pension experts and have the highest level of pension qualifications including G60 advanced financial planning certificate pensions, and AF3 advanced diploma in financial planning pensions.

Expert Financial Solutions Ltd offers advice on pension transfers and pension consolidation including advice on deferred final salary scheme benefits, advice on pension transfers for schemes being wound up, advice on personal pensions, advice on retirement annuities, advice on stakeholder pensions and advice on self invested personal pensions SIPPs.

It is important to review your pension arrangements regularly to ensure that they remain suitable for your circumstances, are achieving the best investment returns and to assess whether they are likely to provide the retirement income you require. 

Final salary schemes

Final salary (also known as defined benefit) schemes provide retirement benefits linked to your period of service with an employer and salary. Pension income is calculated as a fraction of salary (often 1/60th of salary for each year of service) and at retirement age pension income can be exchanged for tax-free cash.

If you leave service before retirement age you become a deferred member and have a deferred pension which becomes payable at retirement age. The benefits are increased between date of leaving service and retirement age to offset the effect of inflation.

Many of these schemes have significant financial deficits and therefore may not be able to provide the benefits promised in retirement. Some employer’s are winding up their final salary schemes and offering enhanced transfer values or a transfer value plus cash sum (which is subject to income tax and National Insurance Contributions) as an alternative.

You may have concerns about the scheme’s ability to provide your retirement benefits, or simply wish to consolidate your pension benefits, or to seek to improve the benefits at retirement with investment growth.

Expert Financial Solutions Ltd, Chartered Financial Planners and independent financial advisers offer advice on final salary pension transfers and can provide a detailed analysis of the benefits available from the scheme and compare them with the alternative options available in a new employer’s scheme, section 32 buy out bond or personal pension plan.

Money purchase plans / personal pensions / retirement annuities

In these pension plans a fund of money is available at retirement age from which you can take tax-free cash and a pension income. The size of the fund at retirement age depends on, among other things, contributions paid in, charges levied by the provider, and investment returns prior to retirement.

Expert Financial Solutions Ltd offers advice on money purchase scheme benefits, old personal pensions as well as advice on stakeholder pensions, retirement annuity contracts and group personal pensions. Expert Financial Solutions Ltd offers advice you on the potential benefits (and drawbacks) of consolidating pension plans to seek a coordinated investment strategy suited to your investment risk profile and objectives with the aim of improving future investment returns.

We can analyse your existing plans and prepare a detailed report for you explaining the charging structure, comparing it with more modern contracts and advise on the continuing suitability of the chosen investment funds to your circumstances, objectives and investment risk profile.  We have detailed and independent research available on poorly performing with profit funds and can advise on your options for these old plans.

Once we have analysed charges and investment returns we can recommend any changes that are necessary and also implement any changes that are agreed.

Expert Financial Solutions Ltd are Chartered Financial Planners and independent financial advisers which means that we are able to choose the best pension plans and investments for you from the entire market place to seek potentially superior long term returns in the medium to long term.

We offer investment advice and wealth management for your personal pension plan or SIPP using active or passive strategies or a combination of active and passive management.

More detail is available on our "Investment & wealth management advice" page.

We have sophisticated risk profiling software and fund analysis tools that allow us to identify where your money is invested and whether it is suited to your requirements. We can analyse the ‘efficient frontier’ for your risk profile and demonstrate the benefits of a diversified and well managed investment portfolio for your pension fund.

Section 32 buy out bonds

These products are imaginatively named after the relevant section of a Finance Act that gave rise to them.

A Section 32 bond can only hold pension benefits transferred in from a previous employer’s occupational pension scheme. Usually before the plan started you would have been told the ‘critical yield’ which was the investment return required after charges in the Section 32 to provide benefits at retirement of similar value to those in the previous scheme.

Many older contracts have limited investment options (a with profit fund only is not uncommon) because the plans contain ‘guaranteed minimum pension’ (GMP for short) which is the term used to describe pension benefits from contracted out employment i.e. your State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) pension.

You may wish to understand how these benefits have changed over the years and consider your options for the future. Alternatively you may wish to review whether the plan is achieving the critical yield and if not what your options are for the future.

We can provide a detailed report tailored to your circumstances, objectives and risk profile and consider what changes if any should be made to the plan. If any changes are recommended and agreed we can implement those changes as required.

Expert Financial Solutions Ltd, Chartered Financial Planners and independent financial advisers offer advice on Section 32 buy out bonds by providing a detailed analysis of the benefits available and comparing them with the alternative options available.

For more information and advice please contact Expert Financial Solutions.

Updated: September 2009