Our Retirement Planning Experience

Our primary function is to help you achieve your goals: by creating the right financial foundation to reflect your individual circumstances.
 
Your pension is a vital element in this planning process, to protect your quality of life after you stop working.
 
Robust financial planning is not a one-stop exercise, so we support you throughout your career, and beyond, helping to establish the financial flexibility we all need as our changing circumstances dictate through life events. 

Choices

When planning your pension, the choices open to you now are broader than ever: but ever since ‘A’ Day (the Appointed day), on 6 April 2006, a single set of rules now govern all pension products in the UK.

Key rules:
* Early retirement is available from age 55 
* Full concurrency (i.e. being able to pay into any array of plans you wish), subject to the annual allowance and potential for carry forward 
* Investment flexibility 
* Options at retirement, such as deciding to take benefits as Flexi-access Drawdown instead of an annuity 
* No need to secure benefits at age 75 via an annuity
The new rules also introduced:
* The individual Lifetime Allowance (LA) – currently set at £1,030,000
* The individual Annual Allowance (AA) – currently £40,000
 
A tax charge is triggered by any contributions that exceed either the LA or the AA.
 
Although this single set of rules now governs all UK pension schemes, the Government’s agenda was also to minimise tax loss through the changes in 2006, and many new legal rules were introduced as a consequence.
 
Regulations can therefore still seem confusing!
 
For example, under the tapered annual allowance rules, individuals with income in excess of £110,000 p.a. may have their AA reduced (tapered) to £10,000. There is also an ability for individuals to carry forward any unused AA from the previous three years, to make a larger single top-up contribution, if circumstances allow.
 
However, if you have already accessed part of a pension scheme, under the flexible options, then you will have your AA reduced to £4,000.
 
A further raft of changes – introduced in April 2016 – brought new options for individuals to access their pension savings.



These included:

* Removing the maximum ‘cap’ on withdrawal and minimum income requirements for all new drawdown funds, from 6 April 2015 
* Enabling those with ‘capped’ drawdown to convert to a new Flexi-access Drawdown fund, once arranged with their scheme 
* Introducing an ‘Uncrystallised Fund Pension Lump Sum’ (UFPLS) option. This enables pension schemes to make payments directly from pension savings, with 25 per cent taken tax-free
* Removing restrictions on lifetime annuity payments 
* Increasing the maximum value and scope of trivial commutation lump sum death benefits.

By building a long-term relationship with you, based on a thorough understanding of your needs and goals, we can provide the impartial specialist advice that will help ensure:
 
• Financial independence for your chosen lifestyle, today and in the future
• Financial security for you and your family.

Pensions are a long-term investment. You may get back less than you put in. Pensions can be and are subject to tax and regulatory change therefore the tax treatment of pension benefits can and may change in the future.