Taking retirement income

There are a number of ways clients can take an income from their pension with us. They can enter into flexi-access drawdown and you have the ability to arrange automated regular crystallisations on their behalf. In addition, we support clients with existing capped drawdown arrangements as long as they remain within the income limits. Clients can also make UFPLS withdrawals and can receive small pots, ill health and serious ill health payments (subject to meeting the conditions for these payments).

We’ve introduced the ability to set up automated regular crystallisations. These new improvements have enhanced our existing drawdown functionality, which also enables your clients to take one-off crystallisations and PCLS (tax-free cash) along with regular and one-off taxable income.
 

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• Benefits of phased drawdown
• How our phased drawdown facility works
• Bank mandates

The new automated service allows you to set up regular crystallisations, providing your clients with a regular PCLS (tax-free cash) payment without the need to submit an instruction each time.  Within the same journey, you will also be able to set up regular income.

To meet your clients’ needs and provide flexibility, we offer a choice of crystallisation frequencies: monthly, quarterly, half yearly and yearly, as well as two payment dates; either the 10th or 25th of the month.

How we crystallise assets and pay out PCLS

Money is always moved from the Pension Savings Account to the Drawdown Account first. To do this, any money in the Pension Cash Account will be used first. If there is insufficient cash, then assets will be moved proportionately from the Pension Savings Account.

Once the assets have been moved to the Drawdown Account, payment of the PCLS will then be made.

For regular PCLS, this is taken from cash first, but where there is insufficient cash, our default is to take the shortfall by disinvesting proportionately from all assets in the drawdown account, or you have the option to select the largest fund. A 2% oversell will be made to allow for market movements/brokerage charges.

For regular income, this is taken from cash first and any shortfall will be funded by proportionately disinvesting from assets.

In the tables below you can see how to submit instructions for different scenarios.

With the new service, it’s important to set up the bank account online if one hasn’t been set up already. You can do this at any time and once added, it will be verified through our automated, online verification system and you will be instantly notified whether the bank account has passed the verification or not. This should be done on the client summary screen prior to setting up a regular crystallisation.

Please note a bank account cannot be set up within the regular crystallisation journey.

If the bank account cannot be verified you will be directed to call us on a dedicated line to go through verification manually with our Bank Mandate Verification team.