Taking retirement income

You can prepare a quote through the ‘Open a new account’ option and selecting ‘Pension Savings Account / Pension Drawdown Account’ and completing the relevant information. You will need to supply all the information requested in the online form.

View our video on how to create and manage pension savings accounts.

View our video on how to create and manage pension drawdown accounts.

To open a new account, choose ‘Open a new account’ and select:

• Pension Savings Account > Transfer to Immediate Drawdown for transferring uncrystallised money to the platform and crystallising all or part of the account.
• Pension Drawdown Account > Drawdown to Drawdown transfer when transferring an account already in drawdown held with another provider to us.

Please note, once received, capped drawdown transfers will remain under the capped regime. If you wish to convert to flexi-access drawdown, please submit a request in writing signed by the client.

If you are transferring multiple drawdown arrangements, these will be held in separate accounts once received.
 

If possible, we will pay your client's tax-free lump sum from cash within their account. If there is insufficient cash within the account, we will sell investments proportionately across the pension to make up any shortfall. If you would prefer the lump sum payment to come from a specific fund or funds, you will need to sell the necessary units within their account before applying to take the tax-free cash.

For tax-free cash and any one-off income, investments can be sold to fund payments but it does speed up the payment process where money is already available within Product Cash. This is particularly so when you are crystallising an existing account which is fully invested. 

Where you decide to sell funds into cash before submitting a crystallisation request, consider ‘over selling’ to allow for any platform and adviser fees which may be taken prior to us processing the benefit crystallisation event. In addition, certain funds take longer to settle into cash and any exchange-traded investments will need special consideration.

If you are transferring to immediate drawdown using a cash transfer process, we will settle any tax-free cash, one-off income and adviser initial fees before buying funds. There is no need for you to allocate this within the portfolio. Any money held within Product Cash once the payments out have been settled will be used to pay adviser ongoing fees, regular client income and platform fees.

If you select to transfer as a re-registration, we will need to sell funds before we can pay out tax-free cash, one-off income and adviser initial fees.

• For clients who require tax-free cash and/or one-off income payments and enough money is available within Product Cash, the payment will normally take up to seven working days from the application being submitted online.
• For clients who require tax-free cash and/or one-off income payments and they do not have enough money available within Product Cash, the payment will normally take up to 14 working days from the application being submitted online.

Please note:

All tax-free cash and one-off income payments are paid by CHAPS. There is no charge for this, although clients who have bank accounts in Northern Ireland may be charged by their bank.

The application may be delayed if we have been unable to verify the client’s bank account or if we have been unable to complete anti-money laundering verification.

Delays also occur where we are waiting for details of any previous crystallisations from the ceding scheme.

The timescales quoted above are based on us receiving all necessary information to process the application and any delays will extend these timeframes.

Yes, we do this internally using a third-party system and, in most cases, this is achieved without needing any further information from you.

In some instances, where this verification isn’t possible, we will contact you to obtain a copy bank statement dated within the past three months. It may therefore be worthwhile holding a copy of this on your file if your client is waiting for an urgent payment.

To register transitional protection with us, we need either:

• A copy of the HMRC paper certificate showing the protection (this must include the protection reference, scheme reference, protected amount and the client’s name). Copies of these documents are fine – they do not need certification.
• If there is no paper certificate (the recent ones have been given online), we need a screenshot of the online certificate confirming the protection reference, scheme reference, protected amount, client’s name and national insurance number.

Initially, when you crystallise for the first time, we will need to create a new Pension Drawdown Account. Any remaining uncrystallised money will be held separately in the Pension Savings Account.

When crystallising further money, there is no need to create a new drawdown account, although you have the option of using the existing drawdown account or creating a new one. In our experience, most clients prefer to only have one drawdown account. The online application will allow you to select the existing drawdown account number.

We also allow for further crystallisation events into capped drawdown.
 

You can set up a regular income for your client using 'Pension Quote and Transact'. You'll be able to specify the gross amount and select the payment date (either the 10th or the 25th of the month).

The payments will come from cash within your client's account. If there isn't enough cash available at the start of the month to cover the next income payment, we will sell units proportionally from your client’s investments or, where applicable, an investment you have nominated.

You can request an ad-hoc income payment by selecting the account and choosing 'Manage pension income' from the 'Actions' dropdown.

You'll be able to specify the gross amount to be paid and we will deal with your request in seven working days. If there isn't enough cash within your client's account to cover the payment, we will disinvest proportionately across the portfolio in order to make the payment. It may then take up to five working days for the necessary deals to settle.

We make regular income payments through BACS on the 10th or 25th of the month. Ad-hoc payments can take up to seven working days, plus up to five days for any necessary deals to settle.

When you have selected your client, choose ‘Edit’ or ‘Cancel’ from ‘Regular instructions’ on the ‘Account view’ page.

When setting up pension drawdown or moving additional investments into an existing Pension Drawdown Account, the Adviser Initial Fee will be calculated on the value of the full amount before tax-free cash is paid out and is taken after the tax-free cash has been paid.  

For example, if £100,000 is to be crystallised with an Adviser Initial Fee of 1%, the charge would be £1,000. £100,000 will be moved from the Pension Savings Account to the Pension Drawdown Account and £25,000 will be paid out as tax-free cash. The fee of £1,000 will then be deducted from the remaining £75,000, so that £74,000 remains invested in the Pension Drawdown Account.
 

Adviser initial fees can be input as a monetary or percentage figure and will be deducted from the crystallised account after payment of tax-free cash.

Please note, if you enter a percentage adviser initial fee, this is calculated based on the amount being crystallised. For a partial crystallisation, you may wish to consider selecting a monetary amount.