Pension withdrawals and account closing

You can prepare a quote through the ‘Open a new account’ option and selecting ‘Pension Savings Account / Pension Drawdown Account’ and selecting the appropriate task.

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 select ‘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, you can opt to sell investments proportionately across the pension to make up any shortfall; sell from the largest fund or select specific assets.

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 there is enough money in Product cash, payments will be made by the next working day after the instruction has been received.
• For clients who require tax-free cash and/or one-off income payments and they do not have enough money available in Product cash, the payment will be made once disinvestment from the assets has completed which can take up to 7 working days.

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 to receive CHAPS payments.

For payments relating to a transfer, payments will only be made once funds are received from the ceding scheme. Delays can occur where we are waiting for details of any previous crystallisations or account details from the ceding scheme or we don’t hold a verified bank mandate.

It’s important to set up the client’s 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. 

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.

To register transitional protection with us we need either:

• The protection reference which you can submit to us online or
• 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 and these can be sent to us via Upload and Send

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. 

We also allow for further crystallisation events into capped drawdown.

You can set up a regular income for your client by selecting the drawdown account and choosing ‘Manage pension income’. You'll be able to specify the gross amount and select the payment date (either the 10th or the 25th of the month) and the frequency.

The payments will come from cash within your client's account. If there isn't enough cash available to cover the next income payment, you can select to take the shortfall from the largest fund or from nominated assets.

You can request one-off income payments by selecting the drawdown account and choosing 'Manage pension income' from the 'Actions' dropdown.

You'll be able to specify the gross amount to be paid. 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. Or you can choose to disinvest from the largest fund  or nominate assets. 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. One-off payments are made by CHAPs and if there is sufficient cash will be paid within 24hours or where funds have to be disinvested up to 7 working days.

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.

Yes, please visit your pension phased drawdown service for more details.