Retirement Pension

Retirement
Pension

Our Review Service

Our review service enables clients to understand their pensions and provides them with clear, straightforward advice of what income they are likely to receive from their plans in retirement.


The review service includes reviewing of ‘Frozen Pensions’ and ‘Pension Tracing Service’ .


We assist clients with setting retirement goals/objectives and advise on the funding levels required to achieve these.


First Steps

 

  • Gather information on your pensions including ‘Frozen pensions’. We provide a ‘Pension tracing service’, this enables me to be able to provide a full picture of your current position.
  • Gathering the information also includes collating information on your state pension, this can be done by registering on the Government Gateway system - https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension

 


Next Steps

  • Assess your attitude to investment risk. This is completed by the completion of a dynamic planner questionnaire.
  • Set some initial retirement objectives, these can be amended based following discussions.
  • Analyse all of the features and benefits of your existing scheme and assess the suitability of these schemes versus your retirement objectives and attitude to risk.
  • Consideration of consolidating pensions where appropriate.

Different Types of Pension

A personal pension is a type of defined contribution pension. You choose the provider and make arrangements for your contributions to be paid. If you haven’t got a workplace pension, getting a personal pension could be a good way of saving for retirement.

Stakeholder pensions are a form of defined contribution personal pension. They have low and flexible minimum contributions, capped charges and a default investment strategy if you don’t want too much choice. Some employers offer them, but you can start one yourself.


A self-invested personal pension (SIPP) is a pension ‘wrapper’ that holds investments until you retire and start to draw a retirement income. It is a type of personal pension and works in a similar way to a standard personal pension. The main difference is that with a SIPP, you have more flexibility with the investments you can choose.

small self-administered pension

A small self-administered pension scheme is a type of employer-sponsored defined contribution workplace pension that can give the employer additional investment flexibility.

Other Areas of Advice

Property purchase – providing advice on property purchase within a pension scheme such as a SIPP or SSAS.

It can be highly tax-efficient to buy commercial property through a pension fund. This is increasingly popular amongst small business owners who choose to purchase their business premises through their pension scheme to take advantage of the tax breaks that are on offer.

Self-administered pension schemes are used as the pension vehicle for the purchase of the property. There are two types of self-administered scheme – self-invested personal pension plans (SIPPs) which are for individuals, and small self-administered schemes (SSAS), which are for companies. These are known collectively as investment regulated pension schemes.
A SIPP is permitted to own a commercial property outright, but not a residential property. While it is possible for a SIPP to invest in a residential property, this can only be done as a small part-owner where the property is not for personal use and via a genuinely diverse commercial vehicle, such as a real estate investment trust (REIT). The restrictions on residential property mean that in most cases SIPP property investment is restricted to commercial property.

Permitted investments include business premises, factories, offices, shops etc., as well as hotels, care homes and prisons. Investment in student halls of residence is also permitted, but not flats or houses let to students.

Land purchase within a pension – providing advice on land purchase within a pension scheme such as a SIPP.

It’s common for investors to use a SIPP to fund a commercial land purchase. You can acquire many different types of land within your SIPP. You can acquire land for development, or to simply buy and hold. Pensions have also been used to purchase more exotic pieces of land, such as access roads to quarries, the land to develop sports stadia and the land for a clay pigeon shooting site.

Whatever your ambitions, you can expect your SIPP provider to scrutinise the financial viability of your investment.
They will also help you ensure that the land is allowable under pension legislation, and check that any development plans meet the rules. They will also most likely ask you to instruct an independent expert to value the land and ensure it’s acquired at market value. 

This is not a case of needless red tape. It’s about bringing more security and tax compliance to your investment and helping to protect your pension from unnecessary risk.

Pension Scheme Loanbacks – providing advice on pension scheme Loanbacks.

This is a loan from the pension fund to the connected limited company. 'Business funding's best kept secret.'

The Basic Information
The first key point here is that every SSAS Loanback is different. Advisers and accountants need to establish:
  • The value of the client(s) existing pensions
  • The value of any new contributions
  • How much of a SSAS Loanback does the company require?
  • What “fixed assets” the company (or the member personally) have to offer as first-charge security?

This information is used by SSAS providers as part of a more detailed review and discussion.

SSAS Loanbacks – the nuts and bolts
To protect the scheme, the SSAS provider will be looking to ensure the company can repay the loan under the SSAS Loanback rules. There are five key tests that any SSAS loan must meet to avoid tax charges:
  • A 5-year maximum term
  • Capital and interest repayments in equal instalments at least annually
  • Maximum loan limit of 50% of the SSAS net assets
  • Interest rate is at least 1% above current base rate (can be agreed at a higher rate as long as this is on commercial terms)
  • Security must be in place
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