CDNReturner

I'm terribly upset this morning to find out that I have no control over my UK pensions. As I'm coming up to my 60th birthday I have a small contracted-out pension just under 10k that was going to mature this year (with the shake up in pensions that is no longer the case). I have a much larger Stakeholder Pension with Standard Life UK that I don't plan on taking until I'm 65.....this morning I called them to get my contracted-out pension transferred over to Standard Life UK. They said I cannot do this because I live outside of the UK and have to hire a financial advisor to do it.

This just doesn't seem right and I can see a good percentage of the 10K going in fees.

Does anyone know if this is true? I have been fed bad information in the past by UK financial institutions who have misunderstood the rules.

I know there is a guy here in Guelph that specializes in UK pensions but my attempts at contacting him in the last few months have totally failed(even though 1 message was left with an actual person). I don't know him and he doesn't know me so that has been somewhat disappointing and weird.

mjwalker007

An advisor who is licensed and based in Canada would not be able to help transfer a pension between two UK companies...........he could only help you if you wished to transfer that pension to Canada.

CDNReturner

That is what I thought......I did neglect to tell him that the smaller pension pot was in the UK.

I have had an FA since the late-80's in the UK who have never done much for me so I am sooooooo not inclined to let them make any more money off of me. Not once have they contacted me in the 10+ years I have been in Canada and I used to go years w/o them contacting me when I was still in the UK. All they ever did was collect their commission.

It's ironic that the pension shake-ups are to allow people to have control over their pension but they've taken control away from their clients that don't live in the UK.

BTW, he specifically said any Canadian or UK FA licenced to do transfers......I repeated what he said for clarificaion.

BTW, the Standard Life guy said specifically any licenced to do so FA in Canada and/or the UK. I repeated what he said and he said Yes.

I was a bit peeved when my UK credit card was taken away from me last year too. And it certainly wasn't because of non-use. I do fear my UK bank account is eventually going to be taken away too by the time I reach 66 to collect State Pension.

I'm getting the impression this is all to do with UK money-laundering laws and not anything to do with the financial institutions themselves.

Cathie