Im looking to transfer the funds of my UK pension to a similar Canadian fund. Has anyone ever done this?

I tried to move my occupational pension and gave up ... too bloody complicated and I couldn't find anyone willing to do it for me.

ugh - was afraid of that. im not contributing to the uk one anymore, but they're still charging me small fees for keeping it open.

Just gave it up as a lost cause:

I have a letter from the CSP regarding the transfer of my UK civil service pension. The letter says:

" Requests to transfer benefits to an overseas pension scheme must be referred to the Pension Scheme Office and must meet the following criteria:
* the transfer must be requested by you
*the overseas scheme must confirm that it is willing to accept the transfer. Major Canadian banks have actuarial departments that will facilitate this.
*the country of residence of the overseas employer, overseas scheme and yourself must coincide.
* written confirmation from you that you have left the UK on a permanent basis with no intention of returning to either work or retire
* written confirmation that you are already in emplyment overseas and that contributions are being made to an overseas scheme in relation to that employment.
* you must provide a certified true copy of the full documentation of the overseas scheme
*the intended method of securing the Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) liability.

Transfers of GMP are at your own risk and neither yourself nor your widow would have any recourse to the CSPD or to the UK state pension if there were to be a shortfall in the GMP equivalent benefit eventually paid by the overseas scheme.

The scheme to which the transfer payment is to be made may not be regulated by UK law. Consequently there is no obligation under that law on the receiving scheme ot its trustees or administrators to provide any particular value or benefit in return for the transfer payment"

I am leaving my pension where it is.Not much use but at least it clarifies the actuarial position of such transfers.

Hi Dingbat,

Thanks for this. I'm currently trying to ascertain how my HM Forces pension will be affected.
Looks like I need to do more research.

Regards.

I've got a UK company pension ... it's possible to transfer it, but I couldn't find anyone who would help me do it ... only one person was interested, but he wanted to sell me a bunch of his own company's financial products to justify the effort ... I said no, so the pension didn't get transferred.

I'd be interested in finding out who may be interested.
I'm looking at a service pension, aged 43, to be in the region of £8000 (CDN$18,000) per annum, (2004 figures) possibly indexed linked, definitely until death. Not a pension to be dropped lightly. My gratuity (A lot) and pension are our 'safety net'. Transferring these is very high on my agenda to emigrating from the UK to Canada.

As it gives us a guaranteed income, I think I'd be a fool to drop it.

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Do you lose them if you leave the UK?? Any reason why you can't draw on it from over here?

Mine is an investment based pension and the new management company looking after it are useless ... it lost 10% in one year!!

If that's index linked and guaranteed until death, you'd be nuts to swap to a private pension ... but then again, I know nothing about service pensions so I'm not qualified to advise!!

A-HA!,

The point.
I've approached a number of banks and financial agencies regarding the Serivce pension.
I know that a UK senior citizens pension isn't index linked; but a service pension is a different beast. So I'm awaiting the outcome on this. I don't mind paying punitive financial penalties, but anything over 7.5% is daylight robbery.
I also need to check if I'll be taxed from UK and from Canada.

So much to check,
Bloody hell, my brain hurts!!!

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I can get you names and numbers for pension specialists from the yellow pages, but like I said I thought they were either ****ing useless or just plain rude ... the banks were all utterly and completely useless.