Journeyman Electrician

Can anyone help, in the UK I opted out of the state pension and started a private pension with HSBC. Where do I stand with transfering this fund to Canada and am I still entitled to continuing UK pension payments.

Any direction is much apprciated.

burton bunch

This is I do know for sure

Private Personal Pensions can be transferred to Canada but as my hubby has discovered it is a tonne of trouble - if you do a forum search you will find that it has been discussed before in here. There was a guy who posted on here who offered to help people transfer pensions so if you take a look at what the search brings up you sould be able to find it.


If you take a look in that post on the above hyperlink then there is also another link to an older thread which also discusses it too.

If you leave them as an investment in the UK then you can still collect the payouts on maturity - but will have to of course declare them as foreign untaxed income on your Canadian Tax return.

Hope that this helps

Gaynor

Journeyman Electrician

It all helps thanks for the good advice.

Piff Poff

We went to see a financial advisor who has painstakinley done all the work for us and invested the money as we wanted - 2.5 years on and we are still waiting for 2 of our pensions to be transferred. The pension companies don't like giving your money up!

Voyager970

Took me and the wife 9 months to transfer ours, my civil service and the wifes bank pension

It can be done, PM if you want any info

Eddie

Journeyman Electrician

I'm forty right now but I take note of your reply, These companies are very quick to take the premium but appear to be extra slow in paying out.
Thanks

Voyager970

We were charged nothing to transfer our pensions over

We used our banks invesment division to do the transfer as they were experienced in dealing with overseas transfers and the UK red tape nonsense that comes with this type of transfer.

They will of course make their money when they invest our cash !!!

Eddie

Journeyman Electrician

Before you can transfer the pensions I assume you need to be citizens

Piff Poff

No, we did a couple of pension transfers while we were still on work permits and we are now permanent residents, waiting for another couple to be transferred and won't be eligible for citizenship for another couple of years.

Paul Wildy

I am in the process of transferring a UK Stakeholder pension. I don't know if that is different to what you have.

The actual transfer seems to be fairly straightforward and doesn't take years. I started it off about 2-3 months ago and the funds have apparently arrived although the still havent "cleared" and been converted to Canadian funds according to the institution here. They are being transferred into an RRSP and there is no fee at either end for the transfer although the institution here will obvioulsly charge something when the money gets invested.

By far the slowest part for me (took well over a year) was to try and find a Canadian institution that was prepared to put the money into an RRSP that wan't "locked-in". A locked-in RRSP means you cant ever get it out until you retire which is unusual here - Canadians with RRSPs are normally allowed to access them if they need to (although what you take out gets taxed as income in that year). The RRSP has to be "QROPS" registered which is a stupid scheme set-up by the UK Government to make sure that even after you emigrate they still have some sort of say in what happens to your money! Finding a QROPS approved RRSP that didn't want to lock the money in forever was the hardest part in my view. But some do exist.

Tangram

Do you really want to be converting a pension fund from Sterling to Can$ right now ??

Paul Wildy

No, not really. i would have much preferred to do it at the beginning of the year at a rate of 2.30 which was when I first attempted to do it except that, like I say, I couldn't find a company to actually put it into the right kind of account at this end.

It isn't a humongous amount though (given that I'm only a young thing ). I'm not saying I wont have lost a good few thousand as a result of the rate but we're not talking millions either. The other thing is that the rate could get worse (cneldred mentioned 1.90 in the exchange rate thread) so I might as well get on with it.

MarkG

Out of interest, where did you end up going? I should transfer mine over soon if I can.

electricfence

Hey sparky,

If you put your own money into the pension plan with HSBC you may have hope. But if it's your employers, you may have trouble. What you need to do is find a Canadian Pension Fund which is on the Inland Revenue's overseas qualified pension list. If you have an employer here, who has a pension scheme then you may have a chance. Little tip, apparantley Sunlife, and CI Investments are on this list. You could maybe set-up your own Personal Pension Plan registered with CRA and get on the IR's list, but this would require you seeking advice from a financial advisor. UK Laws tightened in 2006, as pension schemes there (due to bad press) and very poor performances, have made it very hard to take that money out. But hey, HSBC are the worlds local bank, and thrive on making transfer over borders easy, so pop into an HSBC Branch here.

manchester mike

I am a financial planner here in Ontario. The new QROPS rules have actually speeded up the transfer time of transfers from the UK. I have transferred three of my own deferred pensions (frozen pensions) from Prudential, Lloyds TSB Bank and Alliance & Leicester Building Society ......Pru and A&L took under 3 months ...Lloyds TSB closer to 5.
I have transferred a substantial number for clients this year and have an even larger number pending.
Glad to trace pensions for anybody, however scant the information you still have on your UK company pension scheme. ( Canadians think it is really strange that they are called schemes)
Traced a company pension this week at Kodak UK, where belief it or not there was a 15 year eligibilty period to join the scheme back in the 60's. Client was in the scheme however and there is a deferred pension there.