I wanted to transfer an old DB pension scheme into my current DC pension scheme.
I’ve got a transfer figure which is less than £30k so I though it would be straight forward.

My current pension provided will not accept an pension transfers if it contains “unequalised GMP” which mine does.

What are my options apart from leave it were it is?

Could I just open another pension with a different provide, who will accept the transfer, and then transfer it from that to my current provider?

cheers

I looked at some options a couple of years back with a Financial Adviser.

The old Defined Benefits was a leave where it was. Two defined contributions could be transferred, which would have saved me a couple of hundred in fees a year. The current DB was another don’t touch. I’ve left them, as I could draw my DC’s in the next 5 years if wanted.

Why, DB’s are worth far more than the DC value would be.

Depending your your dB scheme there might be an odd quirk due to to low interest rates where there is a windfall benefit in the transfer value worth about £100k or so depending how long you’ve Been paying into it. I don’t understand it as pensions are witchcraft, but people i know who have just retired are choosing the self invested option rather than taking the pension to take advantage of this additional windfall as you don’T get it if you take the pension and it will disappear when/if interest rates ever start going up.

Get a financia advisor. This kind of stuff is totally unique and personal Tony our so what might be right for one person isn’t necessarily right for you.

Just been through the process on this, offered 25% of my fund value to manage the risk. The advice from the IFA was leave it alone if you don’t like risk as I was around £300k short of being able to replicate the same benefits and safety. My fund value was considerably higher than £500k and it still was too little.

Also consider what happens after Jan 2021. There’s a good chance that we’re going to need the safety of DB schemes.

Don’t transfer a DBT. Even the FCA have told IFA’s to start from the point that transferring is the wrong thing to do.

We insure IFA’s and those who have even done a handful of transfers are finding their PI insurance go up to quote eye watering levels such is the nervousness about the advice being given.

I’ve got an old DB scheme that had 2.5 years of contributions into from 30 years ago. I doubt it would give much so would like to roll it into an active pension. Would IFAs automatically dismiss this idea?

I’ve got an old DB scheme that had 2.5 years of contributions into from 30 years ago. I doubt it would give much so would like to roll it into an active pension. Would IFAs automatically dismiss this idea?

Difficult to know. Even with such a small contribution you may well still get more from it than you would from pumping it into a DC pot.

By the time the IFA has had their slice and any other fees are paid it’d probably be not worth doing but only a good ifa will be able to teen you for sure.

To put some figures on it, it’s a pension from when I server my time so 34 years old. I paid £600 in and now have a transfer value of £18k but it will only pay out about £300 pound a year when I reach 60.

I waiver between letting it sit stagnating or combine it to a growing pot and hopefully gain from compounding.

Time to get all the paperwork from the old schemes together and make a pension wise appointment!

Back to windysurfer’s question. GMPs are the part of the pension which your scheme provides to you in place of SERPS – if you have a GMP, your scheme was contracted out and you were a member between 1978 and 1997. GMPs are unequal because they partly mirror the SERPS calculation, so have unequal retirement ages etc.

The Barber judgment of 17 May 1990 resulted in a requirement that pension benefits provided in DB schemes had to be equalised between the sexes, but it didn’t require state benefits to be equal. Many people though at the time that the “state” exemption included GMPs as they were a replacement for state benefits, calculated on a basis defined by law.

Over the years we realised that this state exemption did not apply to GMPS (it was wishful thinking, really) and a few people (including DWP) came up with ideas of how we could equalise benefits, but until some of these were tested in court there was really no point going to the trouble and expense of doing it (and then undoing and re-doing)

In October 2018 there was judgment in the High Court (Lloyds TSB) which resulted in a couple of potential options for ways to equalise “for the effect of” GMPs (because GMPs are unequal you need to fiddle the non-GMP bits to get an equal effect).

So, there has been some drive since then to do it, but it’s slow and someone has to pay for the work and for the increases in people’s benefits, so very few schemes have decided exactly what they will do, never mind actually doing it.

And the provider you approached doesn’t want to allow you to transfer now if that means that you risk losing out on some extra money when your scheme does eventually equalise. So they’re trying to protect you, really.

Once the equalisation has been done, you should be able to transfer.