Welcome and thank you for following the weblink from the MAS Retirement Advisor Directory

Without delay, we want to give you a personalised fee quote so you can compare our service and fee charges with other financial advisers on the Directory.

First of all we need you to tell us:

  • A bit about yourself

(including your age, your partner’s age, your health and whether you live in the UK or overseas)

  • What it is you want to do

(please note our service does not extend to advising on defined benefit (DB) transfer)

You can do this by emailing customerservices@wellmoneyclinic.com or calling 01823 743843

We will then e-mail a personalised fee quote to you (or send by post if you prefer). In the meantime please find some further information below on queries that often arise from Pension Wise clients. 

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Safeguarded Benefits

Your pension may have valuable benefits that you would lose if you were to transfer out of it, such as additional death benefits, a pension for your partner after you die, a Guaranteed Annuity Rate (GAR) option or a protected tax free lump sum greater than 25%.

We will make enquiries with your pension provider to investigate the potential presence of safeguarded benefits and assess their value to you.

Defined Benefit (Final Salary) Scheme Transfers

Our service does not extend to advising on defined benefit (DB) transfers.

Lifetime Allowance

The lifetime allowance (LTA) is a limit on the value of payouts from your pension schemes – whether lump sums or retirement income – that can be made without triggering an extra tax charge. 

The LTA for most people is £1.073 million in the tax year 2021-22, and it will remain frozen at this rate until April 2026.

If you have previously built up a large pension fund, you might have previously obtained protection against the LTA. The LTA applies to the total of all the pensions you have, including the value of pensions promised through any defined benefit schemes you belong to, but excluding your State Pension.

Money Purchase Annual Allowance

There is an upper limit on the amount of pension contributions that can be made by you, or on your behalf, in a tax year, which is called the Annual Allowance.

If you start to take money from your defined contribution pension pot, this can trigger a lower Annual Allowance known as the Money Purchase annual allowance or MPAA.

Whether the MPAA applies depends on how you access your pension pot and there are some complicated rules around this.

As a basic guide though, the main situations when you’ll trigger the MPAA are: 

  • If you take your entire pension pot as a lump sum or start to take ad-hoc lump sums from your pension pot
  • If you put your pension pot money into a flexi-access drawdown scheme and start to take income
  • If you buy an investment-linked or flexible annuity where your income could go down
  • If you have a pre-April 2015 capped drawdown plan and start to take payments that exceed the cap.

And you won’t normally trigger it if you:

  • Take a tax-free cash lump sum and buy a lifetime annuity that provides a guaranteed income for life that either stays level or increases
  • Take a tax-free cash lump sum and put your pension pot into a flexi-access drawdown scheme but don’t take any income from it
  • Cash in small pension pots valued at less than £10,000

You can’t carry over any unused MPAA to another tax year. The MPAA only applies to contributions to defined contribution pensions and not defined benefit pension schemes.