Your Pension - Your Choices - A Briefing Note on the New Pensions Legislation
Published byGrant Johnston
Radical changes to pensions were announced in the March budget and confirmed in the Queen’s Speech, some effective immediately and some expected in 2015.
These changes are intended to make it easier for people to draw money from their pension and give them greater flexibility in how they take their retirement benefits.
Our wealth planning team have prepared a Briefing Note to provide more information and answer some of your questions. Read the Note here.
The Queen’s Speech also announced legislation to introduce a form of collective pensions. These would allow people to pool their pension savings into a “mega fund” which will pay them an income in retirement. The rationale would be to reduce the investment and longevity risk to individuals, instead sharing risks collectively - although the amount of retirement income would still not be guaranteed and would depend on investment performance. It seems unlikely that this new form of pension saving will benefit from the full flexibility being introduced in the other changes.
Full details of these proposals are awaited and we will keep you up to date with them when they are issued.
If you would like to know more about how these changes might affect your own personal situation, please contact our Wealth Planning team:
Grant Johnston: wgj@wjm.co.uk
Graham Murray: gnm@wjm.co.uk
Ron Nicolson: rn@wjm.co.uk
