Managing your pension

In most cases, if you stop paying contributions into your scheme, your employer will stop paying in too. Your member’s booklet will have more information on the position for your scheme or you should speak to your employer.

If you need to pause your pension contributions and plan to re-start them when your finances allow, most schemes allow this. Again, please check with your employer or see your member’s booklet for clarification on how your particular scheme manages this situation.

If you want to stop your pension contributions from being taken directly from your salary, you’ll need to speak to your company’s HR department. Remember that if you do stop paying in, it’s likely that you’ll miss out on receiving your employer’s contributions so please check with your member’s booklet or with your employer directly.

You can do it online by logging into your plan at Manage Your Account.

To register all you need is your pension account number which you’ll find in your plan documents and annual statement.

Pension transfers can mostly continue. However, if you have any investment in a suspended fund this may prevent you from transferring until the suspension is lifted.

You may also want to take into account the potential implications of transferring out during volatile market conditions – for example, you could be ‘out of market’ during significant market movements or be subject to higher transaction costs known as ‘spreads’.

Everyone’s circumstances are different, and if you’re unsure how to proceed, you might like to get professional financial advice. If you haven’t got a financial adviser, you can find an adviser local to you at unbiased.co.uk. Advisers usually charge for their services.

If your transfer hasn’t yet been processed, you may be able to cancel if this is what you want to do.

You should check the value of your pension savings and any other sources of income including the State Pension.

Then look at your outgoings and calculate how much you think you’ll need.

You can use your pension pot to buy an annuity which pays a guaranteed income for life or you can leave it invested and draw down an income from time to time, whichever option suits you best.

Obviously, the longer your money is invested the more time it has the potential to grow. Remember that the value of your pension plan can go down as well as up.

You can use the Government’s free and impartial Pension Wise service for general guidance and, if you want personal financial advice, you can find an adviser local to you at unbiased.co.uk. Advisers usually charge for their services.

When considering if you need to access your retirement savings, it is also important to understand the time it can take to collect the required information to complete your request. The amount shown on your quotation is not guaranteed and your payment amount may be different. In periods of market uncertainty this can lead to fluctuations in the value of your pension pot. If you’re planning to access your pension savings, you may crystallise current losses and might lose the opportunity to recoup those losses in the future.

If the value of your pot has dropped by at least 10% since you had your quotation, we will call to inform you of this change. Should you wish to use your pension pot to pay you a regular income, we may disinvest your income payment a number of weeks before you receive it. We do this to remove market exposure whilst we collect your payroll information, for example, your tax code.