Pensions & Retirement Planning

Pensions and retirement planning are areas of financial planning that many clients are often confused about when they first come to us. However, a pension plan is simply a savings vehicle with tax advantages, but there are many different versions of pensions in existence due to ever changing rules and regulations. This area of financial planning is one that clients often leave late to plan, which can create obvious issues when many of us want to retire as early as possible.

Our advice can cover the following two main areas:

Pre-retirement planning - where we help you build a pension fund for your eventual retirement and / or review your existing arrangements. With any existing arrangements, we will consider their charging structure, flexibility, any built in guarantees or enhancements and their investment options. New plans can be arranged where appropriate and required, taking advantage of the tax relief which is currently available for any new contributions.

At retirement planning - when the time comes for you to access your pension benefits, which can be from age 55 in most schemes, we can guide you through the various options, with the most common two being annuities and flexible drawdown. Each option has criteria suitable for different clients and their individual requirements. Factors such other income sources (i.e. basic state pension), risk profile, health issues and income levels required are all borne in mind.