Personal

Personal Pension Plans

Designed to offer a lump sum and income in retirement, a personal pension is available to any United Kingdom resident who is under 75 years of age. When you contribute to a Personal Pension plan, your money is invested and a fund is built up. The amount of pension payable on retirement depends upon:

• the amount of money you paid into the scheme;
• the performance of the investment fund
• the 'annuity rate' at the date of retirement. The annuity rate is the factor used to convert the pension fund into a pension.

Currently a Personal Pension scheme member can retire at any age between 50 and 75, with the minimum age rising from 50 to 55 from 6 April 2010. At retirement, you may normally take up to 25% of the value of your fund as a tax-free lump sum, with the balance commonly being used to buy an annuity.

The value of your investment and income from it is not guaranteed it can go down as well as up due to fluctuations in investment markets, and you may not get back the full amount invested.

Levels and bases of and reliefs from taxation are subject to change and their value depends on the individual circumstances of the investor