Lifetime Allowances (Pension)

[didds]

My wife, 59, has recently received a letter from her pension company, stating she must confirm to them she has not breached her liftetime allowance for pension savings, else they will have to deduct 25% of her fund (or something).

WTAF?

FWIW the company is Aviva, and the one contact number provided is a government helpline (which she will be calling - I'm just interested in others thoughts here)

How can she prove a negative? Bottom line is she hasn't anything near £1M+ - chance would be a fine thing - but how does she "confirm" she hasn't ? Just say "I haven't" ?

She has 15 years just about to tell them this, but had she been run over by a bus before that letter arrived would Aviva just remove 25% of the fund before distributing the 75% to whoever she had nominated as beneficiary ?

The same presumably will be heading my way (Im already 60) soon - and millions of other people, the vast majority of which equally will be nowhere near that level of pension savings.

Im very generally at least a tad au fait with this sort of stuff (though nowhere near as knowledgeable as many of you all) but Im totally stumped as to how she/we can do what the pension company are asking ... the letter provides no help of course aside form a govt helpline that i cycnically suspect will be of little help either!

didds

[seagles]

My wife, 59, has recently received a letter from her pension company, stating she must confirm to them she has not breached her liftetime allowance for pension savings, else they will have to deduct 25% of her fund (or something).

WTAF?

FWIW the company is Aviva, and the one contact number provided is a government helpline (which she will be calling - I'm just interested in others thoughts here)

How can she prove a negative? Bottom line is she hasn't anything near £1M+ - chance would be a fine thing - but how does she "confirm" she hasn't ? Just say "I haven't" ?

She has 15 years just about to tell them this, but had she been run over by a bus before that letter arrived would Aviva just remove 25% of the fund before distributing the 75% to whoever she had nominated as beneficiary ?

The same presumably will be heading my way (Im already 60) soon - and millions of other people, the vast majority of which equally will be nowhere near that level of pension savings.

Im very generally at least a tad au fait with this sort of stuff (though nowhere near as knowledgeable as many of you all) but Im totally stumped as to how she/we can do what the pension company are asking ... the letter provides no help of course aside form a govt helpline that i cycnically suspect will be of little help either!

didds

Cannot help on this but I would be extremely weary of using anything within an email as a contact. I would log in to my Aviva account and confirm first. Have never heard of a "forced" declaration like this. I only had to do this when initiating 1st pension and subsequently when adding to my SIPP.

[swill453]

Two things

1. When taking a pension from AJBell I had to confirm I hadn't used some Lifetime Allowance with other providers. Maybe Aviva have just decided they need to update their records regarding this.

2. The Lifetime Allowance was effectively abolished from this Thursday in the last budget, so I wouldn't stress about it.

Scott.

[Urbandreamer]

I too recently received a letter from Aviva mentioning the LTA.

I think that the letter I received was using standard text templates.

There are a couple of easy points that should reassure.

1) If your wife HAS exceeded the LTA, then the tax man will know about it.
2) If she hasn't then it's not relevant at all.

You can only exceed the LTA by taking your pension, as it's an allowance upon the amount that you can "take" without being subject to a "charge".

DB schemes and phased drawdown complicate things. But again, your wife either has or has not exceeded the LTA this tax year. Currently, it won't matter by the end of the week. If she hasn't by then, it becomes irrelevant.

I do however recommend keeping track of pension rules and changing your behaviour if they change.

[yorkshirelad1]

Could this possibly be because an individual can have several pension pots, and no one pension company can know what an individual has with other pension companies, but pension companies are possibly obliged by legislation to be informed of their customers' pensions situation re the LTA, IYSWIM.

(notwithstanding the anouncement in April 2023 budget of LTA to be abolished, and notwithstanding the possibility that a Labour govt may reintroduce the LTA etc etc)

[didds]

Two things

1. When taking a pension from AJBell I had to confirm I hadn't used some Lifetime Allowance with other providers. Maybe Aviva have just decided they need to update their records regarding this.

2. The Lifetime Allowance was effectively abolished from this Thursday in the last budget, so I wouldn't stress about it.

Scott.

number 2! DOH!

Yes - very odd.

[didds]

Cannot help on this but I would be extremely weary of using anything within an email as a contact.

FTR the letter has no email contacts.

It mentions

its own website www.aviva.co.uk
the pensionwise.gov.uk website
their own phone number 08009531777

FWTW!

[didds]

Just took the plunge and contacted Aviva through the account online stuff. basically as Scott reminded me above =- there is no LTA.

Nothing to see here! keep moving!


cheers

didds