Transferring other pensions into a Self-Invested Personal Pension

If you have a UK registered pension scheme with another company, you can transfer its value into your pension fund. However, by transferring benefits from another pension provider into your Self-Invested Personal Pension, you may give up the right to guarantees over the kind of benefits, the amount you will receive and the level of increases that will be applied to your pension in the future.

Your existing pension provider may apply a penalty (or other reduction in the value of your benefits) if it is transferred. There is no guarantee that you will be able to match the benefits that you give up by transferring your pension.

If you are in any doubt about the benefit of transferring, you should seek professional advice before arranging the transfer.

SIPP transfer to another pension scheme

You can transfer the value of your SIPP to another UK registered pension scheme at any time. If you have started taking benefits from your SIPP, then you must transfer the whole of that part of your fund from which you are drawing benefits to your new scheme.

If you have uncrystallised funds, you can choose to transfer all, or only a part, of those uncrystallised funds to another pension scheme.

The transfer can be in the form of a cash payment, in which case you will have to sell all of the investments held under your SIPP before the transfer is completed, or you may be able to transfer them in their existing form (known as an ‘in-specie transfer’).