Retirement News & Insights

A new study has highlighted the issue of the gap between women’s pension pots and those of men. The size of the difference? According to the research, by the end of her working life the average woman could potentially end up £47,000 worse off than men in terms of what’s in their pension pot.

The study, carried out by Zurich, looked at 250,000 pension plans, making it one of the largest studies of workplace savings. It looked at pension plans broken down by age, gender, and the contribution rate of employers and employees.

Managing your finances is not an easy task, and many people worry whether they’ll have enough money to last them through retirement. Most people are likely to need a helping hand from a financial adviser, and a new move from the government will help make receiving this advice easier than ever before.

New plans, to be introduced in April 2017, will allow pension savers to withdraw a tax-free lump sum of £1,500 from their pensions so that they can pay for financial advice regarding their retirement funding.

Is your final salary scheme safe?  Are you aware that many of these schemes are seriously underfunded? What is the exact deficit of your final salary scheme? Brexit and the BHS scandal have brought the pension deficit story in to the media spotlight again. However, the issues with defined benefit schemes have been brewing for some time. The UK faces a very real pension crisis with several schemes close to collapse unless serious steps are taken to address the growing problem.

Making sure you have enough money for retirement is a crucial part of your financial planning process. But some workers may struggle to save more than others.

The government is looking to make reforms to automatic-enrolment (AE), possibly putting employees who work seasonally or part-time at a disadvantage when it comes to saving up for their pension.

The ex-pensions minister Steve Webb is urging the government and the HMRC to do more to alert grandparents to all the pension perks they’re entitled to after it was revealed that the overwhelming majority are not receiving the full state pension. By missing out on a particular benefit, unknowing eligible grandparents are missing out on £231 a year. Over the course of their full retirement, this could possibly lead to a loss of thousands of pounds.

It is a scheme called the Specified Adult Childcare Credit. It is thought that only 1,300 grandparents are taking advantage of it despite 100,000 being eligible (a mere one per cent). The scope of the problem was found out by Webb when he sent a Freedom of Information request to the HMRC.

The purpose behind the Specified Adult Childcare Credit is to allow grandparents who give up work completely to help raise their grandchildren the chance to claim National Insurance (NI) credits.

The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association has issued a strong warning against government proposals to raise the state pension age to 68 (with the possibility of being raised higher to 70). It has said that such a scenario would create significant problems – an “unacceptable detriment” – for those with low life expectancy.

The statement comes in response to a report released by the Independent Review of the State Pension. The review was led by former CBI director general John Cridland.

A judge at a UK court has ruled that limitations in the law mean divorcing partners cannot make claims for the QROPS pensions of their British expat ex-partners.

This ruling relating to overseas QROPS pensions was reached in the High Court as part of the protracted and embittered divorce settlement of Amit and Ankita Goyal.

The couple divorced during the summer of 2013 and an earlier court hearing in October 2015 ruled that the husband should pay a financial settlement to his wife. However, it was not until the High Court decision in October 2016 that clarity was offered in respect of the husband’s £87,000 India-based QROPS pension.