Good news only, please

At the moment, no one can say with complete certainty what will happen in the near future regarding Brexit and pensions.

However, one thing is clear: uncertainty about the future should not be a pretext to doing nothing about your UK pension; it is not automatically the right idea to think to yourself “Will Brexit affect my pension? I’ll just leave it where it is and wait to see”.

The government has provided further reassurance on the future of expat pensions and other financial products and services post-Brexit, with Brexit secretary Dominic Raab dismissing a Department for Exiting the EU technical paper which had appeared to cast their futures into doubt.

During a press conference, Raab had no hesitation in saying that access to expat pensions was little more than “a practical issue that we will be able to resolve”.

Raab’s statements were measured and entirely unflustered by some of the more recent sensationalist pronouncements on the subject. For example, he carefully explained that although a no-deal Brexit would have an inevitable impact on Britain’s contractual arrangements with EU member states, it was extremely unlikely that individual country to country relationships would suffer.