HMRC report details French QROPS

Following on from last week’s blog on pension passporting, written by Rosemary Sheppard, Blacktower IFA in France, The Independent newspaper has now warned that British expats abroad could have their cash flow placed in peril by a no-deal Brexit.

While the talks around Brexit and expat pensions are certainly newsworthy, the reporting of pension payments becoming “illegal”, as stated in The Independent’s headline, is pretty implausible.

The story, published on July 25 2018, said the Association of British Insurers (ABI) had told parliament’s Exiting the European Union select committee of the “plausible” risk that payments from British bank accounts could become unviable.

The UK government has admitted there are not enough pension transfer specialist advisers to deal with demand, particularly in the case of more complex transfers into overseas pensions. This was the government’s response in March to a consultation launched two years ago, on whether the need to take financial advice, introduced with pension freedoms, created difficulties for overseas residents – residents such as those living in Cyprus wishing to transfer their pension savings from the UK to a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme (QROPS).

According to data from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), there were just short of 10,000 transfers to a QROPS in the 2016/2017 tax year. However, from these, only transfers of more than £30,000 would be subject to the advice requirement.