More than two years
Your pension is worked out using:
- your final pensionable salary and the pensionable service you have built up at the date you leave the plan; and
- the lower earnings limit over the last 12 months of your pensionable service.
Your pension then becomes ‘deferred’. This means it stays in the plan for you to draw when you retire. To protect it against inflation, the pension is increased each year until you retire in line with inflation up to 5% a year.
Under current pension law, the plan increase rates are subject to a minimum increase to your overall pension. This is the lower of the rate of inflation and 5% a year compound between your dates of leaving and retiring.
You can transfer your plan benefits (including your Investing plan benefits) to another tax-approved arrangement – such as your new employer’s scheme or a personal or stakeholder pension plan, so long as that arrangement agrees to and can accept the transfer.
If you want to take a transfer, let us know. We work out how much your benefits are worth – the ‘transfer value’ – based on pension law and investment conditions at the time.
This means that transfer values change. The transfer value we give you for your Final salary plan benefits is guaranteed for three months – if you take longer than that to make your decision, you will need to ask for a new transfer value.
Please bear in mind that until you and the new arrangement complete the necessary paperwork, the transfer cannot go through.