Good morning. Firstly, sorry about this post being crammed into one paragraph! I can't seem to edit it to how I'd like to present it.

I have a couple of questions as I'd like to be pre-armed with a tiny bit of knowledge before contacting the pension provider/financial adviser.

I have a pension plan with Zurich, which was formerly with Allied Dunbar, which I haven't contributed to for many years. Firstly, should I be concerned that a Financical Adviser company has written to me (last year) to inform me they have taken over from Zurich Assurance Ltd in handling my pension?

The statement is on Zurich letterhead with the new company's details on the right hand side. But, the main reason for the post is to just understand the basics of what the statement is telling me. It's showing two parts: EXCLUDING FORMER PROTECTED RIGHTS BENEFITS = Total Current Value of £6,301 FORMER PROTECTED RIGHTS BENEFITS ONLY = Total Current Value of £71,365

My questions are: Does my pension 'pot' literally consist of these two combined? When I reach the age of 55 next August will I be able to access the full amount? It's a small pot, therefore of course, I don't consider this is going to be providing me with a regular income at retirement - therefore the likelihood is that I'll take the 25% tax free amount and then go with one of the options available for the remaining.

Hope that makes sense and thanks in advance for any replies. Stuarto.

You need to raise any questions like these with Zurich and get the information in writing.

I think you need it from the horses mouth, rather than an online forum. If you don't understand a pension scheme, you need the company doing the pension admin to explain about your rights.

I thought the Government were going to stop people aged 55 or over withdrawing all of the available pension pot money. Again a reason for Zurich confirming your rights, if you wanted to access the funds next year.

basically a pension is divided into 2 bits because you have opted out of the govt SERPS whilst it was active. What your pension is worth is the 2 amounts combined. Before you make any decisions on moving your money you need certain information such as what are the current management fees- the maximum under current rules is less than 1% but older schemes will have much higher fees so that can make it worthwhile moving the money elsewhere anyway. Secondly what is the cash in value as some schemes have a big penalty of what they like to call "market rate adjustment". Again, on newer schemes they just have a buy/sell price on the units in the scheme so it is easier to calculate what the real cash value is. The older scheme may take a massive slace for their supposed adjustment. It theoretically pays for the sudden selling of all of your shares held in trust at a loss but in reality they just take a massive cash slice to punish you. Thirdly you will want to know if you can take the whole sum as cash, a partial settlement to ease the tax liability and whether you can transfer part of it out to another scheme.

They may force you to see a financial advisor who will charge you £2k to do nothing useful if you actually want the cash.

Theoretically though you can take the whole lot as cash. You cannot take 25% of the pot tax free and leave the rest where it is, the tax free bit is a portion of the amount you take out of the scheme so if you withdraw £50k you get the first £12.5k tax free and the rest is treated as income for the tax year so will bump you into the higher tax bracket. Take out £20k and you get £5k tax free and then pay your normal tax rate on the remainder so 20% for most people

Hello there.

I've edited some paragraphs into your post, hope I got it more or less right.

There is a free government advice service called Pension Wise. You can look at information on their website and talk to them if you want to. Here's a link.

https://www.pensionwise.gov.uk/

HB