May your pension pot wish be granted

If your pension pot is one of your larger assets, if not the biggest, are you up to date on what happens to any residual value on death?

When starting a private pension, you will complete an ‘Expressions of Wishes’ form which instructs your pension provider, who is to receive the benefits in the event of the saver’s death.

This form is often made many decades before benefits become available and therefore, in many cases, the circumstances of savers may have changed radically (death, divorce, separation, re-marriage, siblings and other family etc). This may mean that your pension provider is instructed to distribute the pension pot to the wrong person.

Although these ‘Expressions of Wishes’ are not legally binding and your pension provider may be able to consult wills in order to build a full picture of preferences, the problem can be difficult and costly to resolve.

The solution is simple – keep your pension providers up to date on how this asset is to be distributed.

Just follow these 3 simple steps:-

1. Ensure that you are aware of all pensions that you have taken out (some can be forgotten about or “lost”).
2. Be aware of who your provider holds as the beneficiary.
3. Reaffirm the selection of the beneficiary or consider any change (possibly in light of a tax planning review).

If you would like to discuss this in more detail or would like one of our team to look at your pension as part of a tax planning exercise, please do not hesitate to contact us.