We've been working with Legal and General to create an online retirement education portal to give Pace DC members all the information on their retirement options, as well as access to Legal & General’s Pension Access Scheme (PAS), which is a Mastertrust set up to help pension savers access their money flexibly. Legal & General are the current administrators of Pace DC, so you’d be able to continue to use their online system, Manage your Account, if you transferred to the PAS.
There is a retirement options video, a step-by-step guide to follow, and places to go for pensions guidance and advice along the way. Visit yourpensionoptions.legalandgeneral.com/co-operative to find out more or give Legal and General a call on 0345 026 8689.
As a reminder, there are a number of ways you can use the money in your account at retirement.
1. You can take all of your account as a lump sum; 25% will usually be paid tax-free and the rest will be taxed as income.
2. You can use your account to buy a regular income, which is called an annuity. If you want to, you can usually take up to 25% of your account as tax-free cash and use the rest to buy an annuity. If you’re thinking about buying an annuity, you should consider taking advice. Legal & General can also help members who want to buy an annuity, by helping you shop around for the best deal.
3. You can leave your account invested and take sums of money (either as income or a series of cash payments) directly from it. This option is sometimes known as ‘drawdown’ or ‘flexible income’. The first 25% of your account will usually be paid tax-free and the rest is taxed as income.
4. You can take a series of lump sums from your policy. Of each lump sum, 25% will usually be tax-free with the remaining part to be taxed as income.
5. You can take a combination of the above options.
Options 3 and 4 are not available directly from Pace DC because you can’t leave some of your account invested once you have started to take money from it. You would need to transfer your Pace account to another pension provider, such as Legal & General’s Pension Access Scheme (PAS), who can offer this, at retirement.
More information on annuities, and all of the other retirement options can be found at yourpensionoptions.legalandgeneral.com/co-operative or by contacting Legal & General on 0345 026 8689.
While the Pace Trustees have facilitated access to this service, they are not recommending any particular course of action and are not responsible for information provided by the service.
