Transferring your existing pensions into a SSAS

Your SSAS has to exist before any money can move

A transfer is a payment from one registered pension scheme to another, so the receiving scheme has to be real before a provider will send anything. Two things have to be in place: HMRC has registered the scheme and issued its Pension Scheme Tax Reference, and the scheme bank account is open. Until both are done there is nowhere for the money to be paid.

This does not mean waiting around. Establishment and transfers overlap by design. We collect your pension details while the scheme is being set up, so the first requests go out to your providers as soon as the registration and the bank account are in place, rather than starting from a blank page.

What we need from you

For each pension you want to move, we need enough to identify the policy and enough to know what kind of pension it is.

• The provider name, as it appears on your paperwork rather than the brand on the letterhead.
• The policy, plan or membership number.
• A recent statement, or the approximate value and the date it was quoted.
• Whether anyone is still paying into it, including an employer.
• Whether you have already taken any money out of it.
• Whether the pension carries any kind of promise - a guaranteed income, a guaranteed annuity rate, a guaranteed minimum pension, or a final salary or career average entitlement.
• Identification documents for each member, which we need as a firm supervised under the Money Laundering Regulations.
• Evidence of your employment with the sponsoring company - payslips and a bank statement covering the last three months. Before funds can move into an occupational scheme, the provider has to see that employment link.

The question about guarantees is the one that changes the route, so it is worth checking your paperwork rather than going from memory. The most common cause of a stalled transfer is a policy number that does not match the provider's records, which is why we ask for the statement.

How the transfer is actually run

Every pension gets its own transfer case. A director bringing several older pots across will typically have between one and five running at once, and they are worked in parallel rather than in a queue.

1. The case is opened. One case per pension pot, with a named person on our practitioner team responsible for it.
2. We request the paperwork from your existing provider. We make the request, not you. Most providers will only release funds on their own discharge forms, so the first job is getting the right forms out of the right department.
3. The paperwork comes back and we check it. We read it against the scheme details before it goes anywhere near you, because a form returned with a field wrong is a form that comes back again weeks later.
4. The trustees sign, and we return it. You are a trustee of your own scheme, so you sign as well. A good number of providers still want ink on paper and a posted original, so this stage often depends on the postal service rather than on anybody's decision.
5. The funds arrive and the case closes. The money is paid into the scheme bank account and the case is marked complete.

If a provider refuses the transfer, we find out why and appeal it where there are grounds. Refusals are usually mechanical: a missing signature, a query about the receiving scheme, a form filled in on an old version. If an appeal does not succeed, the case closes, that pension stays exactly where it is, and your other transfers are unaffected.

How long it takes

The clock is mostly held by your existing providers rather than by us. What we control - requesting, checking, signing and returning - moves in days. What we do not control is how long each provider takes to issue its forms and then to release the money, and that varies between a modern platform and a closed book administered by a third party.

Two things make the biggest practical difference. The first is whether the policy details you give us match the provider's records. The second is whether the pension carries any guarantee, because that puts the case on the longer route described below. Once your provider's forms are back with us we can tell you what that provider's process looks like and what is realistic for your case.

What will not transfer

Some pensions cannot be moved into a SSAS at all, and it is better to know that at the start.

• The State Pension. It is an entitlement, not a pot of money, and there is nothing to transfer.
• Unfunded public sector pensions - the NHS, Teachers, Armed Forces, Civil Service, Police and Fire schemes. Transfers out of these to a scheme like a SSAS are blocked by statute.
• An annuity that is already in payment. Once an annuity has been bought it cannot be unwound and turned back into a fund.

Two more that people expect to be blocked and are not. A pension you are still contributing to can usually be transferred, although moving it will stop any employer contributions going into that pot. And a pension you have already started taking money from can usually be transferred too, but the crystallised part has to move as a whole and stays identified as crystallised when it arrives.

Defined benefit and other guaranteed pensions

Some pensions come with a promise attached rather than a pot: a final salary or career average pension from a former employer, a guaranteed annuity rate, or a guaranteed minimum pension. These are known as safeguarded benefits, and giving one up is a decision Parliament has deliberately fenced off. Where the value is more than £30,000, the law requires you to take regulated advice from a pension transfer specialist before the transfer can proceed, and the scheme you are transferring out of has to check that the advice was taken before it will release the funds.

TLPI is a pension specialist and an HMRC registered scheme administrator. We are not an FCA regulated advice firm, so that piece of work is not ours to do, and it is the right way round. Assessing what you would be giving up is specialist work and it belongs with a firm authorised to do it.

What we do is make the introduction and keep everything else moving. We put you in front of an FCA regulated pension transfer specialist, give them the scheme details they need from us, and pick the administration straight back up if the outcome is that the transfer proceeds. Your SSAS is established and ready either way, and your other pensions can transfer in on their own timetable while that one runs alongside.

What happens when the money arrives

Transfers arrive as cash. The funds are paid into the scheme bank account, allocated to the transferring member's fund, and the scheme records and fund split are updated. Where there is more than one member, each member's share is tracked separately from the day it lands.

After that, nothing happens automatically. The cash sits in the scheme account until the trustees decide what to do with it, which is the point of the structure. Whether that is commercial property, a loan to the sponsoring employer, or an investment account, it is a separate decision and a separate piece of work, and it is yours to make as trustee.

What we handle, and what stays with you

We handle the administration: identifying and contacting your providers, the discharge paperwork, checking what comes back, chasing the case, and recording the funds correctly when they arrive.

You decide which pensions to move, and you sign as trustee. We are a pension specialist and the scheme administrator, not an investment manager, and we do not advise on whether a transfer is right for you. What we make sure of is that every transfer that goes ahead is properly requested, properly documented and properly recorded.