Corporate Pensions - Employees and members - FAQs

A group personal pension plan (GPP) is a collection of personal pension plans provided by an employer for its employees. Customers investing in a GPP can do so via our simple risk-based pension investment approaches (Adventurous, Balanced and Cautious) or choose our self investment option for greater investment choice, flexibility and control.

A Stakeholder pension differs from a personal pension plan because it has been designed to incorporate a set of minimum standards laid down by the Government relating to charging structure, penalties and minimum contributions. For more information go to the pensions advisory service.

A Group Money Purchase Plan is set up by en employer to provide income in retirement for its employees. It's a defined contribution arrangement, where the employer sponsors the scheme and it is run by a board of trustees, who are responsible for paying retirement and death benefits.

Trustee Buyout Plans are transfer value-only plans. They can be bought by the trustees of an occupational money purchase pension scheme on winding up the scheme. Member's benefits are transferred into Trustee Buyout Plans and Scottish Widows issues the individual members with their own policies.

There are several ways to top up your company pension plan.

Active members:

If your payments are a percentage of your earnings, your payments will automatically go up in line with your new income.

To increase payments or pay in a lump sum, use our online services or contact our Corporate Pension Members Helpdesk on 0845 755 6557 (9am to 6pm weekdays).

Inactive members:

If you leave your job, your current employer will stop paying in and any payments they deduct from your salary will also stop when you leave their employment.

Reducing or stopping your payments would normally result in a lower pension when you retire. If you stop paying in to your pension plan, the money already built up in your plan can remain invested until you retire, and we will continue to deduct our yearly charge.

Existing payments from your bank account will continue as normal, if you want them to. If you're not currently paying anything by this route, you can start payments at any time. Please call our member helpline on 0845 755 6557 to arrange this.

If you get a new job, your new employer may be able to start paying into this scheme if they wish. If they have their own scheme, you may be able to join it.

Group Pension Plan - no this would not be an option, you can only take a refund of premiums within 30 days under cooling off notice rules.

Executive Pension Plan / Occupational Pension Plan - you can have a refund of premiums if you have been a member of the scheme for less than 2 years.

No

If you have a very small pension pot which would be too small to purchase an annuity, you are allowed to take this money as a lump sum at retirement. Currently this can only be taken from age 60 and the value of all policies the member has must amount to less than £18,000.

We deduct charges from each of the funds your plan invests in. Each charge is expressed as an annual percentage of the fund value. We adjust the charges to reflect the terms agreed with your employer and their adviser.

The 'scheme member discount' is a reduction to the annual fund charges for your plan, which will apply while you remain as an 'active' member.

Who is an 'active' member?

You’ll be an ‘active’ member while you remain an employee of your employer's company pension and monthly payments are made to your plan. You'll also be an 'active' member if you leave your current employer, but continue to make monthly payments to your plan at or above the minimum qualifying level at that time. Payments must recommence within 3 months of us being notified that you have left.

Who is an 'inactive' member?

If you no longer meet the criteria for an 'active' member you'll become an 'inactive' member, and the scheme member discount will stop.

From the Scottish Widows website choose the option to Log in or register in the right hand corner. Click on Login or register on the 'For individuals' box and select the 'Register' button on the log-in page. You will then be asked to complete a short registration form, providing details of your policy number or Customer Account number. Once this has been logged, a customer id and pin number will be sent out within 7 days under separate cover.

If you click on the link below you can access all the different funds available under different product contracts - each fund has its own fact sheet giving the performance history as well as in depth details.

Our Fund Prices

0131 655 7004

Switching is when you or an IFA transfer the money within your plan from one fund to another. Redirection means the redirection of future premiums into another fund option, whilst existing money remains invested in the existing fund choice. Switch and Redirection can be used together.

The Cash Fund is invested in SWIP Global Liquidity Fund, which offers investors a lower risk but higher return than traditional money market deposits. This fund offers security, access & a good yield.

The objective of our Cash Fund objective is the preservation of capital. The fund is AAA rated and is one of the largest Sterling funds in Europe. £22.9billion as at March 2011. The fund only invests in highly rated securities so only quality assets are in this fund. The fund also offers easy access, you don't have to wait to en-cash, normally done following day, unlike the bank accounts.

Premiums are used to buy units in the fund. Annual bonuses are declared each year and this is added as a percentage to the unit price thereby increasing the value of the fund.

We may apply a final (terminal) bonus at the end of a policy, which is declared as a percentage of the units bought in each year of the policy, each year potentially having a different bonus rate.

The key difference between unitised with profit and other unit linked funds is that we guarantee that the price of a unitised with profit unit will never fall.

The Unitised With-Profits fund is invested in a balanced portfolio of UK and overseas ordinary shares, fixed interest stocks, cash deposits and property.

This type of fund rises steadily at a rate declared by our management. They can change the rate of the growth at any time. It cannot fall in value. A typical rate of increase would be about 8% per year. This would typically be changed every 6 months or every year.

Once the policy is set up we cannot reduce the retirement date on the plan to an earlier age. We can defer this to a later age, but this will not automatically show on any documentation, it will drop down onto the policy at the normal retirement date. However, you can still withdraw your benefits from age 55.

Depending on the reason for the name change, send in a Deed Poll document for general name changes or through Marriage we have to see the original Marriage Certificate or a certified copy which can be done via a Lloyd's branch for no additional cost.

This is an industry standard and is the same on all pension company quotes. If you are male, it assumes you have a spouse who is 3 years younger, and if you are female, it assumes you have a spouse 3 years older. It is for illustration purposes only and does not affect any projections.

Unless you have any added extra life assurance, or accidental Death Benefit, the money will be paid to your estate or any trustees by 'Return of Fund'.

Yes - this is not normally a problem but we assess this on a case by case basis to make sure we are accepting monies from an appropriate pension source. For further details, please telephone our member helpline on 08457 556 557.

All individuals have different access packages defining what transactions can be undertaken online. You can check with your Employer what access package has been set up for you.

For example, if you have 'basic access' you would only be able to view policy details and plan valuations, whereas with 'full access' you have the option to make changes, fund switch/redirections, add single premiums etc to your plan.

To find out what your access package is please contact our Member Helpline (link to contact us page) or contact your scheme administrator. Access Packages are agreed by your employer and IFA at inception of the plan. For further details, please telephone our member helpline on 08457 556 557.

Annual allowance is the annual yearly amount you can contribute to your pension. Contributions above this amount are subject to a tax charge. The level of the annual allowance is decided by the government and with effect from 6 April 2011 has reduced from £255,000 to £50,000. In certain circumstances, you may be able to take advantage of up to three years' previous unused allowances. Please speak to your financial adviser for further details

A Lifetime Allowance, set by the government, will apply to the total value of pension benefits you can receive from your pension plans. The Lifetime Allowance has been set at £1.8m for the tax years 2010/11 and 2011/12.

This is minimum age you can cash your policy in unless you are in a designated profession with a lower age limit, i.e. Professional Sportsperson, Fire Crew, Deep Sea Divers etc. Pensions are a long term investment and this is a government rule.