No, you only need to transfer one of your inactive pensions to PensionBee to get started. If your pension’s still receiving contributions, you can add it to your online account (known as your BeeHive) and when payments stop you can transfer the pension over.
You can add as many pensions as you like, at any time in the future. And if you’re self-employed, you don’t need to transfer any pensions at all. Instead, you can start a new pension with us and contribute flexibly as much or as little as you like, as often as you like.
When you sign up to PensionBee, we’ll ask you questions about yourself and your pension in order to contact your old provider to begin the transfer process. Including your:
You’ll speed things up if you can provide us with information about your previous pension, such as your policy number. You can watch our How to sign up to PensionBee video on YouTube to see a step-by-step guide.
On average, it takes 12 weeks to process and transfer your old pensions. PensionBee can only accept cash transfers. This means your investments with your old provider will be sold, the cash value will be transferred over to us, then we’ll invest that sum into your new PensionBee plan. We don’t accept ‘in specie’ transfers, where your existing investments are transferred from one provider to another.
We rely on your pension providers to give us information about your old pensions and some of them are quite slow. Occasionally providers will choose to send the transfer packet to you directly and instruct you to forward this information to us via post or as a scanned document. If you have your old paperwork, you can speed up the process by telling us your provider name, policy number and an estimated balance in your online account (known as your “BeeHive”).
We believe that putting your pensions in one place should be straightforward and hassle-free. Therefore, when we gather information about your pensions, we’ll only ask you to sign once digitally. As part of your sign up, you must confirm that you authorise us to use your signature digitally or physically by placing it on a standard letter of authority.
Most providers will accept a letter of authority with a digital signature, but if your provider insists on using paper with “wet” signatures, we’ll use our robot, Armie, to transpose your digital signature onto the letter with ink. We’ll treat your signature as we treat all of your personal information in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
If your provider requires transfer forms, you’ll need to sign these. Most customers can now sign these digitally, but very occasionally, we may need to post them out to you.
If your old pension has guarantees, such as guaranteed annuity rates or a final salary promise worth over £30,000, we’ll send you the full paperwork to review before we transfer it. If you have a pension with guaranteed benefits over £30,000, you’re required to take financial advice from a FCA-regulated Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) before you transfer it.
Visit Unbiased to find an IFA or MoneyHelper for free guidance.
Where you’re required to receive advice, PensionBee will only be able to accept the transfer if the advice is given or checked by a Pension Transfer Specialist. We’ll require evidence of this positive advice before proceeding with the transfer. PensionBee doesn’t provide financial advice and you’ll need to find a Pension Transfer Specialist yourself.
The government doesn’t allow the transfer of unfunded government schemes, including those of the NHS, teachers, the army, police and firefighters. If you have a local government or civil service pension, you might be able to transfer a majority over to your PensionBee plan. For example, The Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) is a ‘funded’ arrangement so transfers from this scheme are still permitted. Please reach out to your personal account manager (your ‘BeeKeeper’) or the scheme provider.
If you only have one “active” pension, that your employer’s still paying into, you have a few options:
Most customers usually wait until they move jobs before transferring an active pension - to ensure they don’t lose any special benefits from their current employer. But you can still add those non-PensionBee pots to your Retirement Planner and see the projected income you could expect from all of your retirement savings.