How to Take Your Pension
Taking Your Pension
The general process for retiring is covered below. Ill health and flexible retirements or those retiring with Additional Voluntary Contributions will have some additional steps.
Steps to Retirement
- Speak to your employer about retiring and agree a retirement date. If you are requesting ill health retirement, your employer will first organise a medical before agreeing to ill health retirement.
- Once you and your employer have agreed and set a retirement date, your employer will notify us.
- Around 4-6 weeks* before your retirement date, we will write out to you about your pension options. This will include your options to swap pension for lump sum.
- You'll need to complete and return the forms we send to you.
- After your final pay has been paid, your payroll department will pass on your final pay details to us. This is used to calculate the final value of your pension and lump sum.
- We will write out to you once we receive your final pay details, confirming the date of your first pension payment.
*We aim to have pension options issued 4-6 weeks before retirement. However please be aware that due to current working conditions this might not always be possible.
Got AVCs?
If you have AVCs, you will be required to take, or opt out of, Pension Wise guidance, before your AVCs and pension can be paid. Find out more here.
How long is the process?
The length of time it takes to process and put your pension into payment varies depending on resources available, and how quickly we receive the necessary information from yourself and your employer. If you want your pension payments to start by a certain date you should contact us in plenty of time to ensure this can be done.
When will I get my first payment?
Once we have received all your paperwork, including your completed forms and final pay figure from your employer, we will process your pension for payment. Pensions are paid on the 15th of each month, with payroll closing around 1 week before. So your first payment will depend when we receive your paperwork.
If you are getting a lump sum, this will be paid around 15-20 working days after we receive your paperwork.
