Flexible drawdown
In April this year we introduced capped drawdown – in line with the new pension drawdown regime. Now – in keeping with our aim of leading the industry in pension provision – we are adding flexible drawdown to the CRA and will be among the first providers to make this available.
Flexible drawdown enables clients who meet certain criteria to access their pension fund without restriction. It enables you to take a more innovative approach to tax efficient extraction of income from a pension scheme, estate planning and life events. The main eligibility criteria for flexible drawdown are:
- Clients must be receiving a minimum income of £20,000 from secured pension arrangements, such as an annuity, final salary pension or a state pension.
- They must no longer be making contributions to a money purchase pension scheme or accruing further benefits in a defined benefit pension scheme in the tax year in which they apply for flexible drawdown.
Increased maximum entry age
As a further enhancement to make the Collective Retirement Account more flexible, we will also be extending the maximum age of entry to age 85 (next birthday) for crystallised fund transfers and to age 75 (next birthday) for uncrystallised funds. This will crucially enable pension contracts not offering such flexibility approaching these ages to transfer onto the Skandia Investment Solutions platform, where they no longer need to purchase an annuity.