Multiple cash holdings in a pension
Andy_Schleider
Member
Hi
Just a quick question: is it possible to have more than one cash holding within a pension (PP or SIPP), and individually protected to the £85,000 FSCS limit? If so, do you know who would do this? I have a client who is looking for 2-3 of these (it has to be pure cash, not a fund).
Thanks 
Comments
There was a debate about this in LifeTalk recently. All that people agreed on was 'why don't we know this for sure?', the info is poor it seems! Suggest going straight to the provider(s) you're considering. I once got a really good call followed by email from Transact, can't seem to find it though! We share our BDM contact details with our Outsourcer. Good luck.
Transact offers fixed rate accounts, so you could potentially hold some cash in the Transact cash account and then one or two holdings in a fixed deposit on platform. I believe the £85,000 limit would apply per account, as long as the ultimate deposit taker wasn't the same (for example, if the product cash account was with Barclays and the fixed rate was Aldermore).
Other platforms may offer this feature too, I just know for sure that Transact does.
I don't understand why you wouldn't?
If you have £85,000 with Bank 1 and £85,000 with Bank 2 - what's the concern?
MY UNDERSTANDING
The issue is who is the account holder.
In the case of a pension it is the Trustees. For a life office or a wrap based pension, the trustee is the provider, not the client. This gives two issues re FSCS. One is the total amount the trustee has on deposit accross all the plans they look after - almost certainly will breach the £85,000 limit..Second is that I believe providers would be too large to be allowed to make an FSCS claim anyway.
Where you have a pension with the client as a trustee as well as a professional trustee (eg SSAS or SIPP where member is also a trustee), then you do have unique account holders and FSCS limit available.
If FSCS protection is the primary concern then via a SIPP or SSAS use NSI. This may also be an option for platform based PPs,
A life office based pension is unlikely to have a cash deposit option - ‘cash’ fund maybe, but these are rarely cahs deposit funds, usually money market funds and so e of these went spectacularly wrong in 20p7b09 crash.
It is perfectly possible to have multiple cash deposits under a pension, provided the provider allows it!