Block Transfer
Sean_Fernyhough
Member
Barclays afterwork - Cash balance + Money purchase scheme.
Two deferred members both with protected early retirement ages.
Trustees policy is not to facilitate block transfers and are using (unspecified) Pension Ombudsman decisions relating to other schemes to back this up. This has been the scheme's policy for eight years.
Is there anyone here with any knowledge of this?
Comments
Never heard of it
This is the best I can come up with on the PO website, Les
https://www.pensions-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/2017/po-11237-po-11238-and-po-11239/hbos-final-salary-pension-scheme-po-11237-po-11238-and
I am dealing with the same administrator but a different scheme.
Do PO decisions provide a precedent?
My understanding is only courts create precedents. Ombudsman decisions only apply to the particular complaint.
You don't have a statutory right to a buddy transfer so if the scheme aren't playing ball there's not much you can do other than complain.
Of course if you find an ombudsman case that suits your complaint then it might sway the schemes decision.
The Scheme administrators have now brought a clearer explanation of their position. Or rather they're providing a different explanation. Referencing 22(6) of Schedule 36 of the Finance Act 2004 and the Pensions Tax Manual at 053720 they state that the transfer to an individual pension with the same provider at the same time cannot be a "single transaction" as it is a personal decision by the "buddies" in each case to transfer and therefore cannot be a block transfer.
Their references don't categorically support their position.
You could say that the transaction in question is the transfer in itself, the means to getting to the request for the transaction doesn't matter. Hello what do you want? I want you to transfer these two pensions = one transaction.
Or you could say that even though the advice is in the main wholly personal if it's a block transfer then the overall advice was predicated in them both transferring together, so is part of the single transaction.
They just don't want to do it and are out of line with other schemes I think.