24 Dec 2019
Wake up to Retirement
From November this year, pension providers will be sending out pre-retirement wake up packs to everyone from their 50th Birthday.
Pre-retirement packs are usually issued 6 months before your normal retirement age and give a summary of the pensions value, your options to covert it in to an income and signal the free information services available to use.
With the new rules, packs will be received regularly, at 5 yearly intervals from age 50, until a higher frequency occurs as you near retirement age and received continuously until all pension benefits have been accessed.
This means clients in pension drawdown plans that are still ‘un-crystallised’ will receive these packs going forwards.
For the 50-somethings receiving these wake up packs, it can only be good news. Awareness is a positive thing, it should help people be more in touch with the savings they have to date and raise awareness of what they may need to do to improve them; in a country where the average pension pot still stands at just over £50,000, it will be interesting to see if it has an effect on this over time.