Pensions And Expats

The Spanish Advantage (Pensions)

Many individuals find pensions confusing and the global recession and so called “credit crunch” has created a great deal of concern over pension invested funds. This is only compounded when you move overseas.

Well the overseas part shouldn’t worry you, in fact as a result of living overseas there are significant advantages open to you with regard to your UK pension arrangements.

In April 2006, UK pension legislation changed allowing persons living outside the UK to transfer their pension assets to an alternate overseas pension scheme. These have been formally named Qualified Recognized Overseas Pension Schemes or QROPS for short.

Although not for everyone, these schemes offer significant flexibility and tax advantages over that as offered by UK sited schemes. By transferring your existing pension assets to a QROPS you could save up to 55% in tax charges on 1st death succession and further 55% on 2nd death succession. In short this means that your heirs will truly benefit from your life time’s work rather than your adopted child the UK chancellor.

In the majority of cases a transfer to an overseas scheme proves to be in the policy holder’s best interest as advantages of transferring to a QROPS include:

· No need to make life long decision now that are locked in

· No requirements to purchase an annuity

· No requirements to pay UK tax charge upon death

· Tax efficiency on Income Drawdown

· Currency hedging (as you could receive your income in the currency of your resident country)

· Better inheritance provisions

· Far greater freedom of investment choices

To find out more or to find out whether transferring your existing pension arrangements to an overseas scheme is in your best interest please contact me on 0034 952 816 443 or 0034 628 549 531 or email me at david.rogers@blacktowerfm.com