Pensions transfers

It’s possible to move money from one pension pot to another. This could be:

• from one personal pension to another, or
• from a personal pension or workplace pension to a ‘self-invested personal pension’ (SIPP), ‘small self-administered scheme’ (SSAS) or qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme' (QROPS )

You may have taken professional advice to help you decide whether to transfer your pension and to choose a new pension plan. This could be from an independent financial adviser (IFA), pensions adviser or another financial firm.

You can bring your complaint to us if you feel you were given the wrong advice by an adviser or firm that’s regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). You can check this by using the FCA Register.

You may feel that your adviser didn’t tell you:

• about the higher charges you might have to pay as result of redirecting your pensions contributions
• that you’d lose the guarantees in your former personal pension plan – such as ‘guaranteed annuity rates’ (GARs)
• that the value of your plan might fall because when ‘with-profits’ pension funds are transferred to another type of plan, pensions providers apply a ‘market value adjustment’ (MVA)

You may believe the pensions advice you received wasn’t in your best interests because the adviser:

• didn’t check your attitude to risk or your capacity for loss, that is, whether you could afford or wanted to make riskier investments
• recommended a pension with unsuitable types of investment
• advised you to transfer the benefits from your workplace pension and you’ve lost out as a result – for example, by losing benefits like employer contributions to your pension, or guaranteed benefits of a ‘final salary’ or ‘defined benefit’ scheme.

Or you may have other concerns about your pension transfer.

If your complaint is about transferring from a 'defined benefit' scheme, you may want to use the FCA’s advice checker. You can use it to find out more about whether the advice you received was right for you, and what to do if you think it wasn’t.

Our service is free and easy to use. 

1. Before bringing your complaint to us, you should make a formal complaint to the company involved.
2. If they don't send you a final response letter within eight weeks – or you're unhappy with their response – you can complain to an ombudsman.
3. Our complaint checker will tell you more about some of the things we need to know upfront and help you make sure you’re ready to send us your complaint.
4. Fill in our online complaint form. Your case will be assigned to a case handler who will get in touch when they start to investigate.
5. To help us consider a complaint fairly, we may ask you to provide more information to help us understand what happened.

Use our complaint checker

We’ll make our decision about what happened using evidence from you, the financial business and any relevant third parties. To reach a decision, we'll also consider: 

• the relevant law
• any regulations that applied at the time
• good industry practice and relevant regulatory guidance

We'll tell you whether we believe you've been treated unfairly or not. If we don't uphold your complaint, we'll tell you why and explain how we reached our decision.

If we think you've lost money – or may lose retirement income – because you received the wrong pensions advice, we'll tell the financial adviser or pensions provider to put things right.

We may also tell them to pay you compensation for any distress or inconvenience you have suffered.

Find out more about the Pensions Ombudsman on their website

Find out more about transferring and merging pensions, see the MoneyHelper website.

The Department of Work and Pensions offers more information about retirement planning.