Swap your UK pension for cash from April 2017

We have received the following letter from Scott Kennedy of FMA – Astute Financial Management Associates Ltd and have replicated it below for the benefit of our UK expat readers wherever they may be, so they may consider if this financial opportunity is of benefit to them.

Swap your UK pension for cash from April 2017

The UK Government has confirmed plans to allow pensioners to sell their income-paying annuities for cash lump sums. More than five million pensioners who bought annuities will be able to swap their guaranteed income for a cash lump sum from April 2017, the Treasury has recently confirmed.

The move to create a new “secondary annuity market” is an extension of the Government’s landmark pension freedoms first announced in 2014, and applying from April 2015. Now the Government has said that from April 6, 2017, tax restrictions for people looking to sell their annuity will be removed, giving pensioners with an existing annuity – and anyone who purchases an annuity in the future – the ability to sell it on for cash.

Currently someone wanting to sell an annuity to a willing buyer would face a tax charge of up to 70%. The government will scrap this, so people are taxed only at their (UK) marginal rate of income tax. The move will be beneficial for those who can swap small or negligible annuity payments for a single lump sum. But critics have pointed out numerous risks, and warn that giving up the right to a guaranteed income could be a dangerous step, hence why pensioners should seek professional independent financial advice first.

Sell your pension? How it would work

It’s been the dream of many an unhappy annuity buyer: sell the policy back to the insurer for a cash lump sum. And now the Government wants to make it a reality. It sounds a simple and attractive idea, but there are complexities. How could you be sure you were getting a good price for your annuity? And how much tax would you have to pay? We look at how such a market would work in practice.

How much would I get for my annuity if I sold it on this new market?

Under current proposals, the annuity would continue to exist after you sold it in the second-hand market. Payment would be reassigned to the new owner and the pension would continue to pay out until you – not the new owner – died. We can’t be sure how much your annuity would fetch in these circumstances. But one possibility is that the annuity would be worth whatever it would cost someone of your age and life expectancy to buy the same annual income for life that you currently receive from the policy.

However, the new buyer would probably prefer an annuity that lasted until his or her death, rather than yours. Therefore, he is likely to expect a discount for the “second-hand” annuity. He might also expect you to take a medical to confirm your good health. And the firm that carries out the transaction would expect a cut. If the second-hand annuity’s value is based on that of a new one, it would clearly depend on the factors that influence annuity rates at that time. These include the interest paid on government bonds (gilts). If you bought when annuity rates were higher, it means gilts were cheaper then, so your annuity should fetch more now.

If there was no buyer for my annuity, couldn’t the insurer just buy it back?

This is another possibility. Any annuity carries risk for an insurer because it doesn’t know when you will die and therefore how much money it will pay out in total. If a particular insurer thinks it has taken on too much risk, it could reduce it by buying back annuities. For the policyholder, the question is what price is offered. Experts said insurers would want a discount, perhaps 20%, on the true value of the annuity. But what is that true value? It depends on your life expectancy at the time you want to sell. If your health has deteriorated since you bought the annuity, its value will be lower, reflecting the fact that it is likely to pay out for less time than originally expected. Because of this, you would probably have to have a medical check-up before you got a trade-in value for your annuity.

What could go wrong?

As mentioned above, the problem for a buyer of your annuity is that payments will cease on your death, not theirs. How many people will want an income that could end at any time? This could severely dent prospects for the new market and make second-hand prices unappealing. It’s possible that individual annuities could be bundled together and sold to institutional investors to get round this problem. There are also practical problems. There will need to be a mechanism by which the original insurer is informed of the death of the first owner of the annuity so that it can stop the payments. It’s possible that these problems could be overcome if insurers were prepared to link payments to the new owner’s death rather than the original owner’s, assuming similar life expectancy.

If I sold my annuity, how much tax would I have to pay?

The sale would probably be treated in the same way as accessing your whole pension in one go under the pension freedoms that take effect in April. In other words, the money will be treated as income and taxed at your “marginal” or highest rate.

If you would like to find out more information about how you can cash in your UK Pension Annuity please contact:

Scott Kennedy Cert PFS

Director

ASTUTE FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES LTD

Tel: +9 (0533) 845 7296 +9 (0533 842 3598)

Email: scott@astutefma.com

Email: info@astutefma.com

Website: www.astutefma.com

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