Moving employment - what to do with occupational fund

A quick question, I hope.

I recently left employment where I had a company pension to start work with another employer. My new employer has a qualification period of 1 year before they admit you to their company pension scheme. Anyway, my pesion from my last place is worth 31k. The trustees recently sent me a letter asking me to decide to either stay in the plan for a benefit payment on retirement or leave the plan and nominate another approved pension plan to transfer into. Obviously I can't transfer it into my new employer's scheme yet, so should I be able to leave it with them for 10 months (paying the fees of course) and then transfer it, or is that impossible once opt to leave it with them? If it is a case of "i must exit now" then I presume the flexibilty of a PRSA is what I should be opting for as I will wish to transfer into my new employer's scheme in 10 months time. Clear as mud?

Re: The cheapest PRSA?

murphaph said:

so should I be able to leave it with them for 10 months (paying the fees of course) and then transfer it, or is that impossible once opt to leave it with them?

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No - it is possible to leave it where it is for now and then transfer into your new employer's scheme later on. When considering pension transfers make sure you know what benefits will accrue to you in terms of lower charges, better fund selection, ease of administration, transferring in vesting time to accelerate the securing of the benefits purchased by the new employers contributions etc. etc. There is no fundamental reason why pensions should always be transferred/consolidated. In some cases it may make sense not to consolidate and instead to maintain multiple separate pension policies.

Re: The cheapest PRSA?

Hi there, a few suggestions:

• Your new company may let you bring in a transfer immediately, even though they will not let you start contributing to plan for one year?
• You can leave it in the old plan for one year and THEN transfer it (it is not as if you have to transfer now or never!)
• So I think that answers your question - the "fees" for leaving it in old employer arrangement should be very very small
• It is NOT a case of "must exit now"
• You can't transfer to PRSA because your TV > €10,000

By the way - there are several existing threads on the whole issue of what to do with existing pension funds (occupational or otherwise) when moving jobs which might be of interest to you. Browse around and use the search to find them.

Cheers guys. I'm going to leave it where it is for the time being so. I need to do some research on my new compan plan before deciding to consolidate or not by the sounds of it! Damn, pensions confuzzle me.