Questions about AVCs

I have a pension with my previous job. I would like to move it in to an AVC and be able to select several funds eg European & US stocks/commodities/china etc. I am currently paying in to another pension and when I finish with that company I would like to roll that pension into the same AVC and so on. I would also like the ability to switch funds in the AVC as things change.
Does this make sense?
Is there any penalities (ie tax etc) involved in doing this?
Which company/companies would be the best to deal with to setup and manage this AVC?
What kind of charges are involved in having someone setup and manage an AVC?
Thanks in advance.

eddie123 said:

I would like to move it in to an AVC

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I presume you're talking about a PRSA here rather than an AVC. You can roll pensions from company schemes into a PRSA without any penalty, but only up to a total of €10000 (at a time, I think).

And you can have as many PRSA's as you like, so you could roll pensions from several company schemes into different PRSAs depending on how you want them invested at a time.

Assuming your total pension contributions in any one year through your employment don't go over maximum allowed by the revenue, then you could also top up your PRSAs (only one at a time though) with extra AVC contributions.

I agree about €10k max (from any one scheme).

I think one can contribute to more than one PRSA in any one year though (but the same limit on contributions will still apply whether one PRSA or ten of them).

CapitalCCC said:

I think one can contribute to more than one PRSA in any one year though (but the same limit on contributions will still apply whether one PRSA or ten of them).

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But what I was told that you can only contribute to one at a time. You could stagger through the year, but only 1 at any one time, up to your limit.

I think you could throw (for example) 5% to an Eagle Star PRSA and 5% to an Irish Life PRSA if you wanted in respect of the same year (as long as total contributions did not breach revenue limit).