UK Pension Transfers & NZ Financial Services for Brits

You can only transfer your UK pensions once you have permanently emigrated from the UK. Some UK pension providers will insist upon you having NZ residency before they will allow the transfer to proceed. 

Please note that once your pension is transferred to New Zealand, you cannot transfer it back to the UK.

We recommend that you do not apply to your pension administrator for transfer values and paperwork for benefits you hold in UK company schemes until you arrive in New Zealand. In most cases they will only be valid for 3 months, so could almost be out of date before you arrive. Many UK pension schemes will not provide a second transfer value until a further year has passed, and they are likely to charge you a fee of around £300.

You can however request the transfer value and paperwork to transfer to an overseas scheme for benefits you hold in personal pensions, stakeholder pensions and pensions used for contracting out of SERPS.

Besides residence in New Zealand, the general conditions for pension transfers are:

• Many pensions can be transferred once drawdown has commenced, but not once an annuity has been purchased.

• The transfer payment must be made direct to the receiving scheme in New Zealand, which must be a Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme (QROPS).

• Controlling directors of UK companies and high earners may need to apply to the UK Inland Revenue for permission to transfer their pension funds.

Read on to find out more about how long pension transfers take from start to finish, and what the process entails.