The Pension Plowman rifling through the pockets of a trustee lying in the gutter following an all night pension celebration , has found too documents, the first a copy of Corporate Adviser the full text of which can be read here

One section of one article was ringed in red lipstick

It had originally only planned to allow DB transfers without authorised financial advice where an individual’s entire pension assets were below £30,000.

The other document appears to be a sales script hand-drafted with the title

How to get rid of the poor buggers!

For the benefit of readers who may be able to benefit from such assistance I include the entire text

Hi there!

So let’s get this right-

You’re over 55 , have some defined benefit rights in our pension scheme and could do with the money – now! Faster than a payday loan, I’m going to make you an offer.

It’s called a DTV. That stands for depressed transfer value.

Now I know you were hoping for fair value from you transfer value but there’s a problem, fair value for your pension rights is around £35,000.

There’s a problem with that £35,000- it’s £5,000 too much to help you. So we’re going to depress it to £30,000 so you can have the money tomorrow!

It’s not our problem, it’s the Government’s. You see those twits in Whitehall are saying that if your transfer value is a penny more than £30,000, you are going to have to take advice and you’ll have to find an insurance company that’s prepared to take your money and by the time you’ve done that it will be too late – your gratification will be deferred!

And what’s more y0u’ll still only get £30,000 because all the fees and commissions will skim off £5,000 – easy!

So we’ve decided as your trustees to ask you to accept £30,000 and we’ll bring it round in used fivers tomorrow morning! Infact we’ll get our actuary to deliver it you in person. Better still we’ll ask his young attractive actuarial student to bring it round in person!

Who said we don’t incentivise transfer payments!