Yesterday afternoon I sat and read by Nest annual pension statement and then all the documents that went into telling me what I could expect from it and I ended up writing a blog , throwing my hands up in the air in exasperation. There is plenty of lipstick but the pig is still a pig.

So, as one of the 13m you can call your own, here is my message to the trustees and funders of  Nest.

“I want my pension done for me”

This is not me being bolshy. Nest pensions is a pension company that provides workplace pensions and pensions to the self-employed and others who simply want a pension at the end of their working lives.

I am coming to the end of my working life, I have money with Nest and I want my pension. Instead of a pension promise, I get a statutory money purchase illustration which tells me what I can expect my pot to be and explains what kind of annuity people like me are expected to buy if we want to swap our pot for a guaranteed income.

I know what a pension is and I know it is not  a pot and it is not an annuity. I know what my pension cost me because when I had the chance to exchange part of my pension for a tax-free-cash-sum, I discovered the conversion rate of pension to pot was not in my favor.  I took 100% of the pension on offer rather than paying off my mortgage. I now have the challenge of living long enough to make that bet pay off!

Retirement Line offer the best annuity available on the open market

It took a little research and a lot of courage but I chose pension over pot then and I am about to do the same with my “Nest pension” and my “Legal and General pension”. I am in a new occupational pension scheme called Pension SuperHaven (PSH) which has been set up to accept transfers in from those who want to swap pots for pensions and when I ask PSH for a quote, I find that I get a much bigger lifetime income than I can get from an annuity.

A guaranteed income for life well in excess of the best annuity I can get from the open market plus the likelihood of bonuses payable on top.

What is more, Pension SuperHaven will give me a price fix on the pension I can get if I wait a year of five years or ten years, to get my money.

Unlike an estimate from a SMPI, I know what I’m going to get and I can work out from the numbers when I can stop work, what it will cost in terms of pension to pay off my mortgage and the cost of including my wife on the pension, building in pension increases or guaranteeing my family the price of purchasing the pension if I die before my pension has paid the principal.

Not only am I buying more income, but I’m buying into certainty and that is what I need to stop work. I am not retiring on the promise of a pot performing in line with SMPI assumptions! Pension SuperHaven does it for me.

The snag and how to de-snag it!

The snag is not with me, it is with my fellow 13m Nest savers who don’t work for and are a member of Pension SuperHaven occupational DB scheme.  These people cannot join PSH because of transfer rules set up to stop pension schemes liberating people from their pensions (theft not access).  These rules are in place for a reason though I, like PSIG’s Margaret Snowden think they are in need for revision (but let that lie).

My fellow 13m Nest savers cannot join Pension SuperHaven but they can join the PSH scheme if it is a trustee investment of Nest itself. We call this PSH inside and PSH inside Nest would allow the 13m people in Nest to have a PSH pension done for them when they came to the time of life when they wanted to convert pot to pension. At Nest, the normal time for this to happen is when the target date fund pays out, the 67th birthday at which point every Nest member could (and IMO should) be offered a Nest Pension – Nest’s cover of PSH inside.

If Mark Rowlands, who looks after Nest’s pension outcomes wants to give me a call about this , he can do so on 07785 377768 or he can mail henry.tapper@psf.capital.

We can discuss how I and 13m people like me , can get their pension done for them. I stand ready!