Flexibility to access pension freedoms and enhanced investment offering

Flexible access at retirement – no transfers-out

This is another way that the Workplace ARC platform (ARC) comes into its own, highlighting two big differences between the Aegon GPP Scheme and the new ARC platform.

When you decide to take retirement benefits, this can be all at once or gradually, it’s up to you.  The usual workplace pensions are a standard GPP or similar (e.g. a Stakeholder Pension, or any other employer ‘money purchase scheme’).  In such cases, at the point of taking benefits, the plan-holder would need to transfer the accumulated pension pot either to an annuity – where it pays only an income for life and nothing to non-spousal beneficiaries – or to a Flexible-Access Drawdown pension plan to enable the investment fund to be used to provide income.

Using the ARC platform, your pension pot is effectively being held in an open-architecture self—invested personal pension ARC Account (‘SIPP’, to be slightly technical!).  What this means is that, whilst you are working, your accruing fund is invested in the usual way and, once you decide to take benefits, your fund can be accessed within the same ARC Account.

This avoids the need to transfer-out and could save you money at that point, as the various other retirement SIPP products out there can sometimes be costly.  Throughout all this you can retain the advice already in place – in this case using Patterson-Mills Financial Planning – or throughout your retirement you are able to appoint any authorised adviser of your own choosing.

Thus, the new ARC platform provides Scheme Members with the utmost flexibility and cost-efficiency at retirement.

The ARC platform offers you the full choices that HMRC permits, in terms of the ways to take your income and is flexible enough to support a phased approach, giving you a seamless transition from saving to taking an income.

Enhanced investments offering – ISAs and more available

As well as a wide range of investment options to choose from, you’ll also be able to take out other savings products such as an ISA or a General Investment Account (GIA).

This could be useful if you’re likely to exceed your annual allowance or lifetime allowance, or indeed with to invest actively into tax-efficient funds available to use sooner than your pension.  These investments can use the same risk-rated portfolios as your pension, or (optionally) with additional advisory services from us, you may access the whole universe of investment funds out there, over 4,500 being available on the Workplace ARC platform.

At Patterson-Mills, with the ARC platform, unlike the GPP Scheme, we are able to open up for you our asset-allocation driven, monitored and quarterly updated wealth management portfolios, as our advised fund choices are all available via the ARC platform.

We shall explain the costs involved for our wealth management service upon request, which are separate to the standard pension portfolios ordinarily used.

You will also have the new ability of investing directly from your pay-slip to your own stocks and shares ISA, using the same (or varied) risk-rated combination of the advised relevant asset classes for portfolios.  Either match your pension or you can ask us to put together a parallel portfolio with different aims and objectives, or even self-select (for the brave!), the choice is yours.

One of the great things about your new Scheme is you’ll have access to Aegon’s online digital service – Retiready. You can log in and track the progress of your retirement savings and, similar to online banking, you’ll be able to see your retirement savings on your mobile, tablet or laptop in a way that’s easy to access and understand.

Watch this short Retiready video to find out how it can help you get ready for the retirement you want.

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