This announcement relates to the upgrade of the Homeprotect Workplace Pension Scheme, for all existing members of the current Royal London Group Personal Pension (GPP) Scheme.
We are delighted to announce that, following a whole of market scheme review and detailed discussions with your Employer, Patterson-Mills has been able to improve the terms, Member costs and investment options for the Homeprotect Workplace Pension Scheme.
The selected pension provider for this upgrade in the pension scheme is Aegon.
Aegon are one of the largest workplace pension scheme providers in the UK market, whilst also having over £200 Bn of investments under management.
Please see the detailed information below to find out more.
This presentation includes how the changes affect you (all are positive) and how the transition to the new scheme from Royal London to Aegon is carried out.
Individual online meetings have also been taking place in the weeks immediately following the presentation, so that your individual situation can be discussed and relevant options selected to best suit your own objectives.
If you have not yet booked your meeting, please look out for our latest e-mail invitations.
This webpage is a summary of your Homeprotect Workplace Pension Scheme. You can also read full details in your Employee Pension Handbook here.
ARC is the name of the retirement savings product that you will have with Aegon. It gives you access to a recognised and approved UK pension plan.
This enables you and your Employer to make contributions Directly from your salary to save for your retirement and then for you to take an income from your accrued fund when you retire.
You will discover that ARC is much more than just a pension scheme, and so please read your Employee Pension Handbook, this webpage, and additional downloadable resources at the end of this page to find out more.
Your pension plan will be a Self-Invested Personal Pension (SIPP), which in practice is a standard personal pension with added flexibility and choice around the investments you can choose.
ARC brings many benefits including the ability to invest in a wide range of funds and gives access to other savings and investment products, including an Individual Savings Account (ISA).
ARC’s range of products gives you options in the way you can choose to save and to make the most of your money.
You can find out more about ARC in the Key Features Document downloadable from the bottom of this page.
Contributions – the standard, minimum contributions in relation to your basic salary are as follows:
You are free to change your employee contributions (minimum 4%) at any time, whilst Homeprotect’s will remain unchanged.
You can choose to invest less than the minimum 4% amount, though it is important to note that you would not qualify for the Homeprotect contribution and will have had to have opted-out of the Auto-enrolment tier of the Workplace ARC Scheme.
Clearly, we recommend that it is in your interests to be part of the Auto-enrolled tier of the Scheme, as you benefit significantly from your Employer contributions.
It is always worth remembering that, as with all investments there are risks associated with saving in a pension or an investment ISA, the value of an investment can fall as well as rise and isn’t guaranteed.
You could get back less than you originally invested.
The Aegon Workplace ARC platform Account uses a uniform retirement age of 65. In practice, you are free to amend this age at any time, without cost to you.
The HMRC limits are currently that benefits can be taken at any time between ages 55 and 75.
To make a change at any time in the future, this can be done online, or by emailing jeanette@pattersonmills.com.
The ARC platform Scheme offers you the benefit of salary sacrifice for all pension contributions.
This contributions method is the same as that used for the previous pension scheme at Homeprotect and maximised your tax reliefs to increase your final invested amount each month. This results in you saving additional National Insurance Contributions in relation to the
This results in you saving additional National Insurance Contributions in relation to the amount contributed by you to the Scheme.
Additionally, using salary sacrifice, higher rate taxpayers are able to receive all their tax relief due immediately, within the pay-slip calculations. This avoids the need to reclaim such higher rate tax relief, as would otherwise be due, via a self-assessment tax return.
The ARC platform has a Default Fund, which is the investment fund used for all contributions until you meet with Patterson-Mills, your Scheme Advisers, to discuss the range of other investment fund choices available.
There is also a range passive funds that follow the Patterson-Mills asset allocation model, aimed at optimising your investments over time.
In addition, you also have the option to choose to use investment portfolios that are closely governed to meet environmental, social governance (ESG) parameters with a sustainable, responsible investment (SRI) approach (view these here).
Patterson-Mills is appointed by Homeprotect to provide pension investment advice for the Scheme and its whole Membership.
We recommend using our retirement target-based asset allocation models that utilise Index Tracker Funds for each relevant asset class to create the optimum portfolio for the time horizon to your retirement, appetite and capacity for investment risk. These are known as our Scheme Portfolios.
For all Members that choose to take up our advice on the above portfolios, the ARC platform will ensure that your portfolios are automatically updated every year, or until you instruct otherwise, whilst employed at Homeprotect.
In addition, you are free to transfer to any of the 4,500 plus available funds on the platform, whether by selecting these funds yourself (or with any other Adviser), as well as taking advantage of the advisory service that Homeprotect pays for in order for Patterson-Mills to offer you an appropriate investment fund mix.
You can see the full investment fund range by clicking here.
The Aegon Workplace ARC platform has a minimum 0.25% cash holding, which allows for related charges and ad-hoc dealing at any time. We expect this cash holding to be of little significance in the running of your pension investment portfolios, the amount of cash held in total usually being greater than this minimum in any event.
As part of the ARC platform procedures, in order for Patterson-Mills to maintain your pension portfolio, your personal consent in writing is needed.
This permits us to carry out your instructions on your behalf, specifically in connection with obtaining values, projections and the important function of updating your risk-rated, time-targeted group pension portfolio.
This will be discussed at your individual pension meeting.
When you join the pension scheme, and your first pension contribution is made to Aegon, you will be sent an email directly from Aegon which asks you to activate your account and register with them. This is really important as you then have access to your Pension.
Take a look at this document to see the Activation Journey for your Workplace ARC platform account.
Once you have received your initial invitation email, you can activate your Workplace Retiready Account, you can click this link here and follow the on-screen instructions.
The unique customer ID field will pre-populate if you clicked through from your e-mail. If it does not pre-populate, you will need to enter your unique customer ID, which will be in your e-mail.
This ID is valid for 30 days.
One month after receiving your activation e-mail, you will begin to receive Aegon’s “welcome journey”. This means that you will receive Aegon’s e-mails aimed at informing you about your retirement savings.
Your Aegon Workplace ARC plan requires an Expression of Wishes form to nominate your chosen beneficiaries.
This form can be completed online within your Retiready account under “your profile” and navigating to “about you”.
You can also click here to watch Aegon’s video detailing the process.
You can also complete, sign and e-mail the Expression of Wishes form (which you can find by clicking here) to jeanette@pattersonmills.com and we will submit this to Aegon on your behalf and acknowledge the same to you once done.
Homeprotect Aegon ARC Pension Scheme Handbook
Take Control with Aegon Retirement Choices (ARC)
Employee Toolkit – Aegon WP ARC
Aegon ARC Workplace Default Fund Factsheet
Expression of Wishes – Nomination of Beneficiaries – Aegon
Patterson-Mills Homeprotect WP ARC SIPP Adviser Statement
Aegon ARC Example Illustrations
Aegon ARC Terms and Conditions
Protecting Your Personal Information – Aegon
