This page provides a summary of your Whistlebrook Aviva Group SIPP Scheme.
There are some important documents for you to download at the bottom of this page. In particular, the Expression of Wishes Form. There are also some essential scheme details within the rest of this page, for regulatory and compliance purposes.
All regular contributions will be automatically paid to the Aviva scheme unless you tell us you do not want to join, which is a process known as opting-out. Opting-out is usually against your interests, unless you have very specific reasons, though this choice is yours and cannot be influenced by your Employer in any way.
If you do not want to be part of the Scheme you will need to tell Jeanette Mills at Patterson-Mills by email to jeanette@pattersonmills.com or by calling 01908-503741 and asking for Jeanette.
In consultation with Patterson-Mills, the Whistlebrook Board upgraded the Company’s pension arrangement with Scottish Widows, in favour of the current scheme with Aviva, with 3 key reasons in mind:
This is the name of the retirement savings product you will have with Aviva. It gives you access to a pension plan so that you can save for your retirement and then take an income when you do retire.
Your pension plan is on the modern Aviva investment platform, which remains in practice a standard personal pension, though with valuable added flexibility and choice around the investments you can choose and how you access your retirement funds in the future.
Aviva has many benefits including the ability to invest in a wide range of funds and providing access to other savings and investment products, including an Individual Savings Account (ISA). Aviva’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 Aviva’s flexible pension platform in the Key Features Document downloadable from the bottom of this page.
It is always worth remembering that, as with all investments, there are risk associated with savings in a pension or an ISA. The value of an investment can fall as well as rise and is not guaranteed. You could get back less than you originally invested.
There are minimum contributions in place. These are as follows:
You are free to increase your contributions at any time, whilst Whistlebrook’s contributions will increase to 5% after 2 years of service.
You can choose to invest less than the minimum, though it is important to note that you will no longer qualify for the Whistlebrook contribution and will have had to opt-out of the Auto-enrolment tier of the SIPP Scheme. As mentioned, it is recommended that in your interests you remain a part of the Auto-enrolment tier of the Scheme, as you benefit significantly from your Employer contributions.
The Aviva platform for your SIPP Scheme offers you the benefit of Salary Sacrifice for all pension contributions. This results in you making a valuable saving on National Insurance Contributions in relation to the amount contributed by you to the Scheme.
This is where your pension contributions are taken from your pay before tax and so you are not taxed at all on the contribution. Using Salary Sacrifice means that all taxpayers receive all of their tax relief on pension contributions immediately, within the pay-slip calculations. Therefore, higher rate taxpayers especially are able to avoid using a self-assessment tax return to reclaim the higher rate tax relief that would otherwise be due, potentially avoiding significant delays.
Salary Sacrifice is particularly advantageous in two ways:
For this pension Scheme, Whistlebrook has agreed to further enhance your contributions by using the additional tax saving Whistlebrook makes in its Employers National Insurance contributions to increase the total value of your pension fund.
You are able to make your contributions outside of Salary Sacrifice should you prefer to do so and, in some cases (such as parental leave) it may indeed be in your interests to do so. Should you consider any change of your preferences in this area, please e-mail jeanette@pattersonmills.com to inform us of your new choice.
Your regular contributions to the Aviva SIPP Scheme will be automatically invested in the Scheme Default Fund. It will remain this way until you have consulted with the Scheme Advisers at Patterson-Mills, for which your Employer is funding individual 1-2-1 meetings.
Patterson-Mills has been appointed by Whistlebrook to provide pension investment advice for the Scheme and its whole Membership. Providing its employees with access to holistic financial planning advice on their pensions.
You are free to make any fund changes of your own, notwithstanding advice being provided by Patterson-Mills.
We recommend using our Target Retirement Age-based asset allocation model that utilises the Blackrock Index Tracker Funds for each relevant asset class to create the optimum portfolio for the appropriate time horizon until your retirement, and your risk appetite and capacity. These asset allocation models are known as our SIPP Scheme Portfolios.
Importantly, all of our Scheme Portfolios are accessed at the lowest annual cost for the Scheme as a whole.
The analysts used to create the asset allocation models are at Royal London Asset Management and these portfolio asset mixes are monitored, updated annually for the Scheme and revised with Members at each annual review meeting. Alternatively, should you be unable to attend a review meeting at any point, such updates and revisions will take place via e-mail communications between the Member and Patterson-Mills.
For all Members that choose to use our recommended Scheme portfolios, the Aviva SIPP platform ensures that your portfolios are automatically updated every year (or until you instruct otherwise), whilst employed with Whistlebrook.
Regarding any fund changes that you as an individual wish to enact, you are free to transfer to any of the 4,500+ available funds on the platform. These include Sustainable Responsible Investment fund types (SRIs), as well as individual externally managed funds from the World’s leading fund management companies, in addition to the Portfolio Funds that make up the target-based portfolios from Patterson-Mills.
You are free to select funds yourself (or with any other Adviser), as well as taking advantage of the Advisory service that Whistlebrook provides via Patterson-Mills, in order for us to offer you an appropriate investment fund mix, tailored to you.
The Aviva SIPP Scheme requires an Expression of Wishes form, which you can download here. Please print, complete, sign, date and e-mail this form to jeanette@pattersonmills.com and we will submit this to Aviva on your behalf and inform you once this has been completed.
In practice, you are free to amend this age at any time, without cost to you. The HMRC limits currently state that benefits can be taken at any time between ages 55 and 75 (from 6th April 2028 this will be from 57), provided this age is no more than 10 years before your State Pension age.
To make changes to your retirement age at any time, you can do this online or by e-mail to jeanette@pattersonmills.com.
Aviva Expression of Wishes Form
Flexible Retirement Account – Key Features
Back to Your Whistlebrook Homepage
