How to Take Your Pension
Taking Your Pension
If you wish to take your pension, you simply need to contact us to request payment. Remember the earliest you can take your pension is age 55 (rising to 57 from April 2028), unless you are applying for early access on the grounds of ill health.
How to request payment?
If you want to take your pension, you can:
- Submit a payment request through My Pension+. Using the Deferred Payment calculator, you can tell us the date you would like to take your pension and also select your lump sum, seeing how increasing your lump sum would impact your annual pension, or
- Contact us through our website form
How long is the process?
The general process for retirement can be found in our Road to Retirement maps below, depending if you have Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs) or not. If you want your pension payments to start by a certain date you should contact us in plenty of time to ensure this can be done.
Please note these timelines are to provide an overview of the retirement process and is not a guarantee of individual timescales.
Deferred Member Retirement
*Retirement options for early access on the grounds of ill-health can only be issued once your application has been approved.
Deferred Member Retirement with AVCs
*Retirement options for early access on the grounds of ill-health can only be issued once your application has been approved.
**This will be the case for Uncrystallised Funds Pension Lump Sum (UFPLS), if you are taking all of your AVC as cash and swapping pension for extra lump sum, or if you have chosen the Open Market Option and have not yet found a new provider.
Got AVCs?
If you have any Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs), you will be required to take, or opt out of, Pension Wise guidance, before your AVCs and pension can be paid. Find out more here.
