While you have made a new life for yourself in Australia, you may still have an existing pension plan in the UK which you will need to access in line with the pension rules applicable under UK law. This is where we come in.

We can help you manage your UK pension from the luxury of your own home. As long as you have access to an internet account and a telephone we can provide you with quotes and an information pack in no time at all. Given the time delay between the United Kingdom and Australia we would hope to keep telephone contact to a minimum ! But we are available if you want us - During UK office hours !

We can offer all the usual products such as standard and impaired annuities, Income Drawdown, Temporary annuities, With-Profits Annuities and Flexible Drawdown. Obviously the fact you now live in Australia and your other circumstances may cause some of the products to be limited.

It may be possible to just take a lump sum from your pension fund and leave the rest invested until you come to retire. It is not for us to provide you with reasons why you should or should not take a lump sum from your pension before retirement. Remember the fund is intended to provide you with money when you have stopped working. Therefore if you do release it, make sure it is for a good financial benefit. If you want to use it to buy a wardrobe to match Matt Preston's it is most probably a poor decision !!

If you are about to retire and want to realise the highest possible income from your pension, then we are ideally placed to help you.

Whatever your circumstances we can help you. We do all the administration work for you and keep you informed of progress every step of the way.

It should still be possible to obtain enhanced annuities even for customers in Australia. BY working with you to present a full medical history to the underwriters, we should be able to identify if you do qualify for an impaired annuity and the enhancement you are likely to receive. At this stage you can decide if you want to progress the situation. The underwriter may require evidence of your situation. This may require you obtaining and providing professional medical evidence before the application is accepted. This is likely to be at your own expense, but the cost may be worth it, given the extra income you could receive.

Currently it is not possible to offer Smoker Only annuities to customers in Australia. This is down to the relative difficulty of getting evidence to an underwriter.

If you decide to do business with us we will do all the pension administration work for you, including completing all the forms required by your existing pension provider and your new provider. We will check with the various providers that progress is being made and keep you updated throughout. As the feedback from our customers demonstrates, you can sit back and relax while we do all the work for you.

The United Kingdom and Australia have a Double Tax Convention, which means that you are only taxed in one country for all of your worldwide assets and income. You should be aware that the tax status of UK products may not apply in another jurisdiction.

There are a number of features that you may want to include within your retirement product. It should be remembered that as you add features to your annuity, the amount paid in monthly income is likely to go down, but you may consider some features too important to leave out.

Depending on your circumstances we may need your co-operation in completing some aspects of the transaction. If you have a UK bank account and still have a property in the UK then you may need to do nothing extra.

In some circumstances you may need to present yourself and some standard documents to a local Notarie, Solicitor or other recognised Legal professional who can verify your identity.

Annuity Rates

While the annuity providers will not give you a lower simply because you now live in Australia, you should remember that if you are now retired in an idyllic countryside location you may get a lower rate as the underwriter may consider that your life expectancy is significantly greater than somebody who lives in the center of a city - How bad that ? or Bonzer - as the locals would say !