Terms of business

2.0 The service we offer

We offer a financial advice service that includes pension assessments, pension consolidation, final-salary pension advice, and retirement planning. Our service is only available to UK residents and UK based pension schemes. Our service is segmented into three areas: –

HealthCheck Service

A free, no obligation Pension HealthCheck from Pension Works provides a thorough insight into current charges, past performance and assesses whether there are more suitable pensions aligned to your requirements. This service also covers ISA’s (Individual Savings Accounts), pension consolidation, pension drawdown and is only applicable to people who have private and old workplace defined contribution pensions.

Defined Benefit Review Service

Our Defined Benefit (DB) Review Service will assess the suitability of your Defined Benefit/Final Salary pension and whether it is in your best interests to transfer your pension. During the DB review service, we will produce a report (charged at £495) that will outline your current pension along with a detailed cash-flow projection to display what your retirement could look like if you transfer your DB into a Defined Contribution pension vs taking the income directly from the scheme.

What is a Defined-Benefit/Final Salary pension?

A defined-benefit pension plan is a type of pension plan in which an employer/sponsor promises to pay a secure income for life, that normally increases each year. The amount of income payable is determined by a formula based on the employee’s earnings history, length of service and age.

Retirement Planning Service

Our financial advisers can help you to put a retirement plan together, that could help you to achieve the comfortable retirement you desire. Planning for retirement is more than just looking at the figures, we will help to guide you on how much to save, what you can expect when you retire and outline what the best options are for you should you want to take money from your pension. Our advice will detail for example whether taking an annuity or drawdown is the right option for you and how you can maximise your funds.

2.1 What’s included?

The advice service we provide can include:

• Gathering all relevant pension and/or ISA information
• A ‘getting to know you’ meeting with a financial adviser
• Assessment of your needs and objectives
• Full scheme/policy analysis
• Evaluation of management charges
• Review of past investment performance
• Advice and recommendation report
• Presentation meeting with a financial adviser
• Implementation of advice given
• Ongoing advice to ensure continued suitability

By agreeing to our service, you are under no obligation to proceed with any recommendations that we may make.

To enable us to carry out our service for you, we require you to complete our Letter of Authority with: –

• The name of your pension provider(s) or/and the name of your employers if a workplace pension.
• Your policy number (if known).
• Your National Insurance number (NI).
• Sign and date the Letter of Authority.

If you have more than one pension, please add them into the relevant sections on the Letter of Authority.

2.2 How to proceed with our recommendations

If our recommendations include a switch or a transfer of fund or policy and you instruct us to implement our recommendations, we will handle all fund and policy administration on your behalf. We will provide you with regular updates, ensuring everything is processed smoothly and minimising any disruption. Unfortunately, we cannot control the service levels of the new or old pension providers, but we do keep in constant contact with them during the process to ensure it’s completed as quickly and efficiently as possible. Our service charge for implementing the advice is detailed in the Our Fees section.

Pension Works will only implement a transfer if one of our Financial Advisers has recommended it following the report. We do not act on execution only basis, meaning that we will not implement any transfers, based on your instruction, that is against our advice and recommendations. If you chose to switch or transfer a pension contrary to our advice and
recommendations, Pension Works accepts no responsibility for this action.

2.3 What is our Ongoing Assessment Service?

To help you to keep on track and achieve your retirement goals, we believe our Ongoing Assessment Service is essential. This service includes: –

• Annual research and analysis of your funds.
• Recommendations of appropriate changes to your investments if your attitude to financial risk or retirement date has changed.
• Delivery of your Annual report with any recommendations.
• A call with your adviser to run through the report, should you wish.

Please see Our Fees section for Ongoing Assessment Service charges, you can opt-out at any time.

2.4 Cancellation of Ongoing Assessment Service

You can cancel the Ongoing Assessment Service agreement at any time. To cancel, contact Pension Works by email or in writing. Postal Address: Pension Works Limited, Booths Park 5, Chelford Road, Knutsford, Cheshire, WA16 8GS. Email: info@pensionworks.co.uk, with your client reference number in the subject line. If you cancel, we cannot refund any fees already processed, as this is payment for the Ongoing Assessment Service we have undertaken to date.

3.0 Our Fees

Our HealthCheck and Retirement Planning services involve no upfront charge to you and would only incur an Advice Charge should you instruct us to implement any proposed recommendations. Due to the complexity and amount of extra work involved in Defined Benefit (Final Salary) cases, our Defined Benefit Review service requires an initial, report writing fee of £495 to be paid prior to any research or analysis being conducted on your behalf.

Following the presentation of a recommendation by one of our financial advisers, an Implementation Fee would be payable should you instruct us to implement our recommendations. The fee payable is dependent on the value of the funds being transferred. If your pension funds are a mixture of Defined Contribution and Defined Benefit pensions and we are assessing your DB pension, then our fees will be charged at the Defined Benefit rates. These fees are explained in the following tables.

Example: A £75,000 Defined Contribution pension would have a charge rate of 2.5% (first £50,000 at 3%, then £25,000 at 1.5%)

Example: A £150,000 Defined Benefit pension would have a charge rate of 3.0% (Report writing fee £495, implementation charges first £50,000 at 3% then £100,000 at 2.5%)

Where the recommendation and advice is to switch funds within the current provider, implementing this switch is charged at a reduced rate of £495.This would not be applicable for Defined Benefit pensions.

Defined Benefit Review Service

Due to the nature of Defined Benefit advice, we charge an initial fee of £495 for this service, which is payable before we commence any research or analysis following your ‘Get to know you’ call. The fee is to be paid directly to Pension Works Limited. Should the advice be to retain the Defined Benefit scheme, this initial report writing fee cannot be refunded.

Our fees are calculated based on a percentage of the fund amount we transfer before any tax-free lump sum is taken unless otherwise agreed on an individual basis, except for the minimum fee.

You can choose how to pay our fees for the implementation of advice from the two options below: –

1. The easiest and most tax efficient way is for our fees to be paid directly from your pension fund if your new pension provider can do this.
2. Payment can be made directly to Pension Works Limited via cheque or bank transfer.

Any other services will be quoted for on an individual basis and a supplementary agreement issued to you before carrying out the work.

Example of Our Fees

What is our Ongoing Assessment Service?

To help you to keep on track and achieve your retirement goals, we recommend our Ongoing Assessment Service.

This service includes: –

• Annual research and analysis of your funds.
• We will assess if your circumstances, needs or objectives have changed.
• We will make recommendations of appropriate changes to your investments based on any changes you have notified us about.
• Delivery of your Annual report with any recommendations.
• A call with your adviser to run through the report, should you wish.

The fee for this service is 0.50% per year of your fund value. This fee is taken directly from your pension fund (only for the pensions that we have authority for). With the ongoing assessment charge being a fixed percentage, the amount taken will fluctuate in line with the size of your fund. You can opt out of this service at any time by giving 7 days’ notice in writing and sending this to info@pensionworks.co.uk.

Example of Ongoing Assessment Fees

3.2 Insurance and Protection Product Fees

For protection and insurance contracts we are an intermediary and will act on your behalf when providing and making our recommendation(s) to you. We will do this based on fair and personal analysis of insurers for term assurance. We do not charge a fee for these services, as we receive a commission from the policy provider/insurer. Any amount we were to receive will be disclosed to you in advance.

3.3 VAT

Under current legislation, our services are primarily exempt from VAT. We will notify you before conducting any work should VAT be applicable.

5.0 Other things you need to know

5.1 Restrictions

We reserve the right to decline to undertake any service at our discretion.

5.1 New Pensions

We will only normally set-up a new pension for existing clients, whether through a transfer or as part of the ongoing assessment service. If we do set up a new pension, our fee is £299.00 that can be paid as a one-off payment or 50% of your monthly pension contributions until the fee is paid.

5.3 Conflicts of Interest

We are always determined to treat our customers fairly. We have a policy in place to ensure that we always identify and handle conflicts of interest fairly and our customers with honesty and integrity. To receive a copy of our Treating Customers Fairly policy, please email info@pensionworks.co.uk

5.4 Your Goals

Unless we notify you in writing to the contrary, we will treat you as a “retail client”. A retail client means you have the highest level of protection under the regulatory system and have the right to take any complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service no later than 6 months from the date of your final decision letter.

You will only be given advice or recommendations after we have completed a detailed analysis of your needs, your personal and financial situation and your attitude to financial risk. We will also apply any restrictions on the types of products you want to consider. You have no obligation to share any personal information. However, if you choose not to disclose any details requested or do so incorrectly, this may affect the quality of the advice you receive. We reserve the right to cancel the assessment, should we believe the withholding of information is impairing the integrity of our advice. We cannot be held accountable for advice given based on incorrect details provided.

5.5 Call Recording

We record every call both inbound and outbound, for training and monitoring purposes. We will accept both written (paper or electronic) and recorded verbal instructions to proceed, on the basis the new pension provider will accept verbal instruction.

5.6 Anti-Money Laundering

We adhere to all applicable legislation, including the anti-money laundering regulations. To become a client, we will verify your identity, using an electronic checking system to validate your name and address. The data supplied will only be used to confirm your name and address against the electoral register and public records.

In instances where we are unable to verify your identity using our electronic system, you may need to provide further evidence to confirm your identity and residence.

5.7 Your Money

Pension Works Limited will not handle or hold your money during our service and if appropriate, the subsequent transfer of funds. Instead, money will be transferred directly between pension providers for added security. We cannot accept any payment unless it is in respect of an item invoiced by Pension Works Limited.

5.8 Force Majeure

Pension Works Limited shall not be in breach of this Agreement and shall not incur any liability to you if there is any failure to perform its duties due to any circumstances beyond its control.

5.9 Data Protection

Pension Works adheres to all GDPR directives in regard to protecting your data. If you wish to view our full data protection policy; please visit our website www.pensionworks.co.uk/privacy-policy or email info@pensionworks.co.uk to request a copy.

5.10 Cancellation

In most cases, you can exercise a right to cancel by withdrawing from the contract. In general terms, you will typically have a 30-day cancellation period with the provider for a life, pure protection or pension policy and a 14-day cancellation period for all other policies. If you wish to pause or cancel any transfer, we require written confirmation and this to be acknowledged by Pension Works. Please be aware that should you accept advice to switch pension providers and then cancel within the 30-day period, the original provider may not accept the funds back.
The start of the cancellation period will normally begin when you are informed that the contract has been concluded or, if later, the day on which you have received the contractual terms and conditions. Instructions for exercising the right to cancel, if applicable, will be contained in the relevant product disclosure information which will be issued to you.
If you cancel a single contribution contract, you may be required to pay for any loss you might reasonably incur in cancelling it which is caused by market circumstances. You might not get back the full amount you invested if you cancel the policy. Full details of the cancellation terms applicable to any product you decide to take will be given in the Key Features document or other documentation supplied by the product provider.

5.11 Termination of Service

The authority to act on your behalf may be terminated at any time, without penalty, by either party giving seven days’ notice in writing to that effect to the other, but without prejudice to the completion of transactions already initiated. If you terminate any transaction, having requested us to act upon the recommendation we have provided, we reserve the right to charge a proportionate fee for the service provided. Termination of this Agreement will also terminate any ongoing service.

5.12 Terms of Business Governance

These terms of business are governed and shall be construed following English Law, and the parties shall submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

5.13 Terms of Business Version

This version of Pension Works’ Terms of Business was produced and effective from 25.03.2020.