Changing Job

[MB65]

Hi
Started a small pension within the last year ( a prsa set up thru the company). I am now changing job to a company with its own pension scheme. I need to know what happens to the existing pension. Can i pay into a new pension and also to the old one. Should i just leave the old one sit. Is the old one lost forever ( I doubt if the contributions so far would pay the salesman commission ). Any advice - Thanks in advance

 

[Guest]

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There are a few others dealing with the scenario of changing jobs and deciding what to do with a PRSA or personal pension plan.

In short it should be possible to join the company scheme and leave the PRSA as it is (paid-up) without making further contributions in the meantime. It will continue it grow in line with the performance of the underlying assets/funds. You would not normally contribute to both the occupational scheme AND the PRSA unless the former doesn't allow for AVCs and you want to make these into your PRSA. Note that having more than one pension fund (albeit usually only one "active" at a time) is not necessarily a problem from an investment point of view (although it may mean a little extra adminstrative hassle) and is not that unusual these days. I have five different pension funds myself for example (paid-up regular contribution personal pension plan from when no occupational scheme was available to me, paid-up single contribution personal pension plan from when I made a lump sum contribution to avail of tax relief, paid-up occupational fund, paid-up occupational single contribution fund transferred in from an earlier job, active PRSA).

> I doubt if the contributions so far would pay the salesman commission

Are you sure about that? Standard PRSAs have charges capped at 5% of each contribution and 1% p.a. management fee calculated on the full fund value. Were you paying more than these charges?