How Beach helps people combine pensions

Beach pension pot

Beach offers a personal pension, which is a great option to combine all of your old pensions from old jobs, and even other personal pensions.

If you’re not familiar with pensions, a personal pension is a type of private pension, meaning it’s a pension in your name and is all yours, rather than the government pension, called the State Pension.

A pension from work is also a type of private pension, and technically called a workplace pension. Your employer will open this for you, whereas with a personal pension, you’ll open it yourself.

With the Beach pension pot, you’ll get the same tax-free saving benefits as a pension from work, so any money you add to your pension will go in tax-free (you’ll get a 25% bonus on your money, and can claim back 40% or 45% tax back if you pay it, all called tax relief), and it will grow tax-free too (meaning you won’t pay tax as your money grows). However, there may be tax to pay when you retire and withdraw from it, it all depends on the tax rules at the time, and would apply to all pensions.

Easy to combine pensions

With your Beach pension, it’s easy to combine old pensions. It’s all handled within the Beach mobile app, which is available on both Apple and Android. 

All you need to do is add your pension provider and your policy number within the app. If you don’t know either of those, don’t worry, instead you can enter your old employer name, and the approximate years you worked there, and the Beach detectives will get to work and try to track down your pension and transfer it across to Beach.

It’s as easy as that, and only takes a few minutes to enter your pension details. Beach will handle the paperwork behind the scenes to get your pension transferred, and let you know if there’s any issues. They’ll keep you updated along the way too, and the customer support team is available to answer any questions too, and even available over WhatsApp.

You can add as many pensions as you like, and any in future too.

Your old pension will normally take around 6 weeks to arrive in your new Beach pension pot, but it can be quicker (Beach’s record is just 24 hours), however it can take longer too. It all depends on your existing provider, and how many hoops they make you and Beach jump through before transferring.

Saving more into your pension alongside consolidation

Beach is more than just combining pensions, although it's great at that. Once your pension pot is set up with Beach, which normally only takes a few minutes, you can add money whenever you like, even before you have combined pensions.

It’s tax-efficient too. With the Beach pension, you'll get a 25% bonus from the government added straight into your pension pot, and Beach will arrange this automatically. The bonus will simply turn up in your pension pot. It usually arrives at the end of the following month.

If you pay 40% or 45% tax on your income, you can claim the difference back from the government (HMRC), so an additional 20% or 25%.

Technically speaking, this is called tax relief on your pension contributions. Saving more into your pension is a great way to reduce your overall tax bill.

With Beach, you can set up a regular top up, for instance adding money each month, or you can add one-off top ups as and when you like.

Each tax year (6th April to the 5th April the following year), you can save as much as your total income, as a total across all of your pensions. For instance if you earn £40,000 each year, you can save up to £40,000 into your pensions each year (this includes your current pension from work if you have one).

There is also a legal limit of £60,000 per tax year, even if you get paid over this amount as an income. Having said that, you can use the previous 3 years tax year’s allowance if you haven’t used it all in that year, and had a pension open with any provider.

Adding money is easy to do, and it’s all sorted in a few taps by setting up a Direct Debit, or by sending money instantly via bank transfer directly to your pension pot.

Note: tax treatment will depend on your personal circumstances, and this isn’t financial advice. This article doesn’t include every tax situation.

Beach pension plan

The pension plan (investments within your pension) are tailored to your current age, so there’s no complicated investment decisions to make, and the pension plan will adjust over time with the aim of growing larger when you are younger (which can have bigger ups and downs) and then gradually reduce these ups and downs each year until you’re ready for retirement, at which point the goal is to provide a regular income.

Technically speaking, it adjusts the risk level, which is the mix between stocks and shares (also called equities) and things like bonds, which are essentially loans to governments and large companies who pay regular interest, and is generally seen as safer investments. So if you’re younger, there will be a higher percentage of equities and when you’re older there will be a higher percentage of bonds.

The pension plan is managed by BlackRock, the largest investment company in the world (when measured by assets they manage). They also consider things like reducing climate change, so when saving with Beach your pension could have a more positive impact on the environment and the world in general (compared to pension options without this focus).

Excellent customer service

We’re getting great feedback on our customer service, with fast response times, and even offering WhatsApp support so you can chat away with us when you like, fitting customer support around your busy lifestyle and outside of your email inbox (we won’t be offended if you leave us on read!). There is also email support and you can send us a message in the app.

Download and combine pensions today

Dare we say we’re one of the most modern pension providers in the UK, making us an easy option to combine pensions? Find out for yourself by downloading Beach from either the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.

By the way, Beach isn’t just for combining pensions, it’s for anyone looking to save more for retirement, find lost pensions and save separately to a pension with an easy access pot suited for general life savings, invested sensibly by experts, and tax-free within an ISA.

When investing with Beach, your money can go up and down in value, so you could get back less. Learn more.