You have 12 months from joining the Kent Pension Fund (LGPS) to transfer previous pension rights into the scheme. Your employer and Kent Pension Fund may allow you longer. This is a discretion. You can ask your employer and Kent Pension Fund what their policies are on these matters.
You should seek advice from an Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) regarding transferring pensions. You can find IFAs in your area on the Financial Conduct Authority website.
Process
- Your employer tells you about the Joiner Pack when you became a member of the LGPS. Within the pack is a Personal Details Declaration form. You complete this form to indicate if you are interested in transferring in pension rights and send it to us.
- When we receive your completed Personal Details Declaration form we investigate your requested transfer(s).
- We send you a transfer request form.
- You send the transfer request form to your previous pension arrangement. If you need to send the form to more than one, please photocopy it.
- Your previous pension arrangement tells us the amount of your transfer value. If they send it direct to you, please forward it to us.
- We work out how much pension this transfer value will buy you in the LGPS. We write to you to let you know what it will buy. You can make a comparison. We let you know details of deadlines which apply, and enclose forms.
- If you decide not to proceed with the transfer, you take no further action.
- If you decide to proceed, you return the forms enclosed.
- We request payment from the pension arrangement.
- When we receive the payment we tell you that the transfer is complete.
We are not part of the Origo system which is used within the transfer process by some pension providers.
Previous LGPS pension rights
If you have previous LGPS pension rights, they are usually automatically aggregated with your new LGPS pension. You have only 12 months from joining to make an election to keep your LGPS benefits separate.