savings better off moved to pension ?

A question about : savings better off moved to pension ?

Hello,
I would appreciate some suggestions/clarifications on the below

I'm currently 62, probably carry on working till 65, 40% tax payer, have a Standard Life personal DC pension, both firm and I pay in 6%

In addition I currently save Ј600 / month (could do more)
I would be better off increasing the pension payments by that much rather than saving it externally - wouldn't I ?

I have some earlier savings ISAs and Cash (50/50) of about 100K
Would I be better off moving some % of those savings into the pension ? ( tax wise ? , any other wise ?)
if so should I put into the SL pension or get another personal one - any difference / reason to prefer one or the other

Best answers:

• Yes, you'd be better off using a personal or defined contribution pension since that'll get you the pension tax relief on top of whatever else you get. Even better if you're in a work scheme that uses salary sacrifice so you can gain from the NI saving of that.
  Yes, the same applies to the savings.
  Since you're 55 years old you're able from 6 April 2015 to get at all of the money in a pension, though the amount taken out beyond a 25% tax free lump sum is taxable as normal income. You'd need to check whether the work SL pension allows this, either directly or via transfer out, if it doesn't, just pay some money into a personal pension instead of the work one.
  Best to get started and get as much tax relief on pension contributions as you can while you're till working and have a relatively high earned income. That earned income is the limit of how much you can pay into pensions each year, unless it's more than Ј40k, in which case that would be the cap, though with the ability to carry forward unused allowance from the past three years if you were in any pension scheme except the state one.
• I edited the 1st post-
  The SL pension is actually a personal pension - i.e. its my pot (although it was set up/organised by the company)
  So can they stop me taking the 25% or transferring it out to either buy another providers better rate annuity or into a draw down scheme ?
• Yes, as a higher rate taxpayer you would be better off paying some of your cash savings and extra income into a pension.
  You can put in up to 40K per year total (incl employers contribs and tax relief) and you can use past years unused allowances too.
  Fill your boots as it were.
• Is it a "personal pension" or a "group personal pension"? If plain PP nothing they can do about it because you can just transfer out. if it's a GPP into which work contributions are going they would probably accept it anyway because you could transfer regardless by opting out, transferring, then enrolling again.
  Deferring the state pension will pay you 5.8% for each year deferred, pro-rated for less than a year. You can do this for several years and that 5.8% is more than twice what you'd get for a comparable inflation-linked annuity purchase. It's quite a good deal unless you have medical conditions affecting your life expectancy, when there's a chance that it might be beaten by an "enhanced annuity" that takes the shorter life expectancy into account.
• just checked - yes it is a Group Personal Pension
• They you'll need to check what is allowed so you can plan for that. Not a big deal but worth knowing in advance and perhaps asking them to change it. My work SL GPP did, to two free transfers out then a small charge for more.