Pensions statement FAQs

The OAS is an optional service provided by Wesleyan Financial Services. It will provide you with the opportunity to receive a financial review at least once a year. You will also be kept informed about relevant changes to taxation and regulations.

The Annual Allowance, which is currently, £60,000, is a limit on the amount of pension contributions or savings that can be made in a tax year without incurring a tax charge. If your total annual income is more than £200,000 your Annual Allowance could be reduced. The exact limit depends on various definitions of your earnings, and if you are unsure of your Annual Allowance, we recommend you seek regulated financial advice.

Taking money from your pension in the form of a taxable withdrawal through either the Flexi-Access Drawdown or Uncrystallised Funds Pension Lump Sum options, will trigger the MPAA. It is not triggered by buying an annuity with your pension savings.

Once triggered, the level of contributions that can be paid into money purchase pension schemes (for example, your Wesleyan personal pension) before incurring an Annual Allowance tax charge, will be restricted to £10,000 per tax year. This includes all contributions paid by yourself, your employer or any other parties. If you have triggered the MPAA, your pension provider will notify you. You should, in turn, notify any other pension providers that you hold a pension with.

You should consider taking regulated financial advice before taking a taxable lump sum or sums from your pension savings to ensure it is the most suitable option for you, particularly if you want to carry on building up your pension savings.

This part of your pension Plan is where you build up your savings before accessing any of the benefits, often this is referred to as your uncrystallised benefits.

This is the part of your pension Plan that you have already taken some benefits from, this could be as a result of taking some tax free cash or because you have chosen to take regular or occasional withdrawals from your Plan. Often this is referred to as the crystallised benefits part of your Plan. Further details of this can be found in the Benefit Crystallisation Event (BCE) Certificate issued at the time you took the benefits.

Product and Fund Management charges
These generally relate to costs and charges arising from the management of the investment fund in which your money is invested and the servicing of the Plan. For example, initial charges paid on every payment into the Plan, switch charges and recurring charges such as fund management, Plan fees, product administration, dealing costs.

Other recurring charges include transaction and fund costs, which represent the expenses of dealing in the underlying investments of the funds. They are not directly charged to your Plan and are spread across all investors in the fund. They include costs such as:

• The difference between the price of a fund asset immediately before an order is placed in the market and the price that the trade is actually executed at
• Commissions paid to brokers
• Taxes such as Stamp Duty

Advice charges
If you have received any financial advice, payment for this will be made as part of the product. For advised sales, there is an ‘Initial Advice Charge’ for each new investment. Wesleyan Financial Services collects any fee directly from the payments you make.

If you have opted in to the ‘Ongoing Advice Service’, recurring ‘Ongoing Advice Charges’ are collected from your fund value.

For a full breakdown of all the charges detailed, please contact our Customer Engagement Team on 0800 294 8857.

As a mutual, Wesleyan doesn't have shareholders so we can work to benefit those who invest in our business – our customers and members. That is why we say, "we are all about you".

Our in-house Investments Team, which includes our highly experienced Fund and Property Managers, Analysts and Socially Responsible Investment Team. Together, they manage approximately £7bn of assets, with the main aim of achieving strong long-term performance across our fund range, to maximise the financial returns for our members and customers.

If you’re investing in the With Profits Fund, you should be aware of what a Market Value Reduction (MVR) is.

In certain scenarios, such as periods of stock market volatility, we might need to apply an MVR. An MVR is an adjustment that can be applied to the value of your investment if you chose to cash-in or withdraw from the fund at certain times, reducing how much you get back.

We will only apply an MVR if we believe it fairly reflected the value of your investment and that it was necessary to protect our with-profit fund and those policyholders who remain invested.

Lifestyling involves gradually switching the money you have already built up in certain funds and redirecting any future contributions into our lowest risk fund. The aim of Lifestyling is to reduce the amount of risk your money is exposed to as you approach your selected benefit date.

As you established this pension scheme for your employee, we are required to send the annual statement to you. It is your responsibility to provide a statement to the named employees.

We would have given you these documents when you first took out your Plan with us. If you would like a copy, please contact us using the phone number on your statement or by email at statements@wesleyan.co.uk.

All our funds are rated in one of five categories: Risk Averse, Low Risk/Reward, Moderate Risk/Reward, Moderate-High Risk/Reward and Higher Risk/Reward. The risk rating of each fund is given on their factsheet. Detailed fund factsheets are available here.

Low Risk/Reward - This means the fund is intended for investors who are looking for better returns than cash-based investments that aim to beat inflation and accept investing a portion of their money in some higher risk assets to achieve this. This means when investments are cashed in they may be worth less than the amount invested.

Moderate Risk/Reward - This means the fund is intended for investors who are looking for higher returns than cash or fixed interest based investments and accept investing in higher risk assets to achieve this but in a way that limits exposure to frequent market rises and falls. When investments are cashed in, there is a risk that they may be worth less than originally invested.  Money is mostly held in shares and property, with a lower proportion in fixed interest and cash based investments.

Moderate-High Risk/Reward - This means the fund is intended for investors looking for moderate to high returns and who accept investing mostly in higher risk assets to achieve this. This means when investments are cashed in they may be worth less than the amount invested. It is likely that the value of the investment will move up and down.

Not all funds are available for all Plans. Please refer to the Plan Document for further details.

Your Wesleyan Financial Services statement includes charges applied relating to all advice, not just on Wesleyan Assurance Society products. Also, the period your Plan statement covers is different, so we would not expect the amounts to match.

Read more about our recent bonus rates.

You can learn more about our With Profits Funds here.

For regulated financial advice or for queries relating to your Plan, including whether your current level of cover is still right for you, please speak to your Specialist Financial Adviser from Wesleyan Financial Services directly, or call us on 0800 294 8857 and we’ll arrange an appointment for you.

In light of the turbulent economic conditions experienced in recent years, you may find our monthly Investment Market updates beneficial on how these factors impact fund performance.

We have assumed that investments in the following funds will grow at the rates shown until you decide to take your benefits.

1.0% a year: Deposit Fund; Risk Averse Fund

3.0% a year: Government Bond Fund; Corporate Bond Fund; Low Risk/Reward Fund

5.0% a year: all other funds

Your investments may not perform in the way that we have assumed and you should review these regularly.

There are a range of reasons why we may have not included illustrations as part of your statement, However, if you would like an illustration, please contact us and we will be happy to arrange this for you.

We do not provide an illustration for your Plan if that Plan’s selected benefit date has passed. Therefore, you will stop receiving an illustration with your statement if you have passed this date.

We do not provide an illustration for your Plan if that Plan’s selected benefit date is less than two years away from the date the illustration is calculated. Therefore, you will stop receiving an illustration with your statement as you approach this date.

If you have a Plan that is in Flexi-Access Drawdown, you may not receive an illustration from us.

The projected pension figure is individual to you, and is calculated based on a number of assumptions about the future: for example, how old you are, when you would like to retire, the extent to which you are making contributions, as well as the future investment returns you will receive. It assumes that you will use your pot to buy a guaranteed income for life (an annuity), and regulation guides us on the annuity rates to use.

In addition, there are a number of other factors which may influence your projection: for example, investment returns over 2023/24. Some of these may cause a decrease in your projected pension compared to previous years.

It is important to remember that your projected pension is just an estimate, and the benefits you actually receive at retirement could be very different.