Retiring soon?

If you’re approaching retirement, it’s important to start considering your options for turning your savings into an income. You can start taking your benefits from age 55. Here are some of the ways you can take the pension benefits you’ve built up:

Annuity

This is the regular income you’ll get from your retirement savings, and is paid for the rest of your life. The money you’ve saved is used to buy your annuity (also known as your pension) from AEGON or any other pension provider. You can choose a pension that stays the same for life, one that increases each year, or one that’s guaranteed to pay out for a set period of time (even if you die). You can also choose a joint annuity which will pay a portion of your pension to your partner should you die in retirement before them. 

How much income you’ll get will depend on how much you’ve saved, as well as factors like your age, sex and health when you buy your annuity.

Tax-free cash

You can normally take up to 25% of your pension benefits as tax-free cash. Before the age of 75, if you’ve transferred in money from any other company pension plans, it could be more or less than this amount. We’ll tell you exactly how much you can take at the time. The rest of your money will be used to provide a pension.

Phased retirement

This is like a series of mini-retirements spread out over time. Your retirement fund is divided into segments and invested in your chosen funds. You can cash these in when you want to get your tax-free cash or annuity.

Income drawdown

You can take income direct from your retirement fund instead of buying an annuity. Because your money remains invested you can benefit from any investment growth. The value of an investment and any income from it can fall as well as rise and is not guaranteed. You may not get back the amount you originally invested.

There are lots of choices to make when you approach retirement so you may want to get professional financial advice to help.

Tools to help you

Use our online tools to help you plan your future.

Why choose AEGON?

Our award-winning technology and support makes setting up and running a pension scheme easy.