"The best performing pension could produce more than three times more pension income than the worst performing one. The really bad news is that your pension fund is more likely to be amongst the bad than the good" The Observer
Flexibility of retirement age
Some final salary schemes will not consider allowing a scheme member to start to draw benefits before the scheme normal retirement age (NRA). Others will allow this to happen, but only with sometimes excessive penalties. Very few permit benefits to be deferred after NRA.
Flexibility of single or joint life annuity
What’s the value of the promise of a spouse’s pension to a scheme member who isn’t married?
Flexibility of increases to pension in retirement
If the scheme member has reduced life expectancy, the lower initial pension from an escalating annuity may never, unfortunately, reach the higher level the client could have enjoyed personally from a level pension.
Flexibility of nomination of death benefits
What if the scheme does not recognise common law partners or same sex partners for this benefit? Depends on the personal circumstances of each client, of course.
Commutation factors
If the client wants to take maximum tax free cash at retirement, the Institutes of Actuaries have openly expressed their dismay that many scheme members are made to forego (‘swap’ or ‘commute’) excessive amounts of pension for the ‘privilege’. Avoidable, if the benefits are transferred.