Royal London is the UK’s largest mutual life and pensions company, providing award-winning products and services which allow customers to save for the future, purchase protection, and invest with confidence and clarity.

Royal London is a proud mutual and exists for members to benefit from its services.

In the event of your death before you have drawn any benefits from your plan, the full value will be paid to your dependants or other nominated beneficiaries.

No initial charges apply to your plan. All contributions are invested without deduction in the default investment fund or fund(s) of your choice. No penalties will apply if benefits are transferred away in the future.  The annual management charge in the default fund is only 0.37%. Additional charges will also apply to some internal and external funds if they have been selected.

In order to provide a balanced spread of investments, all contributions will be invested 100% into the scheme’s default profile.

The default profile offers investment into a diversified range of UK and International Equities, Fixed Interest Securities, Commercial Property, and Cash. In the lead up to the Scheme retirement date (age 65) the fund is progressively switched into more cautious funds to reduce possible fluctuations in fund value as retirement approaches. This is known as “lifestyling”.

If you do not wish to invest in the default fund you may select your own investment portfolio from the wide range of funds available.

Bentham Ltd will contribute 4% of your basic pay as long as you contribute a minimum of 5% of your basic pay.

Salary Exchange, which is also known as Salary Sacrifice, is an agreement between Employer and Employee to give up an amount of pay in return for another benefit – in this case, a pension contribution.

When receiving pay/salary (as a basic rate taxpayer), much of your pay suffers tax (currently 20%) and Employee National Insurance (currently 8%). This means that you ‘lose’ 28% of your gross pay before receiving it as net/take-home pay.

By agreeing to give up an amount of pay/salary, no tax or Employee National Insurance is payable… because it hasn’t been paid to you.

This can best be shown by way of an example:

In this example, if you agree to ‘give up’ £100.00 of gross pay, your employer would pay the full £100.00 into your pension.  Your employer will also pass onto you their saved Employer National Insurance contribution of 13.8%.

Meaning that for a net cost of £72.00, £113.80 is paid into your pension (as opposed to £90.00 by conventional funding).

Note: Different figures apply to higher rate taxpayers. If applicable, please contact us so that we can provide calculations based on your circumstances.

If you would like more details or to take up salary exchange, please contact us.