NORMAL LIFE: You Won't Take My Money, But You'll Give Me Some?

Recently, I was going through some papers and realised that I had two pensions in my name which two different employers had paid money into on my behalf as a benefit of working for them. One fund was significantly smaller than the other so I started the process of consolidating them.

Over the course of two hours, I had called both pension providers and the relevant previous employers to find out the process for transferring the balance of one fund to the other. Each party had a different preferred way for dealing with the process so I called the fund I wanted to consolidate everything into for advice.

Since I am living abroad and no longer subject to UK taxation, I am unable to maintain this particular fund. Somehow, I imagined that my time would end up wasted, set adrift amidst tax-related law bureaucracy. I was told that until I returned to the UK, had a permanent UK address and was subject to UK taxation, I would be unable to continue maintaining the pension fund in question.

Furthermore, the provider had no alternative products to offer allowing intra-country transactions meaning that I would need to open up a third, internationally maintainable fund! During the course of that call, however, I was told that the pension provider has recently demutualised (whatever that means!) and that I would need to speak to someone else before ending the call.

I was placed on hold briefly before a joyful Scottish woman came onto the line, informing me that my pension provider had free shares on offer as part of the provider's demutualisation. Thinking it would be minimal and annoyed by the fact that I would need to open a third pension, I was tempted to just left them keep the shares. Before I could make an excuse to put the phone down, however, the woman once again pointed out that I was no longer a UK taxpaper and therefore the monetary value of the shares would be awarded to me (for some reason, non-UK taxpayers are not allow to hold these shares) so they will be sending out a cheque for £529.

I nearly fell off my chair. My head was swimming in what can only be described as bureaucratic nonsense, but the long and short of it was that the pension provider was refusing to take money from me, but happy to give me money. I felt like I was a contestant on Deal Or No Deal. Deal, I thought!