Can I transfer money from a personal pension to a SIPP, while leaving the original pension open?
Just to aid your searching, note that what your employer has provided you with access to is a Group Personal Pension . Now, as to the question of whether partial transfers from a GPP to a SIPP are possible - the answer would appear to be Probably Yes; however you should contact the pension administrator at your employer (who will be able to give both the employer's and the scheme's points of view), and also the SIPP provider you are considering, to get a definitive answer. I'm basing this on the results I'm seeing googling for 'partial gpp transfer', eg Partial transfer from group pension possible? and Is it possible to transfer?. Add to that the fact that one of the largest UK SIPP providers explicitly includes a 'Partial Transfer' checkbox on their pension transfer form. "Yes it's entirely possible; see below.  If you can't find anything on transfers out (partial or otherwise) on anyone's site it's because they don't want to give anyone ideas. I have successfully done exactly what you're proposing earlier this year, transferring most of the value from my employer's group personal pension scheme - also Aviva! - to a much lower-cost SIPP.  The lack of any sign of movement by Aviva to post-RDR ""clean priced"" charge-levels on funds was the final straw for me.  My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner!  Transfer paperwork was initiated from the SIPP end but I was careful to make clear to HR people and Aviva's rep (or whatever group-scheme/employee benefits middleman organization he was from) that I was not exiting the company scheme and expected my employee and matching employer contributions to continue unchanged (and that I'd not be happy if some admin mess up led to me missing a month's contributions). There's a bit more on the affair in a thread here.  Aviva's rep did seem to need a bit of a prod to finally get it to happen.  With hindsight my original hope of an in-specie transfer does seem naive, but the out-of-the-market time was shorter and less scary than anticipated. Just in case you're unaware of it, Monevator's online broker list is an excellent resource to help decide who you might use for a SIPP; cheapest choice depends on level of funds and what you're likely to hold in it and how often you'll trade."
Having gone though this type of event a few times it won't be a problem. On a specific date they will freeze your accounts. Then they will transfer the funds from custodian X to custodian Y. It should only take a day or two, and they will work it around the paydays so that by the time the next paycheck is released everything is established in the new custodian.  Long before the switch over they will announce the investment options in the new company. They will provide descriptions of the options, and a default mapping: S&P 500 old company to S&P 500 new company, International fund old company to international fund new company...  If you do nothing then on the switchover they will execute the mapped switches. If you want to take this an an opportunity to rebalance, you can make the changes to the funds you invest in prior to the switch or after the switch. How you contributions are invested will follow the same mapping rules, but the percentage of income won't change. Again you can change how you want to invest your contributions or matching funds by altering the contribution forms, but if you don't do anything they will just follow the mapping procedures they have defined.  Loans terms shouldn't change.  Company stock will not be impacted. The only hiccup that I would worry about is if the old custodian had a way for you to transfer funds into any fund in their family, or to purchase any individual stock. The question would be does the new custodian have the same options. If you have more questions ask HR or look on the company benefits website. All your funds will be moved to the new company, and none of these transfers will be a taxable event. Edit February 2014: based on this question: What are the laws or rules on 401(k) loans and switching providers? I reviewed the documents for the most recent change (February 2014). The documents from the employer and the new 401K company say: there are no changes to the loan balances, terms, and payment amounts. Although there is a 2 week window when no new loans can be created. All employees received notice 60 days prior to the switchover regarding new investments options, blackout periods. You've mostly got it figured out, but there are a couple of more points to consider: You'll be permanently losing a corresponding amount of your RRSP contribution room allowance, because the re-deposit of your funds into the new RRSP would count as a new contribution, the way you're proposing to things.   For a small amount, it might not matter much, and if you're like a lot of people, you may have more accumulated RRSP room than you can reasonably use up. There may be complications if spousal contributions were made into your account during the previous three years. "In the case of Fidelity, the answer is ""no."" Although when you leave your employer and roll over the account to an IRA, leaving it with Fidelity allowed me to keep money in those closed funds. My Roth IRA was not able/allowed to buy those funds." You can do this with no problem. What you want is a direct transfer style of rollover. This is simply where the money is transferred from your 401(k) custodian directly to your new IRA custodian. This will ensure there are no taxes or penalties on the balance.  The key is that the money is moving directly to the new account without you having direct access to the balance. This keeps the money out of your hands in the eyes of the IRS. The process should look something like this: A few notes: "You have a Solo 401(k). You can fund it with cash, or I believe, with shares of your own company. You can't pull in other assets such as the ISOs from another employer. I see why that's desirable, but it's not allowed.  You wrote ""this will mitigate all tax complications with employee stock options.""  But - you can't transfer the ISOs from your job into your Solo 401(k). As littleadv notes, it's self dealing. Once the ISO is exercised there's no hiding the gain into that 401(k)." littleadv's answer gives a concise summary of the system as it stands now, but much more changed than just the portion of the mandatory contribution that was diverted to the private plan. In broad terms, the balances of your accounts and your future benefit won't change. It's only the source of these benefits that's changing. The Bloomberg article describes the changes this way: The state will take over the amount of bonds that pension funds held as of end of Sept. 3 and turn them into pension liabilities in the state-run social security system... The state will assume control of 51.5 percent of pension-fund assets, including bonds guaranteed by the government and “other non-stock assets” After the change, Polish workers that held bonds in the private portion of their retirement portfolios will instead have more payments from the state-run pension system. The balances of your retirement portfolio and your future benefits shouldn't change, but the reality may depend on how the state pension system is managed and any future changes the government implements. The effect this change will have on future benefits isn't clear, because the change may simply delay the problem of high levels of outstanding sovereign debt, not solve it. The government stated that because increasing numbers of workers invested their money in private pension funds, less money went into the government's fund, which forced them to issue sovereign debt in order to cover the shortfall in their current pension liabilities.  The government's recent cancellation of government bonds in the hands of private pensions will decrease their overall outstanding debt, but in exchange, the government is increasing its future pension liabilities. Years down the road, the government may find that they need to issue more sovereign debt to cover the increased pension liabilities they're taking on today. In other words, they may find themselves back in the same situation years down the road, and it's difficult to predict what changes they might make at that time. "There are two different types of ISA; the ""Cash ISA"" for cash savings, and the ""Stocks and Shares ISA"" for stock market investing.  You can transfer funds between these two different types of ISA.  If your current cash ISA provider does not provide stocks and shares ISAs, then there may be a fee involved when transferring funds between two different providers. If I am reading your notation correctly, you have contributed the full allowance of GBP15,240 in both the current tax year and the previous tax year.   Each year you can contribute GBP15,240 (currently) to your ISAs and this can be done in any combination of cash ISA and stocks and shares ISA.  For example, you could put GBP5,240 into your cash ISA and GBP10,000 into your stocks and shares ISA. Regarding your questions : It is also important to understand that once you withdraw money from an ISA, it does not affect your previous contributions or allowances.  For example, if you have used your full contribution allowance for the current year and chose to withdraw some funds, then you have still used your full contribution allowance and so you cannot redeposit these funds." You can't actually transfer shares directly unless they were obtained as part of an employee share scheme - see the answers to questions 19 and 20 on this page: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/isa/faqs.htm#19 Q. Can I put shares from my employee share scheme into my ISA? A. You can transfer any shares you get from into a stocks and shares component of an ISA without having to pay   Capital Gains Tax - provided your ISA manager agrees to take them. The   value of the shares at the date of transfer counts towards the annual   limit. This means you can transfer up to £11,520 worth of shares in the tax   year 2013-14 (assuming that you make no other subscriptions to ISAs,   in those years). You must transfer the shares within 90 days from the day they cease to   be subject to the Plan, or (for approved SAYE share option schemes) 90   days of the exercise of option date. Your employer should be able to   tell you more. Q. Can I put windfall or inherited shares in my ISA? A. No. You can only transfer shares you own into an ISA if they have   come from an employee share scheme. Otherwise, the ISA manager must   purchase shares on the open market. The situation is the same if you have shares that you have inherited.   You are not able to transfer them into an ISA. "You're confusing between ""individual"" 401k (they're called ""Solo-401k"" and are intended for self-employed), and Individual Retirement Account (IRA). You can't open a solo-401k without being self employed. You can open an IRA and roll over money from your old 401k to it. You cannot get a loan from IRA. You can ask the 401k plan manager to reissue the checks to the new trust, shouldn't be a problem. Make sure the checks are issued to the trust, not to you, to avoid withholding and tax complications. This is what is called a ""direct"" rollover. You might be able to roll the money over to the 401k of your new employer, it is not always allowed and you should check. You can probably then take a loan from that 401k. However, it diminishes the value of your retirement savings and you should only do it if you have no other choice (being evicted from your home, your children are starving, can't pay for your chemo, etc... this kind of disasters). Otherwise, I'd suggest rolling over to IRA, investing in funds with significantly lower fees (Vanguard target retirements funds for example, or index funds/ETF's), and reassessing your spending and budgeting habits so that you won't need loans from your 401k. Re companies - ETrade is nice, consider also Scottrade, TDAmeriTrade, Vanguard, Fidelity, Sharebuilder, and may be others. These are all discount brokers with relatively low fees, but each has its own set of ""no-fee"" funds." Have you shopped around?  I would agree that the fees seem high.   The first question I would ask if if the .75% management fee is per year or per month?  If it is per month, you will almost certainly lose money each year.   A quick search shows that Fidelity will allow one to transfer their pensions into a self directed account.  Here in the US, where we have 401Ks, it is almost always better to transfer them into something self directed once you leave an employer.  Fidelity makes it really easy, and I always recommend them.  (No affiliation.) Here in the US they actually pay you for you transferring money into your account.  This can come in the form of free stock trades or money added to your account. I would encourage you to give them or their competitors a look in order to make an informed decision.  Often times, a person with lowish balances, can't really afford to pay those high management fees.  You might need in the 10s of millions before something like that makes sense. @JoeTaxpayer's answer outlines how to value it. Some other considerations: As I understand it, some public pensions may be tax-free if you still live in the state that is paying the pension. E.g. when a Massachusetts teacher receives pension, it is exempt from state taxes, but if that person moves to Vermont he will have to pay Vermont income tax on those payments. So if you plan to stay in the state post-retirement, this provides additional value. Pension payments aren't fully guaranteed by the PBGC. And not all pension plans are fully funded. Depending on the political and economic environment when you hit retirement, your retirement plan could suffer. (And if you aren't working, you may not have a union vote any more when the other working members are voting on contract amendments that affect pensions.) I'm not certain of all of the rules, but I hear news reports from time to time that formulas like what you've posted in the original question are changed through negotiation with the union. If you make an employment decision using the formula in year X and then the formula changes in year X+10, your expected pension payment will change. No. Disclaimer - As a US educated fellow, I needed to search a bit. I found an article 7 Common SMSF Pension Errors. It implied that there are minimum payments required each year as with our US retirement accounts. These minimums are unrelated to the assets within the account, just based on the total value. The way I read that, there would be a point where you'd have to sell a property or partial interest to be sure you have the cash to distribute each year. I also learned that unlike US rules, which permit a distribution of stock as part of a required minimum distribution, in Australia, the distribution must be in cash (or a deposited check, of course.) the pots will be negligible, however this capital could be used better elsewhere if I was to withdraw them. You won't be able to withdraw the money. Notwithstanding the recent 'pension freedom' changes, money put into a pension is still inaccessible until age 55 at the very earliest, and probably later by the time you get there. You should have been Advised of this every time you enrolled into a scheme, although it may well have been buried in something you were given to read. The best you can do (and what I would recommend, although of course this post isn't Advice) is to transfer the pensions to a personal pension, for example a SIPP, wherein you will be able to control where the money is invested. Most SIPP providers will gladly help you with such transfers. Would it be beneficial to keep these smaller pots with their respected schemes The reason I suggest transferring is that leaving the funds in workplace schemes that are no longer being contributed to is a surefire way of finding yourself invested in poorly-performing neglected funds, earning money for no one beyond the scheme provider. I use two different brokerages, both well-known. I got a bit spooked during the financial crisis and didn't want to have all my eggs in one basket. The SIPC limits weren't so much a factor. At the time, I was more worried about the hassle of dealing with a Lehman-style meltdown. If one were to fail, the misery of waiting and filing and dealing with SIPC claims would be mitigated by having half of my money in another brokerage. In hindsight, I was perhaps a bit too paranoid. Dealing with two separate brokerages is not much of an inconvenience, though, and it's interesting to see how their web interfaces are slightly different and some things are easier to do with one vs the other. Overall, they're really similar and I can't say there's much advantage (other than my tin-foil hat tendencies) to splitting it up like that. "Firstly (and this part is rather opinion-based) I would absolutely not think of making more pension contributions when you are currently totaling 6% of salary as ""over contributing"". There are some who argue that you should be putting a minimum of 20% away for retirement throughout your working life; you don't say how old you are / how close to retirement you are, but a common rule of thumb is to halve your age and put away that % of your salary into your pension. So I would certainly start with upping those contributions.  I actually don't think it makes much difference whether you go for just your workplace pension versus a separate private one - in general you end up paying management fees that are a % of the value, so whether it is in one place or split doesn't cost any less. The ""all eggs in one basket"" syndrome is a possible argument but equally if you change jobs a few times and end up with half a dozen pension pots it can be very hard to stay on top of them all. If you end up with everything in one pot and then transfer it when you change jobs, it's easier to manage. Other options:   ISA as you mentioned; on the plus side these are tax free. On the minus side, you can either go for a cash ISA which at the moment has very low rates of return, and/or a stocks and shares ISA which exposes you to risks in the stock market.   If you have debt, consider paying it off early / overpaying. Student loans may or may not be the exception to this depending on your personal situation. Certainly if you have a mortgage you can save a vast amount by overpaying early.   Other investments - stocks and shares, BTL housing, fine wines, Bitcoin, there are almost limitless possibilities. But it makes sense to max out the tax-efficient options before you look into these."