Your UK pension, run from abroad

Your UK pensions did not stop existing when you moved. The State Pension keeps accumulating, old workplace pots keep growing, and both can be claimed from abroad. The questions are practical ones: whether your State Pension will rise each year where you live (in many countries, including Australia and Canada for most British expats, it is frozen at the rate first paid), whether gaps in your National Insurance record are worth filling at £18.40 a week, and what should happen to the workplace pensions you have collected along the way.

The numbers here reward attention. A single voluntary Class 3 year costs £956.80 at the 2026/27 rate and adds roughly £358 a year to the full State Pension, for life. On the transfer side, the rules changed in October 2024: a 25% Overseas Transfer Charge now reaches most QROPS transfers unless an exclusion applies, which has made keeping a UK scheme the practical route for many. Where safeguarded benefits in a defined benefit scheme exceed £30,000, UK law requires regulated advice before any transfer.

This is precisely the terrain a regulated pension specialist works every day: your forecast, your record, your schemes, and where you actually live, assessed together so decisions are made once. We make the introduction; the specialist does the advising.