Free to Use Annuity Quote Service

We are pleased to provide this free to use annuity quote service which is powered by The Annuity Exchange Ltd. If you need help, information or advice on purchasing an annuity you can also contact us on 01483 204600 or enquiries@arch-fp.co.uk

Purchasing an Annuity

An annuity is a guaranteed income, usually for the rest of your life but it could be for a fixed number of years, and in most cases is purchased by the pension fund(s) which you have built up over your working life, although you can also buy an annuity with cash.

If you, possibly with the help of an employer, have been building up a pension fund in a personal pension or stakeholder pension plan, the insurance company will write to you two or three months ahead of your stated retirement date on the plan to set out your options. The most important option is not usually the easiest to find in the paperwork and it is the Open Market Option. This means that you have the right to purchase your annuity from another insurance company if they will provide you with a higher level of income. That is where we come in. We can carry out this research for you and arrange the paperwork. The best increase we were able to obtain for a client over the last 12 months was 57% because he had recently had a heart operation.

If you would like to have a no-obligation discussion with one of our advisers please contact us on enquiries@arch-fp.co.uk or telephone 01483 204600 and ask for Sarah Bond.

The Impact of Health and Lifestyle

The majority of people who purchase annuities could obtain an increase in their pension payments due to their health or lifestyle, however, only a few do so. The reason for this is that most of the major pension offices do not offer such enhancements and therefore it is not brought to their attention.

If you use our services we will always check to see if an enhancement is available. A typical enhanced annuity for, say, a cigarette smoker will provide a 10% increase in the annuity payments for the rest of the person's life.

Surely that alone is worth contacting us for.

Our Charges for Annuity Arrangement

Where your pension fund, or total pension funds, is in excess of £65,000 we will normally be prepared to accept the standard commission offered by the annuity provider in full payment of our costs.

For smaller pension funds we have a minimum fee of £500. There are two things to note about this fee:

(1) We will deduct the commission that we receive from the annuity provider. So for example, if your pension fund(s) is £48,000 and you take the maxiumum tax free cash of £12,000, we might receive £360 in commission. Our fee to you will therefore be just £140.

(2) The fee is not payable until you receive the tax free cash amount. So in the example above, as soon as you receive £12,000 in cash you are asked to send us £140 for our fee.