The Equus Silver Retirement Annuity Trust Scheme, which is registered in and managed from Gibraltar, has been added by HM Revenue & Customs to its official list of recognised QROPS.
With a set-up cost of £299 and the same level of annual management fee, the new scheme offers over 1,000 funds in seven currencies.
Steven Knight, chairman of the Castle Trust Group, said: “This new QROPS aims to make the management of pensions as simple and inexpensive as possible without compromising on investment choice.”
“It will particularly benefit the many people who have lower value portfolios that otherwise would adversely suffer from high minimum professional charges on the management of their pension. At this level, Equus Silver is directly comparable with the cost of providing a UK SIPP”, he said.
Equus Silver joins a number of other QROPS launches aimed at people with smaller pension pots.
These include Momentum Pensions, which has introduced a “lite” charging structure on both its Malta and Isle of Man QROPS last month for pension funds of under £100,000, with initial £300 fee and annual £500 charge.
Sovereign also launched a version of its Gibraltar based Calpe Retirement Benefit Scheme in December last year for pension funds of less that £100,000 with an initial £300 fee and an ongoing £500.
Further back, in 2011 Royal Skandia and Concept Group set up the Guernsey-based Aurora Quantum Lite – a QROPS with a fee structure aimed at clients with transfer values of less than £75,000. This scheme was subsequently struck off HMRC’s list of registered QROPs in April 2012 along with over 300 other Guernsey schemes.
Knight, who is also chairman of the Gibraltar Association of Pension Fund Administrators, said: “Our members have seen strong demand across the board for QROPS managed from Gibraltar, which gives the certainty of a low 2.5% tax rate and a pragmatic approach to determining fair distribution levels using bespoke actuarial input.”
Castle Trust’s initial Equus Retirement Annuity Trust Scheme, launched in 2009, is one of Gibraltar’s oldest HMRC listed QROPS according to the company.
