According to figures released by the group yesterday, its advisers had assisted with 35% more cases of UK nationals wishing to transfer their pensions overseas using a Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme in 2012 than during the previous year.
The company’s chief executive Nigel Green said he attributed this growth to a loss of trust in how the British government treats pensions.
“More and more Britons who can move their pensions into a QROPS – in general terms that’s those with a British pension and who have left the UK or are planning to – are doing so.
“We attribute this significant increase to the mounting public perception that the government, which people believe is constantly changing the rules on pensions, cannot be trusted with them.”
Green added that, increasingly, the company’s British expat clients, or those about to move overseas, want to take their money out of the UK in order to “safeguard it from the government which is quietly and not-so-quietly plundering pension pots in the form of scrapping age-related benefits, and with the plans to cut pension tax-breaks and the tax-free allowance”.
