money purchase schemes but with notable differences to ordinary occupational money purchase schemes.
A GPP is essentially a cluster of individual personal pensions; not a common fund. The scheme will be administered by a life insurer and in theory at least the running costs ought to be lower than taking out a personal pension plan because of economies of scale.
The advantages of GPPs are
- flexibility for mobile workers. If you tend to change jobs more frequently say more than four times in your career a GPP will probably make more sense than joining the companys occupational scheme each time you sign up for a new job. The reason is with a GPP you incur no penalty for job hopping. If you leave your job you simply take your pension plan with you.
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- you own your own investment fund. Having the certainty of knowing what is in your pension fund is worth a little peace of mind. If investment performance is good youll get a bigger income in retirement but if its bad the reverse is the case. Nevertheless following the Maxwell affair where employees pension funds were raided for dubious purposes many employees would given the choice opt for the peace of mind of having their own segregated personal pension fund.
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- charges of running a GPP ought to be lower than having your own personal pension scheme - because the life insurer operating the scheme has the benefit of economies of scale in that some of your fellow workmates will join the same scheme.
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