Good afternoon everyone and thanks for taking a minute of your time to help out.
I have money in a pension fund in the UK and moved back to France permanently. What is my best option to bring the money back here? It seems to be a rather difficult thing…
Thank you
Adrien
Hi, welcome to SF.
In case it makes a difference, could you tell us what kind of pension fund you’re in please? A company scheme, private pension, etc. I’m sure someone will be able to point you in the right direction. 
Thank you for your message !
It s a personal pension plan with the company Aegon Retirement Choices .
Thank you. I should also have asked what age you are, as this can affect what choices you have.
I’ve been through this recently with two small private pensions.
Sadly as non-UK resident you can no longer open new business with UK pension providers, such as buying an annuity or opening a draw down account.
There are some weird workarounds but the best advice I got was to withdraw the whole fund, reclaim the emergency tax paid on the 75% that isn’t tax free & declare it all in France as the tax payable on pension lump sums is relatively favourable.
It’s worth a look around this forum as there are other threads that cover this subject.
Do you necessarily have to move the whole pot back to France?
I’ve been looking into this in advance of my own move, and it seems that although you can only buy an annuity while you are still UK resident, after moving to France you can usually still do drawdown from a UK private pension into a UK bank account and then transfer money across with a currency firm such as Lumon, TorFX, etc.
You might even be able to have your drawdown paid into a fintech such as Wise or Revolut and convert the money to Euros yourself via their app (assuming they give you a UK IBAN number, which Wise do.) It would depend on whether that account is acceptable to the pension firm for withdrawals.
I am not in any way shape or form a pensions expert, but I seem to recall that the problem with moving a pension wholesale to France is that there are no QROPS pension schemes in France (I think the French authorities consider them to be a tax dodge).
If you are moving the money to a fund that’s not a QROPS then the UK Government will sting you for 45% tax!
I think some people use QROPS schemes in other EU countries such as Malta, but again I suspect the French authorities may take a dim view of that, and according to the web link quoted above you have to live in the country where the QROPS is based, otherwise the UK will nick 25%..
@George1 any thoughts?
Hello Adrien, also welcome to you too.
The pension will be taxed in France, HMRC will take tax also which you will reclaim by sending them a double tax treaty form signed / stamped by your France tax office.
Your options depend on whether you have accessed the pension already or not.
If there are already withdrawals, just take it out as and when you want. Taxed at your France marginal tax rate - 0%, 11% or 30% - etc.
If no withdrawals, you also have an option to take it out as a single lump sum and have it taxed under the France ‘prelevement forfaiture ‘ paying 6.75% tax.
As has been said, there are plenty of threads and also a tax / pensions person available on this site offers an initial 1-1 as well, I think.
The threads do get a bit muddled up though if you do have some time you will find it well worth it. The key words obviously are pensions and pension lump sum and prelevement forfaiture.
Regards.
Edit - there may be social charges also if you pay these in France (no S1 or private health cover) - I have one and always forget!
Welcome Adrien
Some excellent points already made.
One or two other points. You can access the funds in your personal pension on or after your 55th birthday. I don’t know your age, and I see @Jennifer11 has raised this point above. The age threshold will increase to 57 in 2028.
I’ve set out what will hopefully be a useful thread above. It focuses on the actual steps needed to obtain a refund of UK tax withheld. It is not super difficult to sort out the tax situation but you need to be both very, very patient and methodical! France has exclusive ultimate taxing rights on the pension income if you are French resident, but the UK pension company will have to comply with PAYE withholding rules and provisionally tax it. The UK can typically take from 2 months to 12 months - from receiving the application form - to make the refund (via Form France Individual). Interest is not usually payable.
My experience of taking several UK pensions in France is that companies will generally agree to pay them directly to French bank accounts but you lose control over the exchange rates used by the companies. I prefer to choose the timing of when to transfer myself now.
Good luck, and don’t hesitate to ask any questions on this forum. There is a lot of experience collectively here.
We’re with Aegon too!
I can’t face all the shenanigans to cash in our pots while resident in France so have done nothing for now.
Be careful the options may be narrowed by the UK Chancellor even if you are in the UK. It might turn out that 6.75% on the whole lot while you can is a good option. You can always reinvest (but careful on timing if you were doing the withdrawal and reinvest in the UK - look up pension recycling or ask a Financial Adviser). Run the numbers as at present, even if conditions stay the same in the UK for lump sums, that protection only applies to 25% of the capital value of your fund. You could also decide in which country, including third countries, to invest before making any move as generally in most countries, it’s easier to bring funds in than get them out (look at what happened to QROPS).
Could be, if you are likely to want to withdraw a lump sum? I can’t see the Chancellor imposing a tax raid on private pension funds themselves (although they are soon to be a taxable part of your estate if you die). They want to encourage people to self-invest for retirement so that the State has less to do in future.
FWIW my (current) plan is to take an annuity on some of my pot while I am still in the UK and then do drawdown on the rest. The logic being that the annuity plus state pension should satisfy the requirement for retirees moving to France to match SMIC, then the rest should be covered by the dual tax agreement and taxable in France not UK.
But everybody is different so getting proper professional advice is essential of course!
Annuities are now looking much more favourable than they were not so long ago. They’ve now recovered to around the rates that were available in 2007. You need to keep an eye on the rates though for when you do retire. Here’s a good website that can give you lots of info on annuities without having to give them all your data.
Yes indeed - they weren’t a good option for a while but are now doing an Arnie Schwarzenegger. 
(Haven’t got a Terminator emoji)
I have an IFA so will get some advice when the time comes, but thank you for the comparator link.
Just what I did before moving here. It’s the best thing I did, as following his advice has been very advantageous to me.
Good evening everyone and thank you so much for your insights and very detailed answers it is very much appreciated!
I am currently 33 years old and should retire between 62 and 65 depending on my future health !
From what I gathered from you the one single lump payment then being taxed the 7%ish in France seems to be the best way to go.
So we’re clear do I need to wait for the UK retirement age or my own here in France?
Thank you once again and have a great evening!
Adrien.
My gut feeling FWIW is not to worry too much about it right now - an awful lot of changes to pension regulations (both in the UK and in France) can happen in 30 years!
Yes, and no. I used to do market research on this type of stuff and there were (are?) people who chose to go into the police force in their twenties because they knew they would have a good pension. They were the ones in their large detached houses, going on cruises and on the golf course in their late fifties, and maybe doing a bit of security work on the side.
The rest of us? Not so much. 
Ah, you’ve met my next-door neighbour then? 
Retired from the UK police and then got a very well-paid job training the Abu Dhabi police. His wife worked for British Airways so to add insult to injury they still get cheap flights when they want to go away. They spend half their time in Uk and the rest of the year either at their flat in Austria or on holidays elsewhere.
They are nice people, but their jam sandwich definitely landed the right way up.
As for the pension, yes of course it’s important to make plans and put money away while you are young, but my point was that moving money from one country to another may not be worth it given that laws and taxes are very likely to change over the next 30-odd years.
Wise words from SF members about regulations being very likely to change in the intervening 20-30 years. Almost a certainty, given past patterns of government behaviours (of all political colours). However to answer your question, it is UK rules on retirement age that will determine when you can access your UK pension, not the legal retirement age rules of any other countries, including France.