I am coming up for 60 at Christmas and have a pension pot of around 117000k consisting of 3 final salary deferred pensions and a very small rebate only fund from the 1980s. My husband is retired, and our income is based on his index linked occupational pension and additional income drawn from stocks and shares income. My pensions, with the different schemes together would provide an immediate annual pension of £6.5k, or a reduced pension of £4.95k with max cash of £26.3k. Unfortunately not all of the pension would be index linked (something to do with GMP amounts): only around £3k if I take max pension, and £1.7k if I take max cash - at RPI to max of 5%. The average percentage on the occupational schemes is 5.48% (6.34, 5.04, 4.79 - and 4.67 percent as an annuity on the rebate scheme with the same insurance provider).

Our FA/pensions adviser recommends transferring to a 'cautious fund' pension with one of the large pension/insurance providers; we have some other 'cautious fund' investment schemes with them which we are not drawing down from at the moment. The pension fund invests 70% in fixed interest securities, cash and money market instruments, and the rest in equities, property and alternative assets whatever they are. It provides a growth of 5.55% (net of a 1.45% AMC). No start up charges but not sure about other possible charges, commission etc. I can't work out whether this is better or not, if you see it as stand alone pension, especially with the constraints of the GAD, or what would happen if there is a further drop in gilts, or if inflation rises etc. If I took max pension with the occupational schemes in 10 years on 5% escalation (if) the pension figure would be £7.8k; if I took all the tax free cash the pension figure would have gone up form £4.95k in year 1 to £5.7k at year 10.

The max cash on drawdown is £3k higher than max cash from the occupational schemes (which is not quite 25% of the transfer value they are offering) so this increases the immediate benefit of drawdown but occupational pension could start to be better at year 17 year - all depending on gilts and gads and fund value of course. I appreciate the other differences - flexibility to buy an annuity later, estate, etc. So the choices are which way to go and whether with either to take the max cash or not, and I would welcome any advice or comments.