Latest News on Minimum Income Requirement (MIR)

In our newsletter dated 20 December 2010 we stated that the new Pension changes were going to allow a new drawdown called ‘Flexible Drawdown’. These new rules stated that to qualify for Flexible drawdown you had to have a minimum income requirement (MIR) of £20,000 pa. This income could be a mixture of social security pensions, lifetime or dependants’ annuities or scheme pension.
Yesterday, 31 March 2011, there was an amendment that stated for scheme pension to qualify for MIR it had to be from a scheme of 20 or more members. This effectively rules out SSAS or SIPP scheme pension being used to provide the MIR. There are, of course, other reasons where scheme pension will be a useful tool for clients.