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I'm employed by a large UK company (actually an American company, but the subsidiary). I have a (I think relatively standard) employer-provided money purchase pension, which I've been paying into for about 20 years.

Ideally I'd like to keep paying into this pension, as my employer provides matching contributions, and additional matching contributions up to a certain level if I make additional voluntary payments (which I am doing).

However, one of my principles is also that I'm nervous about putting all of my financial eggs in one basket (employer goes bust, pension plan goes bust, something gets hacked, who knows...). My understanding is that it's protected up to £85k by the FSCS in the UK, but my plan value is above that now.

Is there a way to transfer part of this pension value to a private pension, but continue to pay into the employer's pension, so I can get the matching contributions? If not, are there any alternatives which allow me to distribute my pension value over multiple pensions? I've done a fair bit of searching, but all the internet sources I can find only refer to transferring an entire pension permanently, with the implication being that all future payments also go to that pension.

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    Does this help? I think it's a duplicate but I haven't compared all the details: money.stackexchange.com/questions/57168/… Jul 17, 2020 at 11:30
  • It definitely helps, yes. The implication seems to be that it's possible but needs to happen with the permission of the source (employer) pension, which seems very weird - why would be in their interest? I'll ask them, but some more official (government-derived) info would help... Jul 17, 2020 at 12:40
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    @Andrew: The pension regulator does actually like the idea of pension savers being able to freely transfer to other schemes, in the hope money will flow to the better value ones rather than remaining "captive" in the worse ones. While the guidance for DC schemes at thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/document-library/… doesn't explicitly mention partial transfers, it does make it clear that transfers must be allowed at any age and not impeded.
    – timday
    Jul 17, 2020 at 20:24

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It depends on the rules of the scheme. You should contact the scheme administrator and ask them the question. While I was a trustee of a large employer pension scheme we changed the rules to allow this sort of partial transfer for exactly the reasons you mention. While it is perfectly reasonable to worry about putting all of your eggs in one basket, be aware that the pension fund should be segregated, so even if your employer does go bust the pension scheme shouldn't be affected.

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