Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get up to 125,000 Virgin Points by transferring a pension to Virgin Money

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This article is sponsored by Virgin Money which is responsible for its content

Virgin Money has launched an offer for anyone who is interested in transferring their existing pensions into a Virgin Money pension.

You can earn 125,000 Virgin Points if you transfer a pension worth over £100,000 to Virgin Money by 23rd August. However, you can receive a smaller reward by transferring as little as £1,000.

Existing Virgin Money pension customers can benefit if they transfer another pension which is held elsewhere.

You can find out more and full offer terms on the Virgin Money website here.

Get up to 125,000 Virgin Points by transferring a personal pension to Virgin Money

How does the offer work?

To qualify for this offer, you need to be a member of Virgin Red (which you can join for free if you are not a member) and transfer one or more pension(s) worth at least £1,000 to a Virgin Money pension by 23rd August 2024.

The funds must be kept in the pension until 20th December 2024 to qualify for the Virgin Points.

How many Virgin Points will you earn?

The amount of Virgin Points you will receive depends on the total amount of money transferred into the Virgin Money pension:

Total amount transferred inVirgin Points reward
£1,000 – £9,99910,000
£10,000 – £24,99920,000
£25,000 – £49,99945,000
£50,000 – £99,999100,000
£100,000+125,000

You can only earn Virgin Points on the transfer of an existing pension and not on any additional investment you make yourself.

What can you do with 125,000 Virgin Points?

Virgin Red offers you a genuinely broad range of ways to spend your Virgin Points reward.

What can you say about a list of rewards that ranges from a Greggs sausage roll for 200 Virgin Points, to a stay at Sir Richard Branson’s brand-new luxury hotel in Mallorca for those with a six-figure balance?

And, of course, you have flight rewards. This article shows you how many Virgin Points you need for reward flights on Virgin Atlantic, Air France, KLM, Delta and other SkyTeam airlines. 125,000 Virgin Points would be more than enough for return flights for one person to New York JFK (peak or off-peak), Barbados (off peak), The Maldives (off peak) or Shanghai (off peak) to pick just a few examples. Terms apply. Taxes, fees and carrier-imposed surcharges apply to reward flights and charges must be paid in cash.

How is your money managed?

Virgin Money’s pension has been designed with simplicity in mind and offers two choices for customers to choose from, Navigator and Self Drive. Both pension options are managed by a dedicated team of investment experts.

  • Navigator – is a hands-off way to manage your pension. Virgin Money automatically adjusts your investments as you age, moving towards more stable and lower risk investments as retirement approaches.
  • Self-Drive – is for customers who want to steer their own route to retirement. It consists of four different investment approaches to suit different risk appetites: Careful Defensive, Cautious Growth, Balanced Growth and Adventurous Growth

The options are explained through a series of guides and videos on the Virgin Money website here, as well as two easy Navigator or Self Drive calculators.

With Virgin Money’s Online Service and dedicated app, you can keep track of your pension wherever you want to, as well as top up at any time.

What fees will you pay?

You pay up to 0.75% of your pension pot in total each year, based on the value of the account.

This is made up of two clear and simple charges – an Account Charge of 0.30% for managing the account and an Annual Management Charge of up to 0.45% for managing the investments.

Remember, the value of investments can go up and down, so you may get back less money than you put in. Tax depends on your individual circumstances and the regulations may change in the future. Currently, with this product, you can only access your pension money as a lump sum from age 55 (57 from 2028). So, if you’re looking for flexible access, this might not be the pension for you.

Where can you find out more?

You can find more information on the Virgin Money pension offer on its website here.

Virgin Money is a trading name of Virgin Money Unit Trust Managers Limited.

Comments (44)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Alex says:

    Interactive Investor charge fixed fees on a SIPP, £12.99 fixed over £50k which can work out a lot cheaper than the percentage fees for larger pots.

    • Alex says:

      £12.99 per month that is, and setup on direct debit to come out of another account.

  • Dev says:

    You got to be mad if you transfer your Pension/SIPP/ISA for points. You will lose out in high fees, and those fees will make the difference between being able to forget having to redeem at awkward times for flights to being able to just go ahead and buy cash fares instead.

    (Ok, bit more dramatic than reality … but don’t do it!)

    • anuj says:

      Unless it’s an in species transfer and the bonus you receive outweighs the likely higher fees of the new provider. To clarify this virgin money offer is NOT in species so imo a terrible idea.

  • SammyJ says:

    I have a £100k-ish pension that I just whizz around anywhere that’s offering a decent sign up bonus…. Live for now, and all that.

    Last transfer was into Nutmeg last Sept… I can’t find the T&Cs on that – would anyone know offhand if there’s a penalty if I transferred it over to this?

    • dougzz99 says:

      I’m not sure in regard the T&Cs you ask after, but I have a bridge for sales.

    • Matthias says:

      They have a minimum holding period which you need to check. When I transferred in mine it was quite long, think 2 years but then I got something like 200k Avios.

      • SammyJ says:

        Thanks, I thought it might be something like that, but I’ve done a few and it was a crazy year with other things so I’ve lost track! delve deeper later.

  • Danny says:

    Any recommendations for someone in their 30s looking to start saving for a pension?

    • Rhys says:

      Go read monevator.com, it’s basically the HfP of UK passive investing.

      • MKCol says:

        Thx for that, might be interesting despite being 2 decades older 😆
        Thankfully have had pensions for 3 decades now & investigating where to move my Nutmeg one to, to reduce the fees.

  • LukeM says:

    If you decide to go ahead, be wary of the ‘navigator’ option. This moving around of assets as you approach retirement is a hangover from the days when you had to buy an annuity on day one with your pension pot. Most people today will want to keep their pot invested in largely equities, to fund what could be a lengthy retirement.

  • dshunter says:

    Taking advantage of these bonuses is worth it in some situations even if it’s barely worth it vs fees. Money now is far more useful than it is to me when I retire. Who knows what caps/haircuts/taxes may be applied in future years.
    However, wouldn’t touch a product like this where the only options are poorly performing funds.

  • Christian says:

    I am not sure if anyone will see this now the article is a couple of days older! But, I decided to do a bit of research into this. I think this could potentially be a good deal for some people, for shifting your pension now, and back again at the end of the year (when you get the points) probably including me! See my calculations below. My pension fund would be eligible for 100k points.

    First thing is, 100k points is a decent chunk. If you are spending it on travel, its roughly an off-peak business class return to Miami (plus fees and taxes), or a 4-5 day cruise on Virgin Voyages. This is what I would spend it on. I value these at say £1,200 or so (possibly more).

    My current pension is with AJ Bell, and the fees up to the end of the year would be £72. Theres also a small dealing charge of around £8 (everything is in one Vanguard fund). Virgins fees are roughly 0.7% annually, so the fees would be roughly £202 to the end of the year. So thats an additional cost to me of £120 in fees.

    There are no fees to transfer the pension in or out, for both AJ Bell, and Virgin.

    The more important cost in performance. How much better/worse would an actively managed Virgin pension perform compared to the passive one I already have? Its hard to now. But, you can say that, on balance, with all things being equal, an actively managed fund, is more likely to underperform a passive one, especially when fees are taken into account. Lets be generous and call it a coin toss. So I have a chance that the Virgin pension will perform worse than my passive fund, but there is also a chance that it outperforms it.

    So am I willing to bet on a coin toss? Heads I win, a 5 day cruise in the bahamas, and maybe some (unknown) fund outperformance. Tails, I lose, £120 fee differential, plus the (unknown) underperformance.

    I think I would probably take the bet on those terms…. Plus, over a short period of 5 months, how bad could the underperformance be?

  • Christian says:

    I explained that last part really badly! And there does not seem to be a way to edit it.

    Heads I win, a 5 day cruise in the bahamas, and maybe some (unknown) fund outperformance.

    Tails, I lose, £120 fee differential, plus the (unknown) underperformance. But I still get the cruise!

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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