RA vs Pension fund

[Cius]

So at the moment I have a provident fund via my big employer. They give me a few options on who to invest with. I have had it 100% in Alan Grey but will probably just tick the standard option this year and split it over Investec, Coronation, and Alan Grey funds in about a 40/30/30 ratio. The return on those 3 unit trusts was as follows for the last calendar year:
Alan Grey: 22%
Investec: 24%
Coronation: 30%

5-10 year returns typically average around 18%pa for most of the above.

The issue I had is that I had the maximum tax free amount going into them and then had a top up RA for the rest of my savings. The RA however seems more limited and much lower risk and hence the return has averaged perhaps 11%, which is much lower than my pension. Fortunately I only put 1 or 2% there as compared to 15% into my pension.

Anyways, I am hearing that pension tax rulings are changing soon and that up to 27.5% of your pensionable salary can now be saved for pension tax free instead of the usual 15%. Is this true? If so I want to scrap my RA payments and just preserve what I have there and instead would like to up my pension payments into the high growth funds. Can anyone offer advice on if I am headed in the right direction here?

Can one migrate the balance of an RA into a provident fund?

Edit: OK, just saw this awesome post. So 27.5% is true. Still need to figure out if its worth canning the RA though and possibly migrating funds if possible.

 

[supersunbird]

So at the moment I have a provident fund via my big employer. They give me a few options on who to invest with. I have had it 100% in Alan Grey but will probably just tick the standard option this year and split it over Investec, Coronation, and Alan Grey funds in about a 40/30/30 ratio. The return on those 3 unit trusts was as follows for the last calendar year:
Alan Grey: 22%
Investec: 24%
Coronation: 30%

5-10 year returns typically average around 18%pa for most of the above.

The issue I had is that I had the maximum tax free amount going into them and then had a top up RA for the rest of my savings. The RA however seems more limited and much lower risk and hence the return has averaged perhaps 11%, which is much lower than my pension. Fortunately I only put 1 or 2% there as compared to 15% into my pension.

Anyways, I am hearing that pension tax rulings are changing soon and that up to 27.5% of your pensionable salary can now be saved for pension tax free instead of the usual 15%. Is this true? If so I want to scrap my RA payments and just preserve what I have there and instead would like to up my pension payments into the high growth funds. Can anyone offer advice on if I am headed in the right direction here?

Can one migrate the balance of an RA into a provident fund?

To answer the question at the end: No. Maybe with new RAs started after March 2015 it will be possible, but not existing ones.

Who is your RA with? Is it a unit trust RA you can stop without penalties?

About the 27.5%, you might be able to contribute more than 15% if you are on cost-to-company and the company allows it (who knows why they sometimes have the rules they do).

 

[Cius]

My RA is with PPS and is over two unit trust type funds and a property fund.

As to differeing amounts my work already allows you to vary your pension payments. I think they allow 12.5%, 15% or 17.5% now but that is of pensionable earnings so in reality its much lower than those numbers. I am currently putting in what they call 15% and I call 12.5%. Once the laws change I am hoping they will put in a bracket that is somewhere near 20% of my cost to company.