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Although HMRC now allow Precious Metals within UK Pension funds, an area of constant frustration for us is the inability to hold these within all self-invested personal pensions.

The problem partially arises from the way in which Insurance companies are supervised and regulated, specifically, the European Communities (Life Assurance) Framework Regulations 1994.

These regulations are currently being reviewed under the Solvency II framework. However, we are not optimistic that matters will improve. As one analyst put it:

“If a list of eligible assets is to be maintained, in the context of the Solvency II Framework which seeks to remove unnecessary differences between banking and insurance supervision, the continuing exclusion of gold bullion seems anomalous.” *

It seems that the powers that be within the EU are happy for an anomalous situation to persist.

However, our research has found that, even when the pension is not administered by an insurance company, major players in the provision of pension plans in the UK are still not prepared to admit bullion investments.

What is even more surprising, is that many of these pension plans are being sold as ‘self-directed’ or ‘self-invested’ and promote ‘the widest range of investment choices’. In reality, many investors are being subjected to a form of “asset class censorship” by their pension provider.

In our experience, we are finding that some of the smaller, trust-based schemes are much more flexible for example www.palpartners.net

Given the significance of carefully choosing the best mix of assets to purchase, it would be prudent to take great care in your choice of pension provider: you might find you have a version of “self-directed” which is not quite as flexible as you were lead to believe.

Summary of Self Invested Personal Pensions allowing bullion investments

 

* from 'SOLVENCY II - The framework directive approaches' by Towers Perrin Tillinghast.

 

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