Define your lifestyle in retirement

Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs) can be one of the most effective ways to help you save enough money to fund the lifestyle you want in retirement.

AVCs are a great way to help bridge shortfalls in income that you may face in retirement, even with a final salary pension. They can help you catch up if you joined your employer's pension scheme late, if you plan to retire early or simply want to live more comfortably in retirement.

AVCs are tax efficient contributions made directly from your salary. Your contributions build up an additional pension pot to your employer's pension scheme. You can usually take up to 25% of your AVC pot as a tax-free cash lump sum, or use some, or all of it to provide a regular retirement income, supplementary to your employer's pension. Under the terms of the current contract you will need to do this by your 75th birthday.

We're the UK's No.1 AVC provider with over 295,000 AVC customers. We've been helping public sector employees save for their retirements for over 20 years - and we're the official AVC provider to the Teachers, Universities and Local Government Pension Schemes.

As a member of the NHS Pension Scheme, you have other options available to you to increase your pension benefits. You can buy 'Additional Pension' within your pension scheme, for more information contact your main scheme administrator. You also have the option of joining the TUC Stakeholder Pension Scheme to increase your income in retirement.

New Announcement

Confirmation to your Pension Input Period

A Pension Input Period (PIP) is the period of time over which you measure the pension savings made for or by you against the Annual Allowance.

For your NHS AVC Scheme, NHS Business Services Authority, on behalf of the Secretary of State, has nominated the Pension Input Period from 1st April to 31st March each year. This will apply retrospectively from 6th April 2006 and for future years.

For further information on the Annual Allowance, please see the NHS AVC Key Features Document which is available to download from the Literature Library on this site.