How it works
Retirement Account
Our flexible plan for life
Your clients can save for retirement and take pension income from the same plan.
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The Control Account acts as a clearing and transactional account for all payments made to and from the Retirement Account.
- You and your client can access the Control Account(s) online (your client will have read-only access).
- The Control Account(s) are not designed for long term investment. We invest money from Control Accounts in a range of instant access and deposit accounts.
- If a Control Account has a positive balance, it may receive positive balance adjustments, see below for further information including current and previous rates.
Current Positive Balance Adjustments
From 19 May 2025, Scottish Widows are currently adding monthly Positive Balance Adjustments at a rate equivalent to 2.00% each year to customers’ Control Accounts that hold a positive balance. This means that for every £100 held in Control Account we’ll pay you £2.00 in positive balance adjustment.
This is based on the expectation that we will earn interest at a rate between 3.00 and 3.55%.
Start date
Positive balance adjustment rate
Interest retained by Scottish Widows
Start date
19/05/25
Positive balance adjustment rate
2.00%
Interest retained by Scottish Widows
1.00% - 1.55%
Previous Positive Balance Adjustments and Charges
The table below shows the yearly equivalent rates of Positive Balance Adjustments applied to customers’ Control Accounts that had a positive balance in previous periods. It also shows the details of the yearly equivalent rates of interest retained (‘Control Account Charge’) by Scottish Widows in those periods.
Previous positive balance adjustments and charges table Date
Positive balance adjustment rate
Interest retained by Scottish Widows
Date
25/11/2024 - 18/05/2025
Positive balance adjustment rate
2.30%
Interest retained by Scottish Widows
1.01%
Date
12/06/2024 - 24/11/2024
Positive balance adjustment rate
2.50%
Interest retained by Scottish Widows
1.46%
Date
01/10/2023 - 05/06/2024
Positive balance adjustment rate
2.30%
Interest retained by Scottish Widows
1.39%
Date
19/03/2020 - 30/09/2023
Positive balance adjustment rate
0%
Interest retained by Scottish Widows
0%
About Positive Balance Adjustments
Where interest is paid to us, each month we’ll add part of it to your Control Account(s) if you had a positive balance in that month. We call this a ‘positive balance adjustment’. The table below shows the yearly equivalent rates of Positive Balance Adjustments we expect to pay based on a range of possible yearly interest rates.
Interest we expect to earn
Positive balance adjustment
Interest we expect to earn
0 - 1%
Positive balance adjustment
0 - 0.48%
Interest we expect to earn
1 - 2%
Positive balance adjustment
0.48 - 1.05%
Interest we expect to earn
2 - 3%
Positive balance adjustment
1.05 - 1.72%
Interest we expect to earn
3 - 4%
Positive balance adjustment
1.72 - 2.5%
Interest we expect to earn
4 - 5%
Positive balance adjustment
2.5 - 3.38%
Interest we expect to earn
5%+
Positive balance adjustment
3.38%+
The maximum amount of interest that Scottish Widows will retain is the equivalent of 2% per year.