Claim death benefits

If you are the person dealing with the member’s estate, please give us your contact details. This should be the person who is dealing with the member’s affairs who we can contact if we have questions about reclaiming over payments.

You only need to fill in the section below if the death happened overseas. Please make sure that you send a copy of the death certificate along with an official translation. If not, the claim could be delayed or rejected.

The trustees will take into consideration the member’s residential status at their time of death. This is important for any member who died whilst not legally married, in a civil partnership or who has been co-habiting and sharing joint financial responsibilities for residential costs.

If the member was married or in a civil partnership at their time of death, it is possible that we will pay a spouse’s pension. To work out and confirm this benefit, please fill in the following section. This should include details of the bank account where we should pay any benefits.

Only fill in this section if you want benefits to be paid to an overseas bank account. There are special conditions which apply to paying overseas pensions. Please contact us for details of terms and charges.

Please provide details of all dependants and all children from the member’s current and any previous relationships whatever their age. Please ensure that this includes all children under the age of 18 and children between the age of 18 and 25 in full-time education. Please also supply details of any person, other than husband, wife, civil partner and children, who were financially supported in some way by the member who has died. If necessary additional details should be provided on the ‘Further information’ page. For the trustees to fully assess financial dependency, you must provide evidence along with the claim form. This should include copies of utility bills, joint bank or building society account information and joint mortgage or rental agreements. We may reject a claim which does not include suitable, current supporting evidence.

The trustees can decide who receives benefits from the scheme and will take all of the member’s personal circumstances into consideration before anything is paid. You can provide details of any other information, that is not already covered in this form, about the member’s personal circumstances at their time of death that might be relevant.

Tax
Inheritance tax: The payment of lump sum death benefits on most pension schemes is ‘discretionary’ and therefore will not be part of the member’s estate for inheritance tax purposes.
Discretionary means that the trustees are free to decide who to pay the death benefit to. The trustees will often take into account the member’s wishes, although they do not legally have to follow them. This is why it is important for the trustees to understand as much as possible about the member’s personal circumstances at their time of death.
Income tax: Any pensions paid directly from the scheme to beneficiaries will be subject to income tax (PAYE) that will be deducted at source. Pension payments are not subject to National Insurance deductions.

Important information
Isio and the Trustees of your pension scheme take privacy very seriously.
Information use: We use the personal information from this form and any other information that you give us to: value your pension, maintain records for the purpose of payment of pensions, pension related payments, pension communication, market research and to analyse statistics.
Information sharing: We will release information disclosed on this form to other companies within the Isio group of companies (and any future owners), the trustee’s professional advisers, insurance companies (where requested by the trustees of your pension scheme or you), other service providers who hold or process your data on our behalf and third parties to whom we are required to transfer data by law or regulatory requirements (e.g. government and regulatory authorities).
Fraud prevention: We will check the details provided on this form with fraud prevention agencies. If you give false or inaccurate information and we identify fraud, we will pass your details to fraud prevention agencies. Law-enforcement agencies may access and use this information. We and other organisations may also access and use this information to prevent fraud and money laundering, for example, when processing a claim to pay benefits.
You can view our Privacy Notice here: Privacy Policy
Please contact us if you would like to view the Privacy Notice specific to your pension scheme.

Identity verification: Before we pay any benefits we will verify the address and identity of any beneficiary using an electronic identity checking service. Using a range of UK public registers and credit agency reports, we will automatically verify the identity of the beneficiary.
This process will leave a search footprint on the beneficiary’s credit history record but will not affect their credit rating. All checks we perform will be logged as ‘ID check’ and these have no impact on credit ratings. If the beneficiary does not meet the minimum requirements of the identity check, we will write to them to obtain further documents and information in order to verify their identity.
These measures are designed to protect the pension scheme and its members from fraudulent claims.