On the 18th of February 2009, the Federal Treasurer and Minister for Superannuation announced the "Pension Drawdown Relief for Retirees", which is intended to reduce pension minimums by 50% for the 2008/09 financial year. This relief is in recognition of the decline in account balances many retirees have experienced due to the recent downturn in global financial market conditions.
This was passed by parliament on Monday 16 March 2009. As a result, this change will benefit account-based pension holders to the degree that it avoids having to sell assets at a loss in order to meet the minimum payment amount for the current financial year.
As mentioned within the Pension Drawdown Factsheet, the temporary suspension of the minimum payment requirement will apply to:
• account-based annuities and pensions; • allocated annuities and pensions; and • market-linked (term allocated) annuities and pensions.
This will affect all BT Financial and Westpac account-based pensions currently on the prescribed minimum pension level.
If you HAVE already received the reduced minimum
You will be able to choose not to draw down further income from your BT Financial or Westpac account-based pension for the remainder of the 2008/2009 financial year (e.g. if your current minimum level is $10,000 per annum, you now only need to receive pension payments of $5,000).
If you HAVE NOT already received the reduced minimum
You can choose to receive one more payment for the remainder of this financial year to meet at least this revised minimum level. BT and Westpac will stop any further regular payments and allow you to nominate the one-off payment amount as well as when you wish to receive this payment.
To find out how to adjust your payments as a BT or Westpac customer, visit http://www.bt.com.au/pensions or call Customer Relations on 132 135.
*** Please note any requested change to your pension payments will take up to 10 working days to be implemented and we are unable to make any changes to regular payments due in March 2009.
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