What this site is, plainly
Pension to Australia is a free, independent information service for people moving retirement savings to Australia from the UK, US or Canada. It is not a financial advice practice. We hold no Australian Financial Services Licence and we do not give personal financial advice. What we do is narrower and, we think, genuinely useful: explain the rules accurately, check specific facts against public registers, compute your own dates and thresholds from the figures you enter, and — only if you ask — introduce you to a licensed practice that can actually advise you.
That boundary is deliberate and we'd rather state it on its own page than bury it in a footer. If a question needs a licensed adviser, we say so and point you to one instead of answering it ourselves.
Primary sources, not secondary summaries
Every substantive figure, threshold and date on this site is taken from the body that sets it, not from another website's account of it. In practice that means:
- HMRC — the Recognised Overseas Pension Schemes notification list, and the Pensions Tax Manual for unauthorised payment charges and the pension age test.
- UK legislation — the Pension Schemes Act 2015 for the £30,000 safeguarded-benefits advice requirement, and the Finance Act provisions behind the Normal Minimum Pension Age.
- The ATO — contribution caps, and the guidance on foreign super fund transfers.
- Australian legislation — the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, sections 305-70 and 305-80, for the six-month window and the 15% election.
Where a page states a rule, it links to the source so you can check it yourself. We would rather you verified a figure against gov.uk than took our word for it, which is why the links go out to the primary source rather than to another page of ours.
The figures on this site move, and we say when
This is a subject where a page that was correct when written quietly becomes wrong. Three things change on their own schedule:
- The HMRC ROPS list is republished on the 1st and 15th of every month — schemes are added and removed. We never present a fund's status as settled, and we always point you at the live list.
- Australian contribution caps are reindexed most financial years.
- The UK Normal Minimum Pension Age rises from 55 to 57 on 6 April 2028.
Every guide and landing page carries a visible last updated date, and the structured data behind it carries the same date, so you can judge how fresh a page is without guessing. We re-check rate-sensitive figures when the underlying source changes — at the start of an Australian financial year for caps, and whenever a legislated date approaches — rather than on a fixed calendar that would produce meaningless date churn.
What we deliberately don't do
- We don't give personal financial advice, or anything that could reasonably be read as a recommendation to transfer or not to transfer.
- We don't project investment returns, forecast exchange rates, or put a number on what you'd be better off by. Anyone who does this for a cross-border transfer is guessing.
- We don't present a scheme's QROPS status as verified by us. We tell you where the authoritative list is.
- We don't require you to give us anything to see your reading — no email wall, no gated PDF.
- We don't sell or share your data. That claim is independently and automatically verified rather than merely asserted, which is unusual and is the point.
Independence and how we're paid
The site is free to use with no obligation to proceed. Where you ask for an introduction and a licensed practice pays a referral fee, that is disclosed by the practice under its own obligations. It doesn't change what's written here: no page recommends a specific fund, scheme or product, and nothing on this site is placed or paid for by a third party.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, we want to know, and specifically: pension rules are detailed enough that a well-informed reader will sometimes spot a nuance before we do. Email [email protected] with the page and what's incorrect. We check it against the primary source, fix it if it's wrong, and update the page's last-updated date so the change is visible rather than silent.
Accuracy, and the limits of it
We take care with this material and cite it properly, but general information written for everybody cannot account for your circumstances, and the rules genuinely do change. Nothing on this site should be acted on as though it were advice about your situation. Before you move a pension across a border — an act that is, in most cases, irreversible — get advice from someone licensed to give it in the relevant jurisdiction. Where a UK safeguarded benefit is involved, that isn't just prudent, it's a legal precondition.
Want the reading rather than the policy?
The free assessment computes your own dates and thresholds against the current figures, and cites the source for each one.
Begin your assessment →