Flexible retirement

It’s up to you. You could take everything, nothing, or just a bit from your Investment Builder pot when you retire flexibly or fully. And if you retire flexibly, you can carry on contributing to your pot until you retire fully.

Flexible retirement isn’t available if you’re no longer paying in to USS. You must take your Retirement Income Builder benefits all at once. Any Investment Builder savings can remain invested until you need them.

We’ll pay a combination of benefits to your beneficiaries as if you’d died while paying in to USS and if you’d died after you’d retired, up to a maximum limit.

The total benefits we pay won’t exceed the value of benefits you would have received if you’ve died while you’d been building your pension, before the date of your first flex.

If you have any questions about what happens when you die if you’ve taken flexible retirement, call our Bereavement Team on 0333 300 1043 or email deathbenefits@uss.co.uk.

When you started paying added years AVCs, you would have agreed to pay a certain percentage of your full salary. But if you choose flexible retirement, you won’t be paying this percentage as you’ll need to reduce your salary/hours. So you’ll only get a proportion of the original amount you’d agreed to buy.

You’ll continue to contribute the agreed amount to buy your additional pension.

As you'll earn less after flexibly retiring, you may want to consider if this is still right for you.

When you flex, if you want to use your Prudential funds as part of your USS retirement, you have to take 100% of your funds or take them all in the future. You can’t draw just part of your fund.

You can take up to 25% of the value of your benefits as tax-free cash each time you flex. But if you don’t take your Prudential funds during your first flex, the amount of your Prudential funds you can take as tax-free cash on your next flex or when you retire fully may be impacted.

For more information about what you can do with your Prudential funds, see using your Investment Builder pot.

Yes, flexibly retired members can fully commute the unused portion of their benefits as a full commutation lump sum. For more information, see our Serious ill heath lump sum factsheet.