How do I take money out of the Nest Guided Retirement Fund?

• The minimum amount you can withdraw from your Nest Wallet is £20, or the full amount if lower. You can make one withdrawal a month. 
• You can make withdrawals from your Nest Safe at any time if funds are available.
• If you want to take money from your Nest Vault, you’ll either need to come out of the Nest Guided Retirement Fund and choose a different retirement option, or you can take all of your pot as cash. 

• The quickest and easiest way to start making withdrawals is by logging in to your online account.
• Click ‘Request a cash withdrawal’ in Your current fund on your dashboard.

• We recommend that you take guidance from Pension Wise which is a government service from MoneyHelper.
• If you’ve taken guidance from Pension Wise for this request, select ‘Yes’ and then click ‘Continue’ to proceed with your request.

• If you haven’t taken guidance for this request, select ‘No’ and then let us know if you’ve taken guidance from Pension Wise or a Financial Conduct Authority regulated adviser within the last 12 months.

• If you’ve taken guidance from Pension Wise or a Financial Conduct Authority regulated adviser within the last 12 months, select ‘Yes’ and then click ‘Continue’ to proceed with your request.

• If you haven’t taken any guidance within the last 12 months, select ‘No’ and you’ll get the option to book an appointment with Pension Wise.

• If you want us to book an appointment for you, please call us on 0300 020 0394 between 8am to 8pm, Monday to Sunday.
• You can also book an appointment directly on the Pension Wise website or by calling them on 0800 138 3944 between 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday.

• If you select all the options as ‘No’, you will see the screen below, asking you to confirm that you wish to opt-out of receiving guidance from Pension Wise. Should you wish to do this, you’ll need to tick the box and click ‘Continue’.

Taking cash from your Nest Wallet and/or your Nest Safe

• Enter the amount you want to withdraw from your Nest Wallet or click ‘Withdraw all’. Then click ‘Calculate’ to show the estimated amount you’ll receive in your bank account after deducting tax.
• When you take withdrawals from your pot, 25% will usually be tax-free and the remaining 75% will be taxed as part of your income for the year when you get the money. You may also be impacted by the tax-free lump sum allowance of £268,275, this is the total amount you can withdraw tax-free across all your pension schemes. For more information please see Your pensions and tax.

• To take money from your Nest Safe, click ‘Need more? Access my Nest Safe’, then enter the amount you want to withdraw.
• Click ‘Withdraw’ to enter your bank details.

• We'll need your bank or building society account details. We can only make payment to a valid UK account that's held in your name.
• If you've made a previous withdrawal from Nest, we'll show details of the account we paid onscreen for you to check. You can change these to a different account if you want to.

• Once you have submitted your request, to protect your Nest pot we send your details over a secure link to Experian to help check your identity. This won't affect your credit rating or any future credit searches.
• You should receive the payment within 5 – 10 working days once we’ve received the required information or if we don’t need any further details.
• We’ll send you a P60 statement after the tax year is completed if you’ve taken some of your pot as cash.
• Your Nest account will stay open and you can continue to save with us.
• If you’ve taken some of your pot as cash and later claimed your full Nest retirement pot or transferred out before your P60 is issued at the end of the tax year, then we’ll send you both a P60 and a P45 statement.
• Once you’ve taken money from your Nest account you won’t be able to pay more than £10,000 in the current tax year into any defined contribution pension scheme without paying extra tax.

Sometimes we may need to ask you for proof of identification and/or bank account ownership to verify your request. This is also to ensure your pot is protected and only the rightful owner gets access to the cash. To see more information on sending documents to Nest, please see What evidence do I need to provide to take my money out of Nest?

You may want to choose another retirement option if:

• You no longer want to be in the Nest Guided Retirement Fund.
• You want to access money in your Nest Vault.

If you want to choose a different retirement option, click ‘Need more?’ next to your Nest Safe.

• You’ll then be asked to confirm your decision. If you want to do this, click ‘Yes, continue’.
• You’ll then be taken to a screen showing your other options.