How can I take some of my retirement pot as cash?

• You have to be 55 or over. From April 2028, the minimum age will be 57.
• If you’ve got less than £3,000 in your pot, you can only take the full amount.
• If you have more than £3,000, you can make partial withdrawals.

1. You can make one withdrawal every calendar month.
2. The minimum amount you can take at a time is £200, and you must leave a balance of at least £2,000 after each withdrawal.

• The quickest and easiest way to start making withdrawals is by logging in to your online account.
• Alternatively, you could call us on 0300 020 0090 to get started.

Screen by screen guide for taking some of your retirement pot as cash

Log in to your online account and click ‘Retirement options’ in Quick links at the bottom of your dashboard.

• You’ll be able to see some of the details we hold for you on your account such as your name, address and NI number. 
• Please check if these details are correct on your account before continuing with taking your money out. 
• To begin, you’ll need to confirm Yes or No to the statement underneath your details.
• Your answers will help us to calculate any income tax that might be payable on your requested withdrawal. 
• If you’ve taken more than £268,275 as tax-free lump sum from all your pension schemes including the current withdrawal or if you’ve been granted protection of your tax-free allowance from HMRC, select the option Yes. 
• If you confirm Yes please follow the instructions and contact us by phone. 
• If you confirm No you can continue to view your retirement options.

• Click ‘Your options for taking money out’ to select one of the options to take your money out of Nest.

• Click ‘View your self-managed options’ to explore your cash withdrawal options.

• 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 Pensions Wise or a Financial Conduct Authority regulated adviser within the last 12 months.

• If you’ve taken guidance 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’, we will ask you to confirm that you are sure you wish to opt-out of receiving guidance from Pension Wise. To do this, you’ll need to tick the box and click ‘Continue’.

• Click ‘Take some of your pot’.

• Enter the amount you want to withdraw and click ‘Calculate’. This will show you 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.

• Click ‘Continue’ to proceed and confirm the bank account 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 to, 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.
• Please make sure your personal details are kept up to date. If you include your mobile number, we'll text you with an update on your request.
• 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 into any defined contribution pension scheme each tax year 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 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?

To avoid postal delays, please use your Nest secure mailbox to send documents to us electronically. We can’t accept copies of birth, death, marriage or civil partnership certificates. If you are sending one of these documents, you’ll need to send the original document by post.

To send us documents via your Nest secure mailbox:

• Log in to your Nest account and click ‘Mailbox’.
• Click ‘Compose message or chat’ and then click ‘Compose message’.
• Enter the subject, message type and the text of your message in the Your message field.
• Click ‘Attach file’ at the bottom of the message to upload your document. You’ll need to send separate emails from your Nest secure mailbox for each of your attachments.
• Once complete, click ‘Send’.

When using your Nest mailbox:

• Ensure the attachment file size doesn’t exceed 2 MB. Find out more about how to resize your image file.
• Don’t compress or zip the files. 
• Only .jpeg, .gif, .tiff, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx and .pdf file types can be accepted.