
Personal Retirement Bonds (also known as Buy Out Bonds) are a pension plan which allows you to consolidate pensions from previous employments in your name. When you leave employment with a right to future retirement benefits, the funds to which you are entitled may be transferred from the pension scheme of your former employer into the retirement bond. A retirement bond is a single premium policy provided by an assurance company.
The bond will be invested by the assurance company (based on your fund choice) and the proceeds will be used at retirement to purchase retirement benefits. Your benefits need not be taken at the same time as benefits earned under a subsequent pension scheme. Once the bond is taken out, the retirement scheme of your former employer has no control over the funds held in it.