Annuities

If you're happy to accept a higher risk, this annuity provides the potential for your income to grow in retirement through investing in the Aviva With-Profit Fund.

• You can choose how you receive your income - either monthly or yearly
• Our With-Profit Fund invests in a wide mix of assets to help spread the risk of investing
• Your income could go down, but our guaranteed minimum floor means your income will never fall below a minimum amount
• Talk to your adviser and find out how to apply for a With Profits Pension Annuity

Provides the potential for income growth in retirement

Our With Profits Pension Annuity gives you an income for the rest of your life and provides the potential for your income to grow through investing in our With-Profit Fund. The value of your income can go down as well as up and cannot be guaranteed.

What is our With Profits Pension Annuity?

It's a retirement income plan, which you buy with your pension fund. The minimum amount you'll need to buy a With Profits Pension Annuity is £20,000, after you've taken any tax-free cash sum. Your money will be invested in the Aviva With-Profit Fund.

This fund invests in a wide range of different assets, including company shares, fixed interest securities and commercial property. It's this mix of assets that helps to spread the risk associated with investing.

How does it work?

In contrast to conventional annuities, our With Profits Pension Annuity offers the opportunity for growth by investing your pension fund into our Aviva With-Profit Fund.

Along with other factors, such as your age and sex and size of your pension pot, your income from our With Profits Pension Annuity will be based on:

• The bonuses that are declared on the With-Profit Fund
• The anticipated bonus rate you choose
• The process of smoothing which means your income does not rise and fall dramatically

Returns earned by the With-Profit Fund are added to your pension income through bonuses. Essentially, the bonuses represent your share of the profits in the fund. There are two main types of bonus that can be applied to your income: a regular and an additional bonus.

At the start of the plan, you choose an anticipated Bonus Rate of between 0% and 4% in 0.25% steps. When choosing your Anticipated Bonus Rate you are in effect predicting (or 'anticipating') how well you think our With-Profit Fund will perform and the level of bonuses you will receive. If the bonuses declared are higher than the Anticipated Bonus Rate you have chosen, your income will increase. If the bonuses are lower, then your income will decrease. After 12 months you have the option of increasing or decreasing your anticipated bonus rate.

To help you plan for the future and ensure that your income does not change dramatically from year to year in line with the value of investments, we apply a process known as smoothing. This means that some of the money is held back in the good years to help make up the returns in the bad years.

To give you peace of mind, we also provide a guaranteed minimum income which guarantees that your annuity income will never fall below a minimum amount, which is the amount of income you could have bought at the start of the plan on an Anticipated Bonus Rate of 0%.

You can find out more about how this annuity plan works in our A guide to your With Profits Pension Annuity Investment and how we manage the With-Profit Fund.

What are the options?

The options you choose will affect the amount of income you'll get. You can get a personal illustration so that you can see the difference the various options make to your pension income. Find out more about the different options available.

What are the benefits?

• Growth potential. The amount of income you receive has the potential to increase over time.
• Income choice. Your income can be paid monthly or yearly, either ‘in advance' (this means that payment of your income will be from the start date) or 'in arrears' (payment will be one month or year after the start date, depending on your chosen payment frequency).
• Clear charges. We take our charges into account when we work out the price of your initial pension annuity and when we decide what bonuses to add to it each year.

Things to think about

• Cash-in value. Once you've bought your annuity, it has no cash-in value at any time.
• Your annuity ends when you die. This means that you may not receive your money's worth from your annuity if you die soon after taking it out.
• Your income will vary. The amount of income you receive has the potential to decrease.
• Changing your plan. At any time after the first year you can change the anticipated bonus rate within the limits in force at the time or you can convert your plan to a Pension Annuity. In both cases, we'll recalculate your pension. The other options you choose at the start of your plan can't be changed.

Other useful information

• Find the answers to some frequently asked questions
• Download our plan information guides

How to apply

If you think that our With Profits Pension Annuity is right for you, find out more about how to apply. If you need help deciding which annuity or options are most suitable for you, you can call one of our advisers or talk it over with your own financial adviser. You can find an adviser in your area at www.unbiased.co.uk