What deVere clients should know when they decide to leave

Most people who come to me having been advised elsewhere do not have a clear picture of the structure they are in. Typically it is a pension that was transferred into an offshore arrangement, a QROPS or an international SIPP, held inside an investment platform or an insurance bond, with a portfolio of funds underneath. The costs sit in layers, and the layers are rarely visible from a single statement.

Before any decision about leaving, the first task is a written inventory. What is the wrapper, who is the platform, what are the underlying holdings, and what does each layer charge per year. Until that exists on one page, a comparison with any alternative is guesswork, and guesswork is how value gets lost on the way out.

The most expensive mistake on exit is triggering a charge you did not know was there. Many offshore bond structures carry an early-encashment penalty that tapers over a set number of years from the date the bond started, and an establishment charge that the provider recovers over the same window. Surrender in year three of an eight-year taper and you can hand back a meaningful slice of the pot for no reason other than timing.

Ask the provider for the surrender schedule in writing, with the exact taper and any outstanding establishment charge. Sometimes the right move is to wait a defined period before exiting. Sometimes the penalty is small enough that leaving now is plainly better. You cannot tell which without the schedule, so get it before you act, not after.

It is common to find the wrapper described as the problem when the larger drag is the portfolio inside it. A bond or platform charging its own annual percentage, holding funds that each charge another percentage or more, can run to a total ongoing cost that quietly removes a large share of the long-run return. The wrapper and the holdings have to be assessed together, not separately.

When you map every layer, you often find the answer is not simply "leave deVere" but "leave this combination of wrapper and funds for a lower-cost, transparent structure that holds investments you can actually name". The destination matters. Moving from one opaque, expensive arrangement to another achieves nothing.

Order matters. A transfer done in the wrong sequence can crystallise a penalty, create an unintended tax event, or leave you out of the market at the wrong moment. The sensible sequence is: confirm the surrender terms, confirm the receiving structure is suitable and in place, confirm the tax position of the move in both the UK and Thailand, and only then instruct.

For a Thai-resident retiree the 2024 remittance rules and the UK-Thailand double tax agreement both bear on timing, so the exit is not only a pensions question. It is worth having the whole picture costed before a single instruction is sent.

A clean outcome is a structure where you can state, in one sentence each, what the wrapper costs, what the holdings cost, and what any advice costs. You should be able to name what you own. You should know what every charge pays for. If a product is part of the right answer, you should have seen what it costs and what it pays the person recommending it before you agreed to it.

That last point is the test I would apply to any recommendation, including my own. The structural problem behind most of the exit stories I hear is not that a product existed. It is that the client never saw what it cost or what it paid the adviser. The fix is disclosure in writing, before you decide.

This article describes the mechanics of unwinding an offshore-arranged pension or bond in general terms. It is not personalised advice, and the right course depends entirely on your specific structure, its penalty schedule, and your tax position in both countries.

The UK pension transfer service sets out how the practice reviews an existing arrangement and what any recommendation would cost and pay before you commit to anything. For a 30-minute conversation about your own structure, book a consultation.