Shawn cognizant phoenix email address

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Contact us. Home Shaun M. Shaun M. Klein Partner. Email me. Download vCard. Connect on LinkedIn. Regional Capabilities. More information Triwater: Advising the diversified water company on the sale of its water treatment subsidiaries to DuBois Chemicals. Young Innovations: Advising the global manufacturer and distributor of dental products in its acquisition of Promident, a leading manufacturer and supplier of dental handpieces, preventive consumables, infection control products and rotary instruments.

Triwater: Advising the diversified water company on the sale of its water filtration division to Culligan. Share Linkedin Twitter Email Print. How can the world's largest law firm help you today? Others ignored the commotion entirely, and continued to moderate Facebook posts as the paramedics worked. Utley was pronounced dead a short while later at the hospital, the victim of a heart attack. Further information about his health history, or the circumstances of his death, could not be learned.

He left behind a wife, Joni, and two young daughters. He was 42 years old. On Monday morning, workers on the day shift were informed that there had been an incident, and they began collecting money to buy a card and send flowers. But some site leaders did not initially tell workers that Utley had died, and instructed managers not to discuss his death, current and former employees told me.

I think they were worried about people quitting with the emotional impact it would have. In February, I wrote about the secret lives of Facebook contractors in America. Since , when the company came under heavy criticism for failing to prevent various abuses of its platform, Facebook has expanded its workforce of people working on safety and security around the world to 30, About half of those are content moderators, and the vast majority are contractors hired through a handful of large professional services firms.

In , Facebook began opening content moderation sites in American cities including Phoenix, Austin, and Tampa. The goal was to improve the accuracy of moderation decisions by entrusting them to people more familiar with American culture and slang. After regular exposure to graphic violence and child exploitation, many workers are subsequently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and related conditions.

My initial report focused on Phoenix, where workers told me that they had begun to embrace fringe views after continuously being exposed to conspiracy theories at work. One brought a gun to work to protect himself against the possibility of a fired employee returning to the office seeking vengeance.

Others told me they are haunted by visions of the images and videos they saw during their time on the job. Conditions at the Phoenix site have not improved significantly since I visited. Last week, some employees were sent home after an infestation of bed bugs was discovered in the office — the second time bed bugs have been found there this year.

Employees who contacted me worried that the infestation would spread to their own homes, and said managers told them Cognizant would not pay to clean their homes. If someone did make such a request, management would work with them to find a solution.

Facebook executives have maintained that the working conditions described to me by dozens of contractors do not accurately reflect the daily lives of the majority of its workers. But after publishing my story about Phoenix, I received dozens of messages from other contractors around the world, many of whom reported having similar experiences. The largest single group of messages I received came from current and former Facebook contractors in Tampa. Many of them have worked closely with employees at the Phoenix site, and believe working conditions in Florida are even more grim.

In May, I traveled to Florida to meet with these Facebook contractors. This article is based on interviews with 12 current and former moderators and managers at the Tampa site.

In most cases, I agreed to use pseudonyms to protect the employees from potential retaliation from Facebook and Cognizant. But for the first time, three former moderators for Facebook in North America agreed to break their nondisclosure agreements and discuss working conditions at the site on the record. Employees told me that pressure from managers to improve its performance has taken a toll on the workforce.

Contractors told me that Cognizant had lured them away from less demanding jobs by promising regular schedules, bonuses, and career development, only to renege on all three. They described a filthy workplace in which they regularly find pubic hair and other bodily waste at their workstations. Employees said managers laugh off or ignore sexual harassment and threats of violence.

Two discrimination cases have been filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission since April. They said marijuana use is so prevalent that the site manager jokingly complained at an all-hands meeting that he had gotten a contact high walking in the door. More than anything else, the contractors described an environment in which they are never allowed to forget how quickly they can be replaced.

It is a place where even Keith Utley, who died working alongside them, would receive no workplace memorial — only a passing mention during team huddles in the days after he passed. Employees who began working after he died told me they had never heard his name. Shawn Speagle was 23 and employed at an online education company working with English language learners when he visited a Cognizant job fair.

A recruiter there described to him a role in which Speagle would primarily help businesses analyze engagement on their Facebook pages. He might have to do some content moderation, the recruiter said, but Speagle entered the interview believing he was about to embark on a new career in high technology — one that he hoped would eventually lead to a full-time role at Facebook. Only after he began training did he realize that the job would not, in fact, involve helping businesses with Facebook marketing.

Instead, two weeks after Speagle was put onto the production floor, a manager told him he and a colleague would be reviewing graphic violence and hate speech full time.

But had his managers asked, they would have learned that Speagle had a history of anxiety and depression, and that he might not be suited well for the role. No one did. So they had to move more people to cover it.

Speagle vividly recalls the first video he saw in his new assignment. Two teenagers spot an iguana on the ground, and one picks it up by the tail. A third teenager films what happens next: the teen holding the iguana begins smashing it onto the street. Under the policy, the video was allowed to remain on Facebook. A manager told him that by leaving the video online, authorities would be able to catch the perpetrators. But as the weeks went on, the video continued to reappear in his queue, and Speagle realized that police were unlikely to look into the case.

Speagle had volunteered at animal shelters in the past, and watching the iguana die on a regular basis rattled him. I had to listen to its screams all day. It operates out of a single-story building next to a pond fed by two storm drains. On most days, an alligator emerges from one of the drains to bask in the sun. Cognizant was not always straightforward with applicants about the nature of the work in Tampa. Once he joined, though, he was made to work nights, and the bonuses never materialized.

Marcus was made to moderate Facebook content — an additional responsibility he says he was not prepared for. A military veteran, he had become desensitized to seeing violence against people, he told me. But on his second day of moderation duty, he had to watch a video of a man slaughtering puppies with a baseball bat. Marcus went home on his lunch break, held his dog in his arms, and cried.

He ultimately stayed for a little over a year. In its haste to fill the workplace, Cognizant made some odd staffing decisions. Early on, the company hired Gignesh Movalia, a former investment advisor, as a moderator. Cognizant conducts background checks on new hires, but apparently failed even to run a basic web search on Movalia.

According to the FBI, Movalia had falsely claimed to have access to shares of a fast-growing technology startup about to begin trading on the public market. The result is a raucous workplace where managers send regular emails to the staff complaining about their behavior on the site. Nearly every person I interviewed independently compared the Tampa office to a high school. Loud altercations, often over workplace romances, regularly take place between co-workers.

Verbal and physical fights break out on a monthly basis, employees told me. They told me that the daily difficulty of moderating content, combined with a chaotic office environment, made life miserable. I started being depressed. My anxiety went up. It was hard to get through it every day. It started affecting my home life. The company says it has janitors available every shift in Tampa. In the stalls, signs posted in response to employee misbehavior proliferated. Do not use your feet to flush the toilet.

Do not flush more than five toilet seat covers at one time. Do not put any substances, natural or unnatural, on the walls. It smelled horrendous all the time. The work day in Tampa is divided into five shifts, and desks are shared between employees.

Contractors I spoke with said they would frequently come to work and find their workstation for the day in dire condition — encountering boogers, fingernails, and pubic hairs, among other items. The desks would be cleaned whenever Facebook made one of its regular planned visits to the site. At other times, employees told me, the office was filthy.

Florida law does not require employers to offer sick leave, and so Cognizant workers who feel ill must instead use personal leave time. They are granted five hours of personal leave per pay period. Missing work is one of the few reasons Cognizant regularly fires its contractors.

She began going into work even when she felt ill to the point of throwing up. Facebook contractors are required to use a browser extension to report every time they use the restroom, but during a recent illness, Lola quickly took all her allotted breaks.

She had previously been written up for going to the bathroom too many times, she said, and so she felt afraid to get up from her desk. A manager saw that she was not feeling well, and brought a trash can to her desk so she could vomit in it. So she did. In April, two women who work at the Tampa site filed complaints with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that they had been sexually harassed by two of their male co-workers.

According to the complaint, the men regularly discussed anal sex in the office. A Cognizant spokesman told me that the employee has been suspended while the claims are being investigated. But some workers say they are still concerned. And am I going to make it home tonight? Hopkinson told me that her clients who have reported incidents to human resources are generally either ignored or retaliated against, a claim that was echoed to me by several other employees there.

For the six months after he was hired, Speagle would moderate to posts a day. He would frequently wake up in a cold sweat, crying. Early on, Speagle came across a video of two women in North Carolina encouraging toddlers to smoke marijuana, and helped to notify the authorities.

Moderator tools have a mechanism for escalating issues to law enforcement, and the women were eventually convicted of misdemeanor child abuse. The work came to feel pointless, never more so than when he had to watch footage of a murder or child pornography case that he had already removed from Facebook.

In June , a month into his job, Facebook began seeing a rash of videos that purportedly depicted organs being harvested from children. It did not. All the SMEs had to rush in there and try to help people. People were crying, breaking down, throwing up. It was like one of those horror movies.

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In addition to his work in K education, Shawn is a former lead faculty area chair for K doctoral education and faculty development administrator for assessment and resource. Shawn is the receipt of the University of Phoenix Southern California College of Education faculty member of the year and the scholarship faculty member of the year. His research and publications on education reform and teacher leadership were recently presented at conferences held at the 21st Century Academic Research Forum Conference at Harvard University in Boston and at the International Conference on Education in Chicago, where he received best research award.

Publications Using organizational learning to increase operational and conceptual mental models within professional learning communities. Teacher leaders as school reformers. Critical and creative thinking and rubric calibration in a first-year doctoral course sequence. Teacher Leaders as School Reformers. Full-time Faculty. Primary College or School:.

For unit-linked policies, the percentage of your premium that is invested. The limit on how much tax-free money you can build up in your pension in any one year based on your own contributions, any employer contributions and any contributions made on your behalf by someone else. The Annual allowance applies across all your pension savings, not per scheme.

If you exceed the Annual allowance, a tax charge the Annual allowance charge is made to remove the tax relief given to any pension contributions over the annual allowance. See also Money purchase annual allowance. The tax you will pay if your pension savings exceed the annual allowance. Tax is charged at your marginal rate. A bonus that may be added to conventional with-profits policies once a year. An amount we charge each year usually a percentage of the amount you have invested for managing your fund.

A rate of annual interest used by lenders, which takes account of the set up and continuing costs of a loan over its entire term. A person who receives an annuity for a specified term a temporary annuity or for the remainder of their life a lifetime annuity. An escalating guaranteed income increases over time to keep up with the increasing cost of goods and services, known as inflation.

Your income will start at a lower level and will increase by a chosen amount. Annuity policies may include a guarantee which means that the income is paid for a minimum number of years, even if you die.

Annuity rates offered by different providers vary and change regularly. The proportion of a fund that is invested in each asset class. Investments in a fund see also asset mix , asset class and asset allocation. The association speaks out on issues of common interest, helps to guide debates on public policy and promotes high standards of customer service in the insurance industry. The final bonus we assume will be paid when we estimate the value of an investment.

The regular bonus we assume will be paid when we estimate the value of an investment. It is a way of transferring money electronically from one UK bank account to another. Payments take three working days to clear. They are entered into the system on the first day, processed on the second day and cleared on the third day. The main interest rate that the Bank of England charges banks for secured overnight lending. It is used as a guide for other interest rates. The amount on which the maximum income that can be taken from a capped drawdown product is based.

It broadly matches the income a pension pot would provide if it was used to buy a lifetime annuity a guaranteed income for life. These occasions are known as benefit crystallisation events BCEs.

Any crystallising amount that exceeds the level of lifetime allowance available is charged to tax under the lifetime allowance charge. In a unit-linked fund, the price you can buy units at offer price is usually higher than the price you can sell them at bid price.

The price that you receive when you cash in or surrender sell units in a unit-linked policy. Someone who is related to you through a common ancestor rather than by marriage or adoption, e. A type of policy where you pay a single premium. These policies have no fixed term open ended and can be surrendered at any time. We will pay the sum assured or death benefit when you die.

The legal owner of a bond. This may include trustees of a pension scheme. Units that can be added to a unitised with-profits policy to increase its value. The amount of money made if an asset such as a building or company shares is sold for more than it cost the investment profit. A tax charged on the profit made by selling assets e. Everyone is allowed to make a certain level of profit each year before capital gains tax is charged.

You may qualify for Private Residence Relief on the sale of your main home. Also known as Initial Units. These can be allocated to a unit-linked or unitised with-profits policy, usually in the first one or two years. Capital units have extra charges to cover the selling and set-up costs for the policy. A type of income drawdown product that was available before 6 April It allows you to take an income directly from the pension fund while leaving the fund invested.

An option which enables you to have pension savings in a tax year which exceed the annual allowance without having to pay tax. It is only available where pension savings in one or more of the preceding three tax years were below the annual allowance. The unused allowance is carried forward into the current tax year. The amount you might get if you surrender or cancel an investment or life insurance policy. You should think carefully before cashing in your policy. We recommend you seek independent financial advice before you do.

A chargeable event will normally arise on a non-qualifying policy. For example, when you cash the policy in or if the life assured dies.

This certificate is used to work out whether you need to pay any tax in excess of the basic rate. There are a number of ways in which providers can cover the cost of managing your policy. Someone who has entered into a legal relationship a 'Civil Partnership' that is similar to marriage. A life fund is one that contains longer-term investment policies and pensions. An amount of money paid to an adviser or salesperson who advises you to buy a financial product. Since the start of advisers cannot be paid commission if they give you advice about pensions or investments.

They must charge you a fee for the advice. Commission can still be paid for advice on other products such as mortgages, general insurance or life assurance. Compound means that interest is also charged or earned on any previous interest. This is now the key official measure of inflation. It is calculated each month by taking a sample of goods and services that a typical household might buy including food, heating, household goods and travel costs, but excluding mortgage costs.

The size of the rise or fall in the index determines the rate of inflation or deflation. A term used to describe pension policyholders who were contracted out of the State Second Pension S2P. From 6 April , this option was no longer available to members of a money purchase pension scheme, such as a personal pension. Contracting out from a defined benefits pension scheme was also ended in April A type of with-profits policy which has a sum assured or guaranteed cash sum in other words, an amount we promise to pay you, so long as you pay all the premiums due for the term of your policy.

A type of insurance policy that will pay you a fixed amount, usually as a lump sum, if you are diagnosed with one of the severe illnesses, medical conditions or injuries specified in the policy. For example, the rules say that you cannot use reproductions of these certificates to provide evidence of birth, death, marriage or civil partnership. This is why we may ask for original certificates when you are claiming on your policy. An Act of Parliament that setsout the rules an organisation had to follow when they stored or used information about people.

This act also gave a person certain rights to see information about them and to have incorrect information corrected. Some life insurance policies are for a fixed length of time term and pay you a fixed lump sum if you die during that time.

With a decreasing term policy, the amount paid out if you die reduces over the term. At the end of the term, the policy typically has no value. A document that transfers benefits or rights from one party to another. Once signed, it becomes legally binding.

The delayed payment of a pension. This is delayed until the policyholder is ready to start taking it. For income protection policies, the period after the policyholder first becomes ill or unable to work and has not recovered before any income is paid. Pays a retirement income based on your salary and how long you have worked for your employer.

Defined benefit pensions include 'final salary' and 'career average' pension schemes. Generally only available from public sector or older workplace pension schemes. Your pot is put into various types of investments, including shares shares are a stake in a company. The amount in your pension pot at retirement is based on how much has been paid in and how well the investments have performed.

Also known as 'money purchase' schemes. The process by which a mutual company one that is owned by its members becomes a publicly-traded company one that is quoted on the stock exchange and is owned by shareholders.

Some guaranteed incomes can provide an ongoing income for a nominated dependant should you die. Payments you make direct from your bank account under the authority of a direct debit instruction.

An investment company is required to tell you the total cost of taking out a product or policy with them. The practice of spreading investments across different asset classes see asset class to create a balance of risk and return in an investment portfolio.

Any money left in your pension pot remains invested, which may give your pension pot a chance to grow, but it could go down in value too.

You may need to move into a new pension plan to do this. Replaced flexible drawdown and capped drawdown from April , though existing users of capped drawdown can continue in that plan.

A savings product that usually includes life cover. It pays you at least a fixed amount if you die before the policy matures or, at maturity, the sum assured in other words, the amount we promise to pay you, so long as you pay all the premiums due for the term of your policy plus any bonuses that may have been added over the term.

These tend to pay a higher amount of income on the basis that your life is expected to be shorter and so the income will not be paying out for as long. An option to help protect pension rights built up before 6 April from the lifetime allowance charge. The option was open until 5 April , but only to people who stopped building up additional pension rights after 5 April A way to release some of the value of your property to spend while you are alive. It is generally only suitable for people who own their property but have little in the way of other assets or income.

An 'escalating' guaranteed income or annuity increases over time to keep up with the increasing cost of goods and services, known as inflation. Your income will start at a lower level and will increase by your chosen amount each year. When a person dies, their 'estate' is everything they own except, in most circumstances, anything owned jointly with another person , less any liabilities, including their main residence, the value of any assets and most money given away by them within the seven years before the date they died.

The estate also includes all bank accounts, life insurance policies, unit trusts, individual savings accounts ISAs , but not personal pensions, unless we advise you otherwise. More information is available from HM Revenue and Customs. For some funds, we have started to distribute the estate to eligible with-profits policyholders. A projection of what you might get back from an investment.

It is worked out based on assumed growth rates and future charges you may have to pay. This is an example amount and is not guaranteed. The amount you actually get back may be higher or lower than the EMV, depending on the investment returns and the period invested. The term used to refer to an administrator in Scotland i. The term used in Scotland to refer to an executor i. This is sometimes known as an annual, maturity or terminal bonus. An independent body that regulates the financial services industry within the UK.

The Financial Ombudsman Service is an independent public body that helps settle individual financial disputes between customers and businesses. For more information, visit their website at www. Financial products that promise the lender one or more fixed cash payments in the future. They may be issued by central or local Government or a company in order to raise capital. The ability to protect pension funds built up before 6 April from a lifetime allowance charge. A way of using your pension pot to take an income directly from the pension fund while leaving the fund invested.

The income isn't guaranteed for life, but you have the flexibility to make changes to how much you take or to later switch to more secure retirement income products. Any payment you take will be added to your income for the year and taxed in the normal way. It replaced flexible drawdown and capped drawdown from April , though existing users of capped drawdown can continue in that plan. As they replaced some state pension benefits, they were subject to special rules. From 6 April , it was no longer possible to contract out into a money purchase pension scheme.

Any protected rights which existed on 6 April became non-protected rights or former protected rights, so are no longer subject to special rules. If you are in your employer's pension scheme, you may be able to build up a bigger pension pot by paying extra amounts into a separate, independent scheme which is known as an FSAVC scheme.

Indexes showing the relative increase or decrease in the price of selected shares on the London Stock Exchange. A fund pools together the money from many individuals and then the fund manager uses it to invest in a broad range of assets. A fund manager invests the money investors have paid into a fund in various asset types such as cash, bonds, equities and property and depending upon on the investment objective of the fund. European Parliament and Council regulation that sets out the rules an organisation has to follow to protect EU citizens' personal data.

This came into force from 25th May and replaced the Data Protection Act General insurance can include home, contents, motor, travel, unemployment and accident and sickness cover. Gilts are bonds that are issued by the British government, and they are generally considered low-risk investments. The name originates from the original certificates, issued by the British government, which had gilded edges. The yield income on Gilts is one of the factors used to set the basis amount for capped drawdown pensions.

When reviewing a capped drawdown pension, one of the factors used in calculating the maximum pension allowable is extracted from a set of tables calculated by GAD. If it does, and you can choose to take a guaranteed income for life an annuity , you are entitled to the guaranteed rate.

It is important to check whether you have a GAO and how it operates as this may give you a higher income than you can get from another provider. If it does, and you choose to take a guaranteed income for life an annuity from your pension policy, you are entitled to the guaranteed rate.

It is important to check whether you have a GAR and how it operates as this may give you a higher income than you can get from another provider.

Once a bonus has been added to a with-profits policy it is guaranteed to be paid at the end of the policy, so long as all the premiums due under the policy are paid. It also refers to where bonus rates are guaranteed to be fixed or at least a minimum amount. The minimum amount to be paid when a policyholder with a with-profits policy retires or dies, so long as all the premiums due under the policy are paid. A hybrid product that combines a guaranteed income for life with the features of a flexible retirement income product.

A policy where you can invest a lump sum for a fixed term typically 3 to 5 years usually with a guaranteed minimum return. A policy where you can invest a lump sum for a fixed term typically 3 to 5 years usually with a guaranteed income of a specified amount for the length of the term. A fixed term stock market linked investment with a built-in guarantee to return at least the original investment if held to maturity.

This offers investors the chance to share in stock market growth potential without risking their original investment. The minimum amount a policy will pay out if the policyholder dies during the term of the policy, as long as they make all the payments due.

These are exclusive funds with a high minimum investment level and are generally not open to the general public. They are unregulated and exempt from many of the rules surrounding a collective investment. This allows them to follow aggressive investment strategies that are unavailable to Financial Conduct Authority authorised funds.

While some hedge funds operate a conservative strategy, others take risky positions on market and share movement. Visit the HMRC website. Products that combine features of a guaranteed income and a flexible retirement income product to provide a retirement income.

The amount you actually get back may be higher or lower than the illustration, depending on the investment returns and the period invested. If you smoke, have high blood pressure, are on prescribed medication or have a medical condition, you may be eligible for an 'enhanced' guaranteed income also known as an 'enhanced', 'lifestyle' or 'underwritten' annuity. This type of insurance policy pays out if you're unable to work because of injury or illness.

It will usually pay out until your retirement, death or your return to work. Full details are given in the policy terms and conditions. The tax you pay on your income each tax year. The amount of tax you pay depends on the amount of money you earn and receive from your investments and savings and on your individual tax allowances. The only type of financial adviser who can choose from all the products available on the whole of the market.

An investment fund that follows a selected market index, for example the FTSE index. The value of the investment will go up and down in line with the index that it is based on. There are no guarantees. An increase to annuity payments, pension benefits or premiums you pay, linked to a government index typically the Consumer Price Index or Retail Prices Index.

The purpose of index-linking is to attempt to protect you against rising costs as a result of inflation. You will not lose Individual Protection by making further savings in to your pension scheme, but any pension savings in excess of your protected lifetime allowance will be subject to a lifetime allowance charge.

ISAs are tax-efficient savings and investment accounts. You do not pay income tax on the interest or dividends you receive from an ISA and any profits from investments are free of Capital Gains Tax. There are limits on the amount you can invest in ISAs in each tax year. The increase in the general level of prices of goods and services meaning that the same amount of money will buy less in the future than it does today.

Also known as Capital Units. Initial units have extra charges to cover the selling and set-up costs for the policy. A financial intermediary is someone, such as an independent financial adviser, who arranges or organises a financial product or service for you. A life assurance product that provides life cover for more than one person and pays benefits either on the first or second death. A record of the registered owner of land and of whether there are any mortgages or other restrictions affecting it.

The record is held by the Land Registry. The policy will normally have some cash in value. Full details of what happens when policyholders stop paying premiums are given in the policy terms and conditions. The simplest type of life assurance. If you die during the time you are covered, it pays out a specified sum of money.

The premiums stay the same throughout the term. There is normally no cash surrender value. If you have a policy that provides life cover, the policy will pay out a sum of money if the life assured on the policy dies. The total amount you can save into pensions in your lifetime while still getting tax relief. If you go over the allowance you will pay a tax charge on the excess when you draw out your savings as cash or pension. If taking it as income you will also pay tax on it at your usual Income Tax rate.

If you die leaving untouched pension savings that exceed the Lifetime allowance — and they have not already been assessed against it — then your nominated beneficiary will be liable for the extra tax charges on the amount that exceeds the Lifetime allowance. This applies whether you die before or after age Pots can normally pass tax-free to nominated beneficiaries if you die before age A retirement income product that guarantees a regular income for the rest of your life.

The income may stay level, be linked to inflation or rise gradually at set rates, depending on which features you choose. Includes the option to provide for a dependant for life after you die in return for a lower income.

This is a pricing index used when calculating increases to certain pensions either in payment or deferment. A savings product that always includes life assurance. It pays out a fixed amount, known as the sum assured, plus any bonuses at the end of a fixed term. It is designed to help pay off the capital of an interest only mortgage but doesn't guarantee to do so. The amount payable if you die during the term is normally sufficient to pay off the mortgage covered. For unitised with-profits policies, we may apply a market value adjustment MVA if you decide to cash-in your policy or start taking pension benefits early, transfer it to another company or switch it from the unitised with-profits fund into another investment fund.

Full details of when an MVA may apply are given in your policy terms and conditions. The MVA is the amount by which the cash-in value is less than the fund value. It is used to help ensure that policyholders who cash in some or all of their with-profits investments before the end of their policy term do not disadvantage the policyholders remaining in the fund.

MVAs are not normally applied when the policy is due to end, if you retire at your chosen retirement date or if you die during the term. For unitised with-profits bonds, there may also be guaranteed dates where we guarantee not to apply a MVA if you cash-in your policy. For unitised with-profits policies, we may apply a market value reduction MVR if you decide to cash-in your policy or start taking pension benefits early, transfer it to another company or switch it from the unitised with-profits fund into another investment fund.

Full details of when an MVR may apply are given in your policy terms and conditions. The MVR is the amount by which the cash-in value is less than the fund value. MVRs are not normally applied when the policy is due to end, if you retire at your chosen retirement date or if you die during the term. For unitised with-profits bonds, there may also be guaranteed dates where we guarantee not to apply a MVR if you cash-in your policy.

This is when the policy has reached the set number of years originally agreed. For pension policies, the maturity date is usually called the selected retirement date. This is sometimes known as an annual, final or terminal bonus. Also known as 'defined contribution' pension schemes. The maximum amount that can be paid in one year to your defined contribution pension savings and still get tax relief if you have already taken money out of any pension pot as cash in one go or as smaller lump sums , or once you have started taking income from a flexible retirement income product or from a lifetime annuity which could decrease such as an investment-linked annuity.

It does not apply if you have only used some or all of your pension pot to buy a lifetime annuity. The MPAA is also triggered for payments from a pre-April capped drawdown plan that exceeds the cap and in certain other limited circumstances. If you exceed the MPAA a tax charge is made which claws back any tax relief that was given at source. The MPAA limit does not apply to other pension savings.

The legal document you sign giving the lender the legal right to use your property as security for a mortgage. A type of endowment policy usually linked to an interest only mortgage. The benefits are used to pay off some or all of the mortgage at the end of the term. You pay National Insurance contributions to qualify for certain benefits and the State Pension. You pay National Insurance if you are 16 or over and earn, or make a profit if you are self-employed, over a minimum amount.

Before April , if you contracted out of the State Second Pension S2P into a money purchase appropriate personal pension plan, part of the national insurance contributions paid by you and your employer to fund S2P was refunded and paid into your pension plan.

Since April , individuals in these plans have been contracted back in and accumulated S2P up to April Contracting out through a defined benefit scheme ceased in April This includes looking after the value of any unclaimed life assurance policies. For more information, visit www. This is called the Personal Savings Allowance. Your next of kin is your closest relative, usually a spouse or registered civil partner, but if no such person exists, may be a blood relative i.

A person, named by a policyholder, as someone they would like to receive benefits from a policy following their death. There may be an additional cost to maintaining a policy in this way, and it may only be able to continue for a limited time or while there is still a surrender value. Sometimes the unpaid premiums are expressed as a 'loaned' amount. The benefits built up in a money purchase pension scheme from contributions made by the policyholder or their employer. As a result a chargeable event will normally arise when the proceeds are paid.

This is the assumed retirement date we use when we set up a pension policy for an occupational pension scheme this will be set in the scheme rules. An individual who is authorised to swear oaths, certify the execution of deeds and who can authenticate signatures, documents and facts with such authentication being relied upon. A pension scheme set up by an employer for its employees. It usually provides life insurance as well as pension benefits.

The pension it pays out can be based on a proportion of the employee's final salary , or on the amount paid in, together with investment growth see money purchase. The price at which you buy units in a unit-linked fund. An ombudsman is an independent person or organisation that can help settle some disputes between an organisation and their customers.

If you purchased your policy in the Republic of Ireland, our useful ombudsman selection tool will help you identify the right ombudsman to contact. A collective investment vehicle in company form. They provide a way for individual investors to pool their money and invest in a broad selection of shares from a range of other companies, with the aim of reducing the risks of investing in individual shares. Whatever you decide to do with your pension pot you don't have to stay with your current pension provider.

You can use the 'open market option' to shop around for the best product to suit you. However, if you used to make weekly payments to a collector, you have an 'Industrial Branch' policy. As a result two annuities may be paid until the end of the guaranteed period. For some types of policy such as endowment policies and pensions , if you stop paying your regular premiums, the policy may have a reduced value that will be paid either when you die or at the end of the policy term, whichever is earlier.

The amount of tax-free lump sum available to you when you start taking your pension benefits at your selected retirement date.

When the liabilities of an occupational pension scheme are greater than the assets. The actual, or deemed, amount of pension savings made in a pension input period.

For a money purchase pension scheme , it is the total of the contributions paid. For many pension schemes, the PIP was aligned with the tax year, so it ran from each 6 April to the following 5 April. From April all arrangements have a pension input period aligned with the tax year. Pensions lifestyling is when pension savings are gradually moved out of higher risk funds investing in assets such as shares into lower risk funds such as cash.

The aim is to reduce the impact of short term falls in the value of pension savings in the run up to the chosen pension date. A type of Money purchase pension scheme which offers a tax efficient way to save for retirement. The legal owner of a plan or policy. See market value reduction MVR. The legal owner of a policy.