Client Testimonials

Roy Birkinshaw

Retirement is a time to do more of the things you really enjoy. For Roy Birkinshaw, it has given him the freedom to concentrate on his hobby of playing the accordion in a barn dance band, something that involves several gigs around the Thames Valley area each month and recently included a first foreign date, on Spain's Costa Blanca.

Roy, from Bracknell, was working as a project manager at Fujitsu when he was offered early retirement in November 2009. He had some 30 years' service with the company, but not continuously, as he had worked for another employer for a time, which had an impact on what was on offer.

He says: "I had always planned to retire at 60 but when the offer came at 58 it was not a particularly attractive package."

But he wanted to explore his options for making the most of his final salary pension schemes with Fujitsu and his other employer and attended a seminar on financial issues, given by Birchwood as part of outplacement support for Fujitsu employees. He says: "I was impressed by the content and made an appointment to talk to them in more detail."

Roy admits that he's wary of financial advisers, so he appreciated the approach of Birchwood's Becky Haslam, who respected the fact that generating a lump sum from the annuity bought with his pensions pot was strictly a one-off project and that he did not want to pursue any other products.

He says: "It took a while to finalise, which was of my making, though the timing turned out to be very fortuitous. I held off for a year, in which time the stock markets rose and I happened to move at exactly its peak, so it all worked out well.

"The actual process involved was pretty straightforward and from my perspective, every time I asked for anything from Birchwood, I got it."