Transfer of pension providers or schemes: Ceding provider

Overview

Purpose

When pension assets are moved between pension providers or schemes, the changes need to be reflected in the pensions dashboards ecosystem so that a dashboard user has continuous access to their information. Similarly, when a pension provider or scheme changes their route to connection (for example, changing integrated service provider (ISP)), their dashboards responsibilities will be met by another organisation.

This journey allows ceding providers the ability to initiate, manage and execute the movement of dashboards responsibilities between parties connected to the PDP ecosystem. This process only covers the movement of whole or part of a pension provider or scheme and does not include individual transfers.

Who completes this step

• primary business contact

Read the full list of roles and responsibilities.

Before you begin

The transferring pension provider or scheme must already be registered with your connection to the PDP ecosystem.

The ceding organisation should have already started your data migration or transfer between you and the acquiring connected entity.

The ceding connected entity could be the ceding pension provider or scheme or a third-party administrator (TPA). The acquiring connected entity could be the pension provider or scheme or an ISP receiving the schemes or members being transferred.

Currently, this process does not support transfer of schemes between 2 clients of the same ISP. These scenarios must be managed through ISP-specific administrative processes.

It’s important to identify what type of transfer is taking place. Each business scenario leads to 2 types of transfer that can be reflected in the PDP ecosystem:

1. Movement of a pension provider or scheme between connected entities: Each pension provider or scheme is represented by a holdername GUID or multiple holdername GUIDs that are connected to the PDP ecosystem. These need to be transferred to the acquiring provider. Business scenarios that fall within this category may include a change of integrated service provider (ISP), change of third-party administrator (TPA), or acquisition of a pension provider. For these scenarios, refer to section 2.1 below. You may be transferring part of a pension provider or scheme. Review section 2.2 below for more information on how to prepare the data for this scenario.
2. Movement of an individual/member between pension providers or schemes: Each member asset is represented by a pension identifier (PEI) and is stored and managed by the connected entity. These are not provided to the PDP ecosystem via the connection portal. Business scenarios that fall within this category may include member-initiated requests for consolidation, member-initiated requests for transfer to a new scheme, movement of members in a scheme to a master trust or purchase of books. For these scenarios, refer to our guidance on individual transfers (to be published).

2.1. Scenarios that involve the movement of one or more pension provider or scheme records

Before you begin

Before you start the connection portal journey, ensure you have:

• Identified the pension provider or schemes being transferred in accordance with what has been agreed with the acquiring provider or administrator.
• Obtained the acquiring connected entity’s PDP account number and organisation name from the acquiring connected entity or TPA. These can be found on the connection portal homepage or on the 'Pension providers and schemes transfers' page of the acquiring connected entity.
• Prepared the data that needs to be uploaded as part of the transfer request. To do this, you need to create a CSV file of the holdername GUIDs that represent the pension provider or scheme records that you are transferring. Within the CSV, you need to include the following columns:
  • The holdername GUID: This is a unique ID used to reference pension provider or scheme records
  • The regulator number: This is a number generated by the regulators assigned to a pension provider or scheme
  • The regulating body: This is the body that regulates the pension provider or scheme which will be the FCA or TPR
  • The transfer date: This is the date on which the legal responsibility for representing the pension provider or scheme transfers to the acquiring provider. This may be the date that any relevant pension assets are transferred.

What you need to do in this step

1. Sign in to the connection portal and click on the 'Pension providers and schemes' tab in the navigation menu.
2. Click on 'Go to transfers' in the 'Transfer' card.
3. Click on the 'Transfer out' button under the 'Transfer out pension providers and schemes' card.
4. Read the information to ensure you have the necessary details to hand before clicking on 'Start'.
5. Enter the acquiring provider’s PDP account number.
6. Enter the acquiring provider’s organisation name.
7. Enter a description for the transfer. This is for your own reference and will not be validated or shared with anyone.
8. Upload your CSV file containing the relevant pensions provider and scheme records. This file must be formatted as CSV and no larger than 1000 records or 25MB. The file will be validated to ensure all the pension records match those that have already been uploaded by your organisation. The CSV uploads from the acquiring and transferring providers must match exactly, otherwise the acquiring provider must correct the error and replace the file to proceed.
9. If there are any errors in the data validation then you need to correct them and replace the file to proceed. You can download the results to view the errors.
10. Check the details you have entered before clicking 'Confirm and submit'.

TTransfer timing and lead time

The minimum lead time for transfer date is 1 day.

The transfer will be executed in the PDP system at approximately 3am UK time.

You need to account of the activities that take place outside of the connection portal when determining how long the overall process will take.

What happens next

You need to provide the following details to the acquiring provider:

1. Your PDP account number. This can be found on the connection portal homepage or on the 'Pension provider and schemes transfers' page.
2. The auto-generated transfer code.
3. The transferring pension provider or scheme information: the holdername GUIDs, the regulator number, regulating body and the transfer date for each record. You may choose to transfer the CSV file that you uploaded as part of this journey.

The acquiring provider PBC will then need to upload the same scheme information to ensure there is a match with what you have provided. They will need to populate any additional scheme information (for example, which View and PAT refresh endpoints to associate the holdername GUIDs with). Once this is done, the request will be complete and the transfers will be processed on the dates provided in the file upload. This means that the transferring pension provider and scheme holdername GUIDs will be associated with the acquiring providers endpoints from that date onwards.

You need to de-register any PEIs held against the transferring schemes on the legal cutover date specified in the transfer request. To do this, make a call to the rreguri (registration) endpoint with a DELETE HTTP method and deletion_reason of 'Asset-removed' reason code. You may need to contact members of your technical team to deliver this.

PEIs do not migrate automatically as part of a transfer. On the legal cutover date, the ceding provider must deregister all PEIs associated with the transferring schemes, after which the acquiring provider will register new PEIs in response to find requests as they are received.

You will also need to ensure that your solution no longer responds to find requests for members within the transferring schemes.

After transfer, holdernames will appear as inactive for the ceding provider. You may still deregister PEIs from an inactive holdername but cannot register new ones.

How to format the data in your CSV file 

The data in your CSV file must follow the following format: 

• Regulator body: ‘FCA’ or ‘TPR’. Character limit of 3. No special characters allowed. 
• Regulator number: Alphanumeric. No character limit. No special characters allowed. 
• Holdername GUID: Globally unique identifier (GUID) made up of 36 characters. It uses the characters 0 to 9 and lowercase a to f to create a string of 32 hexadecimal characters grouped as 8-4-4-4-12 and separated by 4 hyphens.
• Transfer year: YYYY. Character limit of 4. No special characters allowed. 
• Transfer month: MM. Character limit of 2. No special characters allowed. 
• Transfer day: DD. Character limit of 2. No special characters allowed. 

Error codes for the uploaded pension provider and scheme data

If there are errors in the data you have provided in the CSV file upload, you will get one or more of the following error messages in the results file:

• scheme details not matched
• regulator body error
• regulator number error
• holdername error
• holdername duplicate error
• transfer date error

Scheme details not matched

This can appear for the following reason:

• the combination of regulator body and regulator number are incorrect

Regulator body error

This can appear for the following reasons:

• regulator body missing
• regulator body incorrect

Regulator number error

This can appear for the following reasons:

• regulator number missing
• regulator number incorrect

holdername error

This can appear for the following reasons:

• the old holdername GUID is missing
• the old holdername GUID does not match

holdername duplicate error

This can appear for the following reason:

• the holdername GUID is repeated within the file

Transfer date error

This can appear for the following reasons:

• transfer date is missing
• transfer date is incorrectly formatted
• transfer date is not sufficiently in the future

2.2. Transferring part of a scheme

Some scenarios call for the movement of 'part' of a scheme which refers to a category of members within it. A common example is having 'Defined Benefit (DB)' and 'Defined Contributions (DC)' categories to separate members in the same scheme with different benefit structures. Extending the example, if only the DB part of the scheme is being transferred, and it is not already covered by a different holdername GUID, you need to generate a new holdername GUID for that part of the scheme. You or the acquiring provider do not need a new registration code from the regulator if the newly generated holdername GUID is associated with the same regulated entity (regulator number).

To transfer part of a scheme you must follow the steps in 2.1 but must ensure that the holdername GUID for the part, or parts, you do not want to transfer are not requested for transfer.

You need to de-register any PeIs held against the part that is transferring on the legal cutover date specified in the transfer request.

Viewing and amending a transfer request once it’s been submitted

Once you have submitted your transfer request as the ceding provider, you will find the request in the 'Transfer requests' table in the ‘Transfers’ landing page.

Each request will have one of the following statuses:

• Submitted: This is where you as the ceding connected entity has submitted a transfer request. There is an outstanding action for the acquiring connected entity to complete.
• Pending: This is where you as the ceding connected entity have submitted the request and the acquiring connected entity have completed their outstanding actions to confirm the details of the transfer request. The request will sit in a 'Pending' state until the transfer dates for all the transferring pension providers or schemes has been passed.
• In progress: This is where a transfer has begun but not all pension providers and schemes have transferred yet.
• Complete: All the transfer dates for the transferring pension providers or schemes within the request have been passed.

To view the details of the transfer request, you can click on the reference number highlighted in the transfer request table. Here, you will be able to cancel the transfer request. After confirming that you wish to cancel, the acquiring connected entity will be notified.

Changelog

Last updated:12/03/2026