Thanks that's useful information as I was hoping I could work out my own best options without paying too much for advice and it's a comparatively small fund I'm dealing with. As mentioned ,it's early days yet and I've only just made contact with the UK society my pension fund is with. Is it everyone's experience that it is indeed the case one cannot instruct a UK society directly and that one has to use an IFA of some sort to act on one's behalf ,as I was told ? Just for background information the chap on the phone had to keep checking what information he was allowed to give me as I was a "french tax resident " ,even though I had the most basic general questions.