ZURICH STANDARD PRSA Key thoughts when planning your retirement

What is a PRSA?

A PRSA is a flexible, portable, cost-efficient and easy to manage pension. A PRSA is available to anyone, regardless of employment status. It’s a portable pension that you can take with you if you change jobs. It’s flexible because you and your employer, if any, can make contributions into a PRSA and you can increase or decrease those contributions, or even take a payment holiday at any time.

There are two types of PRSAs; Standard and Non-standard. LABrokers only arranges the Zurich Standard PRSA. https://www.labrokers.ie/prsas-ireland-personal-retirement-savings-account-pension-plan/ There are two main differences between these. The charges relating to a Standard PRSA are capped by legislation and the choice of investment funds is wider for Non-standard PRSAs. Non standard PRSAs do not have their charging structure capped by legislation.

The benefits of a PRSA:

• Tax relief on your contributions.
• Any investment growth is tax free.
• Flexibility – it’s portable and you can stop and restart making contributions at any time without penalty.

Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs)

If you are already a member of a company Group Pension Scheme, then you may be in a position to improve the benefits you receive on retirement by making extra payments, known as AVCs, through a PRSA. https://www.labrokers.ie/zurich-prsa-avcs/

When should you start a PRSA? It helps to start early. The sooner you start making pension contributions, the bigger your retirement fund should be when you finally retire. You can start a PRSA at any time once you are over 18. The older you are when you start, the bigger the contribution you will have to make to build up a healthy pension

 

State Pension

The State Pension (Contributory) is currently worth about €1,250 a month (Citizens Information Board, October 2025). It’s helpful but it’s not going to give you a comfortable life on its own. The State Pension is funded by taxes paid by Ireland’s workforce. But Ireland’s population is ageing, so in the future there will be more retirees sharing a smaller pot. In short, you should not rely on the State to provide your pension. The only way to ensure the retirement you want is to take ownership of it now.

How much should you save?

This is, perhaps, the single most important consideration. It’s up to you but it usually depends on these main factors – when you would like to retire, what lifestyle you would like in retirement and how much can you afford to save. Of course, this may vary for lots of reasons throughout your working life. A simple way to check how much you should save is to use our Pension Calculator at zurich.ie

 

Tax savings benefits

The government encourages us to save for our future by offering valuable tax relief on pension contributions. Other forms of saving, like bank accounts or savings plans, do not attract such generous incentives.

• Tax relief on your PRSA contributions

The table below shows the actual cost of your PRSA contributions when tax relief is taken into account. As you can see, it’s significantly lower:

Your monthly pension contribution of €200 Less 40% tax relief Actual cost to is €120

Your monthly pension contribution of €200 Less 20% tax relief Actual cost to is €620

The investment growth on your PRSA is tax free.  Although you pay tax on your retirement income, you can take a tax-free cash lump sum of 25% of your pension (except for PRSA AVCs).

If you are using your PRSA to make AVCs to your company pension plan, the amount of tax free cash you can take at retirement depends on the benefits from your main pension plan together with the maximum tax-free cash that you are entitled to under Revenue rules.

How is your PRSA invested?

Your pension contributions will be invested in investment funds, with a view to growing your money.

As a general rule of thumb, the further you are from retirement, the more adventurous you can be with your investment choices. Zurich offers a wide range of innovative investment solutions depending on the level of investment risk that you are comfortable with. The full choice of available investment funds are listed on our website and in our Fund Guide.

You can ask your financial broker or advisor to help you with your investment decisions. Or you can let us do it for you by selecting an automatic strategy. This strategy automatically reduces your investment risk by moving into lower-risk investment funds as your retirement approaches.

If you would like to work out your attitude towards investment risk, check out our Risk Profiler tool at zurich.ie

What happens if you die before you retire?

Your PRSA will be paid to your estate if you die before you retire. The payment will be free of income tax, but inheritance tax may still apply.

Can I transfer my PRSA Funds to other pension arrangements?

You have the option of transferring the assets of your PRSA to another PRSA or a pension scheme, including one established outside Ireland, subject to such conditions as may be prescribed. Transfers of PRSA assets to other pension arrangements in this state are not treated as benefit payments for the purposes of taxation. Zurich Life will apply taxation to the overseas transfer of PRSA assets where required to do so as per the prevailing pension legislation and Revenue guidance at the time of transfer.

What happens at retirement?

One of the benefits of PRSAs is the option to take a tax-free cash lump sum payment from your pension when you retire of up to €200,000 (and an additional €300,000 at a tax rate of only 20%*). The remaining balance can then be used to fund your retirement in the following ways:

An income for life (Annuity)

This is a secure retirement fund that guarantees to provide a regular income until you die. The benefit dies with you and you can’t pass it on to your estate.

A retirement fund you control (ARF)

An ARF (Approved Retirement Fund) gives you control over your pension fund when you retire. Basically, you continue to invest your pension and draw down a regular income at the same time. The ARF is yours to invest and budget as you see fit† (making sure it doesn’t run out) and you can pass it on to your estate when you die.

A retirement fund you control (Vested PRSA)

As an alternative to an ARF, you can take your benefits on retirement and leave your remaining funds in your PRSA. This is then known as a Vested PRSA. Similar to an ARF, you retain control over how you invest your pension and can draw an income down in retirement. A Vested PRSA is yours to invest and budget as you see fit* (making sure it doesn’t run out) and you can pass it on to your estate when you die.

* Based on Revenue and income tax limits as of October 2025. These may change in the future. † Subject to revenue limits as at October 2025. These may change in the future.

 

How Zurich keeps you posted on your PRSA

 

Every six months you will receive a Statement of Account listing the pension contributions that you have made to date together with the total value of your PRSA at the end of the six-month period.

Every six months you will receive an Investment Report outlining the performance of your investment funds.

Every year you will receive a Statement of Reasonable Projection forecasting the value of your PRSA at retirement based on your estimated pension contribution levels and investment performance.

You have online access to all of your investment information whenever you need it through your personal Customer Dashboard on our website.

 

Making financial decisions about retirement planning is important. But you don’t have to do it alone. We are here to help however we can. We have lots of useful planning tools at zurich.ie

Our Pensions Video will give you some practical information to help you make the right choice. Our Customer Dashboard gives you an overview of your Zurich pension. Simply log on if you want to check the value of your pension, review your investment choices, get a snapshot of your current investment funds and find out how your investment funds are performing.

Our Pension Calculator can help you decide how much you need to put away to get the retirement you want. Our Pension Tax Relief Calculator will show the benefit of tax relief on your pension contribution.

 

Our Maximum Pension Contribution Calculator will tell you the amount you can personally contribute to your pension for tax relief purposes.

 

Our Dual Income Sources Calculator shows you the amount you can personally contribute to pension plans for tax relief purposes if you have more than one source of income.

 

Our Risk Profiler helps you to work out your attitude towards investment risk

 

LABrokers.ie low cost Zurich PRSA charges

Monthly contribution more than €500 gives you an allocation rate of 100% and an annual management charge of 0.75%.

Monthly contribution less than €500 gives you an allocation rate of 100% and an annual management charge of 1%.

If you invest a lump sum of €5,000 and over, the annual management charge is 0.75%. For less than this amount the annual management charge is 1%. (Max age at start is 63 next birthday. Min 5 year term).

What allocation rate means.

The LABrokers allocation rate on a Zurich Standard PRSA in all cases is 100%. For example, when you contribute €100 to your pension fund, if the allocation rate is 100%, the fund value is immediately €100

As we do not provide advice we can afford to reduce the commission we take. As a result, Zurich will not charge you 5% of the contribution, this means 100% of each and every contribution you pay into your PRSA each month for the life of the policy, goes into your pension fund.

LABrokers PRSA application pack and application forms.