The Telegraph reports most pension providers can only pay into a UK bank account, however, lenders have stopped serving many overseas customers.

“Retirees are also struggling to move pensions into drawdown, buy annuities and make changes to their contributions as post-Brexit rules mean pension providers are less likely to offer cross-border services.

Under HM Revenue and Customs rules, in order to transfer to a new British provider, customers need to be resident in the UK, meaning expats cannot move their pensions to a new company.”

According to The Independent, “Paul Beard, founder and chief executive of Alexander Beard Group, which specialises in giving advice to those moving overseas, said he had been contacted by dozens of retirees about pension providers who refused “point blank” to pay out.”

Further stating that “the policies were a “dereliction of duty” and contravened new consumer rules introduced by the regulator the Financial Conduct Authority in July.

Philip Teague, of Cross Border Financial Planning, told The Independent that his firm was “starting to uncover some big problems for our clients who have got these very vanilla regular pensions”.

The financial planner accused pension providers of failing to offer good advice to older expats who have seen their bank accounts shut about how to access their money.

He added, “We’re proactively starting to feed complaints through to them which will ultimately end up with the Financial Ombudsman because of [providers’] lack of communication in this area.”

HMRC rules mean Britons who are resident overseas cannot move UK pensions to a new company.

So expat pensioners are dealing with complicated overseas transfer processes, which can see them lose up to 25 percent in tax to access their savings.

A Royal London spokesman told The Telegraph “Very few providers are able to offer cross-border pensions business due to the risks and complexity involved for customers in doing so.”

The spokesman said there are some circumstances in which those living abroad can draw income from UK pensions, depending upon the type of contract they have and when it was taken out.

“For those who can’t, they will need to seek advice from an adviser in their local jurisdiction on their options to transfer their pension to an arrangement which allows them to do so.”