From this month you can now have your UK state retirement paid directly to your Turkish bank account and no charges will be made for the service.

Up until this month if you lived in Turkey your UK state pension could only be paid into your UK bank or building society account. But that has changed this month.

The Department of Works and Pensions (DWP) can now make payments direct to your Turkish bank account in Turkish Lira.

As Turkey has a reciprocal social security agreement with Turkey you’ll also receive your annual index linked increases too.

The DWP can’t split payments between the UK and Turkey so if you only live part of the year in Turkey you’ll need to decide where you want to receive the money.

The new service should help the state pension go further by cutting out the middleman.

Pensioners will still be subject to the exchange rate fluctuations between the British Pound and Turkish Lira when the cash arrives in a local bank account.

However, pensioners will no longer need to pay the fees for international money transfers or for withdrawing their pension via local cash machines as before when it could only be paid to a UK account.

For more details on the changes and how you can change where your pension is paid take a look at the direct.gov.uk website here.