Farra is a death administration assistant for UK families. Get step-by-step guidance for registering a death, applying for probate, notifying banks, and managing bereavement admin. From essential documents to practical checklists, Farra simplifies estate paperwork and funeral-related tasks so you can focus on what matters.
Standard Life pension death benefits are paid at the scheme's discretion, outside the estate — a grant of probate is not what releases them. For other products, Standard Life publishes no fixed probate figure: whether a grant is needed is settled case by case once the claim is lodged.
One practical point that catches people out: there is no Standard Life bereavement phone line to ring. Standard Life asks you to notify it using its online bereavement form, and says a specialist in its Bereavements Team will be in contact within two weeks of you submitting it. Numbers circulate online described as “the Standard Life bereavement line”; we could not find one on Standard Life's own pages, so we are not publishing one.
No. Standard Life is a long-established UK pension and investment provider, now part of Phoenix Group — the website is operated by Phoenix Life Limited, trading as Standard Life. It publishes no fixed probate threshold, and whether a grant is needed is settled case by case once a claim is lodged.
It is worth being clear about who is who, because the names overlap. Standard Life the pension and insurance brand belongs to Phoenix Group. Standard Life Investments merged with Aberdeen Asset Management, became abrdn, and is now called Aberdeen — a separate listed company that Phoenix does not own. If the correspondence says Elevate, Wrap or abrdn, it is Aberdeen you need, not Standard Life.
Product-specific rules:
In England and Wales the document is a grant of probate or letters of administration; in Scotland it is a confirmation from the sheriff court, and Northern Ireland has its own Probate Office. For how other providers handle this — several publish no figure either — see our probate threshold guide for 2026–27.
Use the estate administration checklist to manage submissions across all institutions at once.
Standard Life says a specialist in its Bereavements Team will be in contact within two weeks of the form being submitted. This is a key step in notifying financial institutions after a death.
Standard Life does not participate in the Death Notification Service (DNS). Contact Standard Life directly using the number or postal address above. The DNS covers high-street banks; pension and insurance providers such as Standard Life maintain their own bereavement processes.
Standard Life does not publish whether it accepts form IHT423, the Direct Payment Scheme form that lets a bank, building society or NS&I pay inheritance tax direct to HMRC before the grant is issued. Ask the Bereavements Team rather than assuming either way. Our probate delays and IHT interest guide explains how to manage this.
Standard Life publishes one figure and it is about first contact, not payment: a specialist will be in touch within two weeks of the bereavement form being submitted. It does not publish how long a claim then takes to settle, and no official source publishes one, so the “4 to 6 weeks”, “4 to 8 weeks” and “9 to 14 months” that used to sit here have been removed rather than re-sourced.
For a complete step-by-step timeline, see the complete UK probate guide for 2026.
Standard Life pension death benefits — from workplace pensions, personal pensions and SIPPs — do not form part of the estate. They are paid at the scheme's discretion to the beneficiaries, guided by any nomination or expression of wishes, without a grant. Most unused pension funds are outside inheritance tax at present, but the government has confirmed they come within the charge from 6 April 2027.
Investment bonds and other non-pension products form part of the estate; Standard Life publishes no fixed probate figure, so confirm the requirement directly. For guidance on claiming pension death benefits, see our pension death benefit guide. For what each route to administering an estate involves, see our cost comparison guide.
Before you assume you need probate
Do you actually need a grant — and what would it cost?
A Standard Life balance is only part of the picture. Whether the estate needs probate at all depends on the whole picture — property, other accounts, and how everything was owned — not a single threshold. It is worth checking before you start filling in forms.
Guide reviewed July 2026. Bank thresholds change and can vary by account type — always confirm the current figure with the provider before relying on it.
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