Part of the new years resolutions is to tidy up financially.
Just managed to get access back to an old work place pension which has been passed off various providers.
Its now with reassure, and frankly their platform is absolute crap, can't see fund performance or trade from it or anything. In the last 12 months the fund has gone from £52k to £43k with reassurre trousering £900 in fees for administering a dormant account.
So I'm looking to move to another provider, with lower fees and a half decent platform.
This is just invested in unit trusts I setup approx 20 years ago, so I plan to invest and forget, ideally for another 20 years.
Any recommendations? I have never done this before, so I'm hoping its painless..... off to read some of the moneysaving expert forums....anywhere else to look into?
meaningful money and Damien talks money YouTube channels are great places to start for personal finance
C & H ?
Any recommendations? I have never done this before, so I’m hoping its painless
It is painless if you love filling in forms and then waiting for months for the companies to actually process it . They tend to be very slow and not great at communication.
I am with Hargreaves and Lansdown (sipp product), you can either pick your own funds or use their (new, record unknown) default fund.
https://www.hl.co.uk/pensions/sipp/ready-made-pension-plan
Whatever you do, check it vs the competition at least twice a year, and make sure your returns are ok (in comparison to what others are doing) also make sure you compare charges properly.
My friend who died had his pension in a company policy with ReAssure, ended up with the company he used to work for trousering all £200k of it, ReAssure were not entirely competent in their dealings with me, so if you can get it out of their clutches I'd recommend you do.
DT78
In the last 12 months the fund has gone from £52k to £43k with reassurre trousering £900 in fees for administering a dormant account
WTF!? How does that happen?
As a slight aside, are there companies out there who can track down pensions for you? Both myself and my wife worked for a couple of different companies years ago who we believe had pension schemes, but how do you go about tracking the pensions down, particularly when the companies have ceased to exist? I assume they are linked somehow to your NI number.
I'm in the process of transferring 2 old pensions into my current workplace pension.
As others have said, you'll need patience. I started probably 3 months ago. One of the pensions has been transferred relatively easily (though slowly) as the two schemes were able to use an online system called Origo to transfer it across.
The other one (an old workplace pension) doesn't use Origo so I've had to fill in multiple application forms so far. Also needed several calls to ensure I had the exact names and numbers of the old pensions and the new one.
My pensions were fairly simple and I'm under 50 (just) so didn't need a Pensionwise appointment. If you are over 50 they ask you to arrange an appointment with PensionWise to check you know what you're doing.
I was just transferring into my current workplace so I didn't have to choose a scheme to invest in.
@speeder - I have no idea how that has happened because reassures platform shows absolutely FA detail. Frankly it feels like I've just been mugged. Last time I looked at the plan was sept 2021 and it was worth £52k then according to my spreadsheet.
@andy, can't help I'm afraid, I had to do a lot of research as my pension had moved twice and I'd moved houses etc... in that time. Luckily I know a few who still work there who were able to point me in the right direction
Mine took about 6 weeks to transfer to Scottish Widows from Aegon, i just gave SW the info and they took care of it, it ended up in my account not long after.
Looking at mine, i can't see how yours has lost money recently... mine has done exceptionally well in the last 8-12 months.
About 5 years ago I did this as a project to track down all my old pensions and when I did I got a local IFA to consolidate them. Except the final pension which I was advised to leave.
Can be a right pain especially if a company has changed hands a few times. Pension Service helps.
I transferred my pension to Interactive Investor 12 months ago. Spread my investments between different mostly low cost tracker funds and some higher cost funds with good performance like Royal London. In the same 12 months your fund has amazingly lost 20% of its’ value it has grown by just over 18%. The platform has a low fixed cost but I’m not sure set and forget works - you need to take some interest and be prepared to adjust your investments depending on performance.
Either way I can recommend Interactive Investor for a low cost self-investment platform - fees are much lowe than HL for instance.
WTF!? How does that happen?
The pension provider gets paid no matter the performance.
The performance is, being stock market based, liable to go up and down.
I am with Standard Life for mine, 0.5% fee annually, ethical funds choice. They seem good, easy to navigate the website when I need to. I think I have a good spread of 'packaged up' funds (sorry, I don't know the lingo for what that is) from recognisable names, more on the confident / riskier side of things, and while it is pulling back very strongly now, I have made a loss on investments since early 2021...
Pensioncraft was the one advised to me.
I had a SIPP with Alliance Trust Savings, which got rolled up into ii as previous poster above. I stick it in various investment trusts and tracker / managed funds, plus a few leisure stocks.
Have now transferred my workplace pension into them too, which should save a whack of fees (Allied Crowbar as was).
@speeder as said by matt, stocks and shares rise and fall, and so it depends how and where your defined contribution pension is invested. And then the fund managers take a fee and the trading platform takes a fee. If you google the FTSE index over the last 5 years you'll see the top 100 UK companies are basically the same 'value' in £ now as they were in Jan 2020. Though there is lots of volatility and covid happened. So 'losing' 20% isn't difficult depending what you are invested in.
If you are happy managing it yourself I would move it to a SIPP and just spread it over a few named funds and a few trackers. We're with H-L which is a good website but their fees are a bit high.
now with reassure
I transferred a pension from reassure to a Hargreaves Lansdowne sipp a couple of months ago.
The process was completely painless and all done online via h&l.
It's a tiny pension pot so most of it has gone in a low cost vanguard tracker with a bit in one of h&ls own funds.
There are cheaper platform providers, but my main investments are win h&l so having it over place is convenient
Hmmm. I have been monitoring a very old one with Scottish Widows. No contributions have been made and over the last 18 years its returned an average of 4.5% after fees. Anyone know if that's there or thereabouts in terms of performance?
Hi
Same as you but abit more value and multiple funds. Around the 200k mark. Also lost around 10k with phoenix life who charged me £600 for the privilege of having my pants pulled down.
So it's all going to Vanguard sipp , spread across 4 ETFs with super low fees as when you get higher amount of savings the fees can be punishing.
Having to jump through lots of hoops on the way, does not help that I invested originally with Scottish mutual who got bought by phoenix life. Who seem determined to hang onto my money
Lot's of forms and signed decrees of having taken advise and I'm not in the middle of a divorce etc
Helps that vanguard are big so they are like AAA rated .
Got a ream of forms today for one pension transfer, none of which you actually have to fill in.....this is why the costs are so high. Plus they pay investment bankers huge sums to play guess the market with zero risk to themselves.
Equitable life were abit more easy going and Standard life basically just sent me the money. Although all of them say it's weeks till the money is released, which is utter nonsense as it's like 1 minute of typing not going into a vault in Switzerland and counting out pound notes.
Be very accurate with your form filling as any discrepancy seems to be a reason for refusing to transfer money.
@juanking
By good chance I stuck half of a lump sum in Fundsmith in 2010. Average annual return has been 15%
The other half, never have everything in one basket, has done less well but I think better than 5%
FTSE world index did 8% over 20 years.
https://curvo.eu/backtest/en/market-index/ftse-all-world?currency=eur
As a slight aside, are there companies out there who can track down pensions for you?
Start here. Providing you have the employer name it should tell you who is administering the scheme. You then need to contact them.
@juanking
By good chance I stuck half of a lump sum in Fundsmith
By not so good chance I chose Linsell Train instead of Fundsmith. Hasn't performed as well but still better than average. Over the past 6 years there's very little difference in the higher risk funds versus the Vanguard tracker I hold.
