How can I benefit from a stagnant pension plan?

Hasher

I ‘m 57 and have a Group Personal Pension pot of £97k with Standard Life. There will be no more payments into this plan as I no longer work. I’m unhappy with the growth of this pension plan. I’m comfortable managing my own investment portfolio (which is now my income source for later years) and would like to invest as much as I can get out of my pension plan.

What is the best approach for me to get maximum control of the pot taking into account demutualisation and A-Day?

dunstonh

There is nothing wrong with GPP from standard life. It offers a very good fund range and you could build very good portfolios with it.

The pension itself is not stagnant and hasnt performed badly or good. A pension is just a wrapper which contains investments of your choice. It would suggest that your choice hasnt matched your attitude to risk or investment profile. That isnt the fault of the pension though but the person who selected the funds.

So, what is the best approach? I would say first understand how the tax wrapper isnt the investment and then look at the reasons behind why the funds within that tax wrapper havent performed to suit you. Otherwise you will just go from one mistake straight into another.

EdInvestor

Hasher wrote:

I ‘m 57 and have a Group Personal Pension pot of £97k with Standard Life. There will be no more payments into this plan as I no longer work. I’m unhappy with the growth of this pension plan. I’m comfortable managing my own investment portfolio (which is now my income source for later years) and would like to invest as much as I can get out of my pension plan.

What is the best approach for me to get maximum control of the pot taking into account demutualisation and A-Day?

Is the money in this pension invested in the With- profits fund? If so, you should do nothing to it until after the demutualisation when you will receive separately your windfall shares.

After that there are couple of obvious things you could do if you are happy managing your own investments.

Since you are over 50 you could take your 25% tax free lump sum out of the pension and transfer it to your other investment portfolio. You could then put the remainder of the money into a SIPP, where you would be able to manage it in parallel with your other portfolio.You wouldn't need to take an income from it.

There might be a couple of things to watch out for: one would be the possibility of an exit penalty if you moved the money before the Normal Retirement Date mentioned on the policy (60?65?) Another is the question of Protected Rights money, if there is some of that in the pension, you may have to leave that behind for the moment, as PR money is not allowed in SIPPs - though this is likely to change fairly soon. However you can now take 25% cash from PR pensions as well.