should I transfer into a SIPP?

bellydancer_2

I have a pension pot worth £130K with Scottish Life, should I transfer it into a SIPP?
Will Scottish Life charge me to take it out? How much approx?
Who should I use for the transfer? Hargreaves Lansdown? Sippdeal? anyone else?
I'm 53 and not thinking of using my pension till 60, I am no longer paying anything into it as I got my fingers badly burnt with Equitable Life!
any help and advice would be good

dunstonh

I have a pension pot worth £130K with Scottish Life, should I transfer it into a SIPP?

Depends

Will Scottish Life charge me to take it out? How much approx?

Depends.

Who should I use for the transfer? Hargreaves Lansdown? Sippdeal? anyone else?

I have suspended all SIPP transactions pending the new SIPPs and hybrid SIPPs being launched next month. Also a number of providers have said that all pre "A day" transfers need to be completed before A day otherwise a new application would be needed. Any transfer being done now is unlikely to complete before then.

I'm 53 and not thinking of using my pension till 60, I am no longer paying anything into it as I got my fingers badly burnt with Equitable Life!

Not a valid reason. A pension is a tax efficient investment. The funds on pensions are exactly the same as those on ISAs, Unit Trusts and Investment Bonds. Eq Life With Profits fund was just one fund. The pension itself wasnt flawed. The fund was. You are blaming the tax wrapper when you should be blaming the investment fund.

any help and advice would be good

You havent given us enough to go on.

For example, the current Scot Life contract can be on the cheapest on the market. If you have the current contract and move out of that into a SIPP then you will end up paying higher charges.

Scot Lifes PPP is better than their SHP. The PPP has a half decent fund range with some external links. For example, you can get the schroder mid 250 tracker fund with Scot Life at 0.8% p.a. amc with no initial charge. With a SIPP, you would be looking closer to double that and an initial charge.

You are asking for advice on a website from people you dont know. Some of whom often post inaccurate information and have a certain bias. Your personal circumstances could alter what is best (hence the depends answers). You obviously want to do it on the cheap but don't know enough to do it yourself. Perhaps it is worth paying for the advice as you will probably find that with a "new model" IFA, the cost of the advice on your fund value is only 1% and you get consumer protection and portfolio recommended (if transfer is best option). If you do it yourself, your only saving is that 1% and you get no consumer protection and would have to build the portfolio yourself. When you consider that if you transfer to a SIPP yourself, you are still looking at an initial charge of upto 1% on the funds you choose, paying 1% for advice would seem good value.

EdInvestor

Hi belly dancer

You'll probably get a wider range of more sophisticated advice from people with experience of Sipps if you ask the question over here

Deemy

bellydancer wrote:

I have a pension pot worth £130K with Scottish Life, should I transfer it into a SIPP?
Will Scottish Life charge me to take it out? How much approx?
Who should I use for the transfer? Hargreaves Lansdown? Sippdeal? anyone else?
I'm 53 and not thinking of using my pension till 60, I am no longer paying anything into it as I got my fingers badly burnt with Equitable Life!
any help and advice would be good

Yep sippdeal is a good one, maybe not the cheapest now, but one of the oldest and most experienced, has a good dealing platform i.e. accepts unlimited limit orders etc...

Though before you invest, make sure you research what your doing and in the initial stages stick to say Investment trusts rather than individual stocks.

Good luck in yuor investment management career ! And know that what ever happens the thieving scum such as Equitable Life can't steal your money anymore !

cheerfulcat

bellydancer, I would regard a SIPP as being appropriate for someone who wants to control the investments in his or her pension; for anyone else I have to say I would advise a visit to a fee-paid IFA.

EdInvestor

Hi Bellydancer

Is your pension invested in the Scottish Life With-profits fund?

If so, first thing to do is to ask them if it has any valuable guarantees attached to it ( such as guaranteed annuity rates). If not, no problem.If it does, find out all info about them as they might mean you should stay.

Step 2 is to ask for a "transfer value" and see how this compares with the current value, which should show you if they will charge you a penalty to leave and how much.This also needs taking into consideration.

If it's not in the WP fund, ignore the above and tell us the answer to the following questions:

1.What do you want to invest the money in in future - eg shares, funds, gilts ?

2. What charges are you paying now at Scottish Life?

and 3. When you retire, do you think you will use the fund to buy an annuity ( which gives you a guaranteed income for life) , or keep it invested through an income drawdown plan and take an income from it - this enables your fund and income to grow, rather than be overtaken by inflation, but does involve some risk.[No need to be definite about this,just give an idea if you can.]