Which is best Pension provider?

Pilky_2

Hi All

Hope you can help me. My husband and I are looking to both set up pensions and wondered if you could recommend a pension provider that we should look at.

We both have ISA's and are now looking to pay into a pension so that we can't touch it before we retire and so that we take advantage of the tax.

Would you be able to recommend a provider? I have heard that Virgin is rubbish.

I have a pension with work which my employer pays 3% of my salary into without me having to make any contribution. Would I be better contributing to that one or setting up my own?

My husbands employer on the other hand doesn't have a pension scheme.

Many thanks for any help and advice you can offer.

Donna

dunstonh

wondered if you could recommend a pension provider that we should look at.

We dont know anything about you or your needs. So, its impossible to say.

I have a pension with work which my employer pays 3% of my salary into without me having to make any contribution. Would I be better contributing to that one or setting up my own?

Getting the free money makes sense. If you want to pay above that, then it depends on what the terms of that scheme are like compared to other alternatives.

Sorry, thats vague but there is no one best pension provider that fits everyone. Each provider has a target market and prices themselves or structures their product for that target market.

peterbaker

My experience as a pension member of a variety of schemes and someone who is now well inside 10 years of the retirement date upon which he thought he would start taking his final salary pension is not to touch any so-called 'pension provider' with a bargepole.

Basically pretty much all the pension providers I have known are crooks. The only way you can be sure of winning is if you become as big a crook and find yourself in a position of power where you can manipulate a scheme to your advantage.

I am serious.

Look at this today:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1290691/Three-million-Axa-savers-sold-zombie-fund-guru.html

and this:

http://www.citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/with-profits-review-fsa-upbraids-aviva-for-lengthy-reattribution-process/a410611?re=10037&ea=237675

I suggest you think bigger picture about controlling your wealth. The days when you could hand it over to a UK "name" pension provider and expect it to be safe are long long gone. You need to keep your eye constantly on the ball and never relinquish control of your funds to anyone that calls themselves a fund manager. Those types see the fund as theirs not yours and they will take "charges" out of it even when it goes backwards and let it do so in circumstances where even a child could have made the money grow.

I have one minor product with AXA that was the result of a short-term employment that ended back in 2002. As a result of noticing the above headlines I logged in this morning to see what had happened to it lately. It had gone backwards 5% in 2 months despite it being originally invested "cautiously" and the larger part of it being in something called a Retirement Distribution fund which one might imagine is the most cautious of the cautious.

The whole industry is one sick joke.

dunstonh

Look at this today:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1290691/Three-million-Axa-savers-sold-zombie-fund-guru.html

Has nothing to do with the question the OP posted.

and this:

http://www.citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/with-profits-review-fsa-upbraids-aviva-for-lengthy-reattribution-process/a410611?re=10037&ea=237675

again, nothing to do with what the OP asked.

peterbaker

Nothing to do with the OP's question?

What are you on dunstonh????

Link 1. What exactly do you think comprise a large part of the funds with which AXA has done a deal with Resolution? People's pension funds of course, including some of mine. I very much look forward to see what AXA thinks it needs to agree with me first since I have never been one to accept bribes for turning a blind eye to "orphaned funds" or "reattributed assets".

Link 2. What exactly do you think comprised a large part of the funds that Aviva reattributed (had away with) from Commercial Union and Norwich Union with profits pensions policyholders like me? Er ... would it be pensions money they were holding as erm ... a p e n s i o n s p r o v i d e r ???

Yes it would. So as I said, I wouldn't touch any of them with a bargepole if I was starting my retirement planning afresh.

dunstonh

Link 1. What exactly do you think comprise a large part of the funds with which AXA has done a deal with Resolution? People's pension funds of course, including some of mine. I very much look forward to see what AXA thinks it needs to agree with me first since I have never been one to accept bribes for turning a blind eye to "orphaned funds" or "reattributed assets".

Link 1 talks about 1 investment fund that AXA havent offered for years. Nothing to do with modern pension investment offerings.

Link 2. What exactly do you think comprised a large part of the funds that Aviva reattributed (had away with) from Commercial Union and Norwich Union with profits pensions policyholders like me? Er ... would it be pensions money they were holding as erm ... a p e n s i o n s p r o v i d e r ???

Link 2 talks about an investment fund that is still available but one of hundreds offered by Aviva.

Yes it would. So as I said, I wouldn't touch any of them with a bargepole if I was starting my retirement planning afresh.

You wouldnt be able to in the case of AXA as its not available and almost certainly wouldnt in the case of Aviva (as its become a niche fund). So, on the basis of two funds of the 50,000 odd variants out there, you think that all should be avoided.

Do you make all your decisions in like based on historical events that have little or no relevance today? i.e. Never have dealings with anyone from Bristol as they were involved in the slave trade hundreds of years ago.

vbm

peterbaker wrote: »

My experience as a pension member of a variety of schemes and someone who is now well inside 10 years of the retirement date upon which he thought he would start taking his final salary pension is not to touch any so-called 'pension provider' with a bargepole.

Basically pretty much all the pension providers I have known are crooks. The only way you can be sure of winning is if you become as big a crook and find yourself in a position of power where you can manipulate a scheme to your advantage.

I am serious.

Look at this today:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1290691/Three-million-Axa-savers-sold-zombie-fund-guru.html

and this:

http://www.citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/with-profits-review-fsa-upbraids-aviva-for-lengthy-reattribution-process/a410611?re=10037&ea=237675

I suggest you think bigger picture about controlling your wealth. The days when you could hand it over to a UK "name" pension provider and expect it to be safe are long long gone. You need to keep your eye constantly on the ball and never relinquish control of your funds to anyone that calls themselves a fund manager. Those types see the fund as theirs not yours and they will take "charges" out of it even when it goes backwards and let it do so in circumstances where even a child could have made the money grow.

I have one minor product with AXA that was the result of a short-term employment that ended back in 2002. As a result of noticing the above headlines I logged in this morning to see what had happened to it lately. It had gone backwards 5% in 2 months despite it being originally invested "cautiously" and the larger part of it being in something called a Retirement Distribution fund which one might imagine is the most cautious of the cautious.

The whole industry is one sick joke.

This is tin foil hat material. OP please disregard

peterbaker

Link 1. includes something I bought into 20 years ago and it wasn't AXA then. 20 years is nothing in the life of a proper, robust and stable pensions provision, yet in 2000, which was just 10 years in, AXA had taken it over and already started dismantling it and "releasing" funds to themselves. You are making my point for me: it is a complete lottery that anything you buy into now will escape the greedy eyes of the people supposed to be managing it and survive fit for purpose. By the time you need it it will have changed hands three times and industry commentators will be calling it obsolete or "unmodern".

Link 2. - ditto - except that you now dare to belittle my experience because I don't quite have 50,000 separate funds to compare and contrast (thank goodness). Investment fund managers behave exactly like mobile phone airtime providers and bank savings scheme marketeers. Every five minutes they dream up a new package and new ways of charging/deducting/not continuing with the headline rate with the sole intention of exploiting and confusing the majority of us who are not into playing games and didn't know that pensions provision was a game actually.

I don't quite know how you have the temerity to call these things mere "historical" events as if "stuff happens" and the industry has nothing to do with it. The biggest names have proven to be the biggest crooks!

Let me unburden myself with a quote from an 'eminent' City gent once of my acquaintance who told me: "The City only exists for the benefit of the people that work (in) it".

That means, DH, it doesn't exist for you or for me, or for those that have a passing dalliance with it and certainly not for the charge-paying punters who have never set foot in it between 9-5 on a weekday.

Clearly we have evidence daily that so-called pensions providers have no intention of actually providing pensions. They just want to milk the funds whilst the punters are still working and then dump them periodically to outfits like Resolution who are basically a knackers yard that simply would not have been tolerated by the then Department of Trade regulators when I began in financial services and did not even exist until about 10 years ago. Then they start again with fresh meat which is how they see those asking questions in 2010 about who is the best pensions provider.

Oh the Financial Service industry and the City: the truth is that all that it is ... is there exclusively for those that work it.

With pensions, if you don't personally control what you buy from Day One until at least Retirement Day (and I imagine that soon, you'll have to change that to the day of the last death of you and all those supposed to benefit from your pension provision), then you are gambling with a product which could be melted down without warning with all the usual suspects having slithered away long ago.


And don't be distracted by 'non-contributed' "free money" trickling in at 3% of salary. 23% or 33% or 43% maybe. Those are the numbers that contribute to pensions schemes of City players, more for the real manipulators. Keep your eye on the ball ...


PS And I suppose you think of yourself as a bit of a player, vbm?

sandsy

Probably the best thing you could do is find an independent finanacial adviser. Make sure they ARE independent and not restricted as to which provider's products they can sell.

In your case, specifically, it may just be easier all round to contribute to your work scheme. The money then comes out of your salary before you ever see it which is a good discipline to get into. Although the investment choices are often limited on workplace schemes, they often have relatively cheap charges too.

At the very least, read through all the information you can find on your employer's scheme and the investment choices. Because even if you go to see an adviser, it would be useful to have that knowledge to share with them.

jem16

peterbaker wrote: »

I have one minor product with AXA that was the result of a short-term employment that ended back in 2002. As a result of noticing the above headlines I logged in this morning to see what had happened to it lately. It had gone backwards 5% in 2 months despite it being originally invested "cautiously" and the larger part of it being in something called a Retirement Distribution fund which one might imagine is the most cautious of the cautious.

Investing isn't about short term losses and gains - it's about long term.

What has your pension fund done over the last 8 years?

peterbaker wrote: »

I wouldn't touch any of them with a bargepole if I was starting my retirement planning afresh.

So what would you do?

At least you have a final salary pension even if you can't now touch it till age 55.

peterbaker

Reasonable question: My AXA pension has managed 5% pa over the last 8 years.

Currently it goes up and down like a flippin' yoyo. The stock market goes up and down like a flippin' yoyo. That's no excuse for my 'managed' pension fund following suit, now is it?

What would I do? Or what would I have done? Given that I have a conscience which the City cannot deal with, I'd have never become one of their top level manipulators. So ... I would have exploited every opportunity I have had to buy building land when I was more flush than the next guy, investment properties when I was more flush than the next guy, and liquidated the maximum possible in my existing pensions before 5 April 2010 if I had known how and met an IFA who was seriously interested in helping me. I would be holding a lot of cash and credit lines ready to exploit the double dip if it happens. Gold and silver would have been interesting alternatives a couple or three years ago.

Now I am locked in again until age 55 with my pension funds and so have to put up with daily reports of shenanigans like the links I posted earlier.

I recommend that the OP and OH do not put themselves in a similar position where effectively they would be not executing a retirement plan at all, but so easily could become mere passengers in some leaky boat managed by shysters.

PS Yes I do have one deferred final salary pension which was my first ten years of employment, so based on the leaving salary, it ain't much to write home about. It survives but is hanging by a thread merely by dint of one or two surviving Trustees who must surely now be in their 80s whom I remember as men of conscience. Nevertheless, it has been outsourced recently to a firm of "pensions managers" so the end is nigh. I was a member of two others sold by "IFA"s wheeled in by the employer. Both were wound up. One took 4 years to be wound up despite the fact the employer company still exists and is part of a successful conglomerate (in fact both are). Who wound up the latter? That was the "IFA" who sold it to me 8 years earlier as the best thing since sliced bread. What was it wound up into? An Aviva Section 32 Buy-Out Policy "with profits" which was then eyed within two years by Aviva for "reattribution". It is a jungle out there, and the title "IFA" does not mean as much as it should, does it DH?

PPS This may seem strange to some, but if I ever did and could choose an IFA, it would be someone like dunstonh who has some provenance.