Funds Network SIPP?

theboyjb

Hi there.

I have been thinking of opening a SIPP for a while and wondered if anyone had any views on the Funds Network SIPP which seems to be operated by Standard Life? Charges are £100 initial and £250 per year administration, which seems fairly reasonable. Are there other considerations I should have? I quite like the Funds Network portfolio pages which I use for my ISAs so I had good initial impressions.

Currently I am paying around £12,000 per year into a Prudential Stakeholder but it seems to have a very poor choice of funds, so I was thinking that Funds Network would give me more flexibility.

I have around £24,000 in my Prudential fund and around £50,000 in previous employer's money purchase scheme. Is it likely to be worth transferring those into the SIPP when I open it? I was thinking of just leaving them where they are - there doesn't seem to be much disadvantage to having separate pots?

Any pointers appreciated! :wave:

EdInvestor

There are a number of other significantly cheaper providers if you are planning to invest your Sipp yourself without IFA help, eg

https://www.hargreaveslansdown.co.uk
https://www.sippdeal.co.uk
https://www.alliancetrust.co.uk
https://www.epml.co.uk

None of these charge an annual fee and they also rebate initial charges and sometimes annual fees for funds.

Re the funds in previous employer's scheme, what investment options are available and what charges are you paying?

dunstonh

Charges are £100 initial and £250 per year administration, which seems fairly reasonable. Are there other considerations I should have?

When you do these things, you either go DIY or get advice. If you go DIY, then there is little choice paying more than you would do if an IFA was doing it for you and that is the case here.

EdInvestor

Err....I don't think so, but by all means let us know the deal, so we can compare.

theboyjb

Thanks to both of you for your replies. Some interesting links there. I guess I would need to figure out how my contributions would work (probably a monthly direct debit with an occasional lump sum) and what I would be investing in (80% funds, I would have thought, with the rest in blue chip shares) to see which one would have the best charges.

In respect of the other pensions, the old company pension scheme had a grand choice of two funds... A Barclays Global Equity tracker fund (UK biased but with some world wide stock market trackers in the mix) and an actively managed global equity fund. I plumped for the passive tracker based on nothing more than lower charges, and it has outperformed the actively managed fund every year....

As for the Prudential pension, I've got no idea what the funds are - I just went for the default asset allocation - but I do know I that they are all Prudential funds which I have never heard being referred to anywhere else, so the performance is likely to be poor relative to better funds...