Aviva - over 2 years my pension fund (100% in Deposit S2) loses £4,000 + inflation.

Earthling42

dunstonh - I see you're one of those who always has to get the last word in.

Earthling42

Daniel - I'm about to be 62 & the intended retirement was meant to be at 60.

I agree that there is not much point dwelling on this & I don't intend too but I was interested to see if there was anyone else in the same boat.

I didn't realise that this forum would have trolls for the financial sector. I wasn't really interested in hearing from IFA's. I don't have much faith in IFA's - I'm sure there are good one's out there but like most things in life you need expertise to identify them & if you have the expertise to identify them, you don't need them. I don't have the expertise & have always gone for large firms both in IFA's & solicitors with investment arms - with hindsight I would have been better putting money in deposit accounts + an occasional bet on the horses (I'm not a gambler & don't know how to back a horse). The financial sector looks as if it was designed to confuse & financial sector employees all seem to have PhD's in obfuscation.

Earthling42

Daniel are you actually using your real name? brave if you are considering the bullying tactics of the main troll in here who, unlike you, hides behind the anonymity of the internet. Like most trolls he's probably overweight, spotty with size 7 shoes & like most bullies, a coward at heart.

rpc

Earthling42 wrote: »

dunstonh - I see you're one of those who always has to get the last word in.

pot meet kettle!

Except, in this case (and as usual), dunstonh is correct. My wife has a pension with Aviva and they do not provide advice. You chose to make decisions without advice and are now suffering the consequences. I had some sympathy, until it became clear that you will not accept responsibility for a decision that you (and only you) made.

Daniel_Elkington

That is my real name and I am an IFA, I too understand your concerns about us. I've never been in sales personally and used to be a specialist paraplanner (did pension transfers and IHT solutions for my advisers)...

I don't hide behind e-pseudonym's. You can look at me on the FSA register: Personal Ref No. DME01046 if you want to.

tbh most of my new business this year has been from people in a similar boat to yourself; paying outrageous charges on what are essentially tracker funds.

Most, certainly not all, old personal pensions with life companies use tracker style strategies and review their stuff quarterly in line with FTSE reviews (the FTSE 100 is reviewed by FTSE quarterly).

You should look to pay a TER of, at most, 0.5% for that in a pension and can very often get it for less!

1% is double the amount you should be paying and short term debt instruments (which your 'deposit' fund is mostly invested in) are yielding very low at present so you will most likely get back less than you invested.

Unfortunately there is a lot of admin involved in managing a pension and you will never get one for free so you really do have to invest it.

Earthling42

rpc - you've obviously not come across irony - but then irony is wasted on the ****** (please feel free to fill in the blanks).
You are wrong about aviva in relation to their own funds - I was advised to move the fund into cash from equities by aviva & as I stated earlier this would have been great advice if I had been told that before my retirement date. If you are saying that they should not have given advice then maybe I can use that as a lever on aviva.

To quote from an aviva letter dated feb 2010:
"you can also speak to our aviva advisers about your retirement. However they can only advise you on aviva products and services. Please call them on 0800 068 1826"
What part of the above quote do you not understand?
As I had no reason to think of moving to another company at least on the basis that all the larger companies would give a similar performance, I phoned them and after I think was 3 or 4 telephone conversations I did what they suggested. I'm not saying that their advice to move out of equities was incorrect - I believe that it was good advice. My irritation was that they should have been reviewing this 5 years before my intended retirement date and that there should be a deposit type fund rather than what turns out to be yet another gamble, the money market.

Earthling42

Daniel - thx it's useful to know that 1% is a rip-off in relation to managing cash funds.
What is a TER?
I'm an ex IT pro and it can be very problematic using your real name on forums like this. If you do get a troll or some malicious idiot on your trail be sure to report it because they can be almost impossible to shake off.

Daniel_Elkington

I know and have had experience of that, but thanks for the warning.

There are several charges that funds, whether they are pensions or collectives or life funds charge.

There is the Annual Management Charge (AMC)
There are also additional expenses, which are added onto the AMC, this is called TER.
There are performance charges on some funds, but these are rare.
The fund manager can apply another charge called a dilution levy which is when there are large outflows from the fund and he doesn't want the fact that he is selling units to impact upon performance.

With a simple personal pension, like yours possibly is, the life companies bundle most of this up into AMC.

I tend to bundle up all the charges, including contract charges, into a simple TER for the contract.

If it was an actual adviser they should have sent you a document called 'Guide to our service'.

If not and someone actually used the words 'i/we advise that you...' and they did not send you that guide then there may be grounds for complaint.

Compensation chasing is actually good if someone has wronged you. You don't expect the person your pension has been with for many years to miss out key bits of information which would have influenced your decision!

Earthling42

Daniel - thanks again for the constructive responses & information.
I absolutely agree with you about compensation chasing & in this case I feel they should have done a job better.
My view of large financial institutions is not good after the last few years of financial disasters where all we have seen is cynicism, greed & downright fraud from a large number of financial institutions. We the tax payers are footing the bill - my story is very similar to others I know directly and we are all left reeling that, we, the uninformed public, are picking up the bill for the irresponsibility & disgusting avarice of these financial companies .........
Part of my reason for starting this was to see if others have a similar experience with aviva. I suspect that some of the troll replies have achieved their objective of discouraging non-financial people from contributing.
I find the troll contribution worrying in what motivates them to do this & I suspect that there is funding to keep tabs on forums like this and squash any criticisms that they feel uncomfortable with.
Perhaps the admins on this site ought to check out who these anonymous supposed IFA's actually work for.
I absolutely appreciate that you take the risk to make yourself visible.

PaulCooper

Funny thing is, mine went up by approx 4% last year, that's because it is in a deposit account.
I moved out of funds & things like that, into a SIPP, purely because I was ignorant and didn't like the fees. The stock market was at 5900 when I withdrew my money, I reckon in 6 years I'm at least £100k above where I would have been if I'd left the money where it was
You pays your money and takes your choice!
Paul