Scottish Widows Stakeholder via Cavendish Online

gavcooper

I have read the article about Cavendish rebating commission, and I'm interested in transfering my own stakeholder pension to take advantage of this. Out of the schemes on offer through them I favour Scottish Widows, but how do I choose which fund to go with?

Has anyone here used Cavendish, if so what was your experience?

Which pension did you take out?

Thanks for any help.

EdInvestor

http://www.trustnet.com/pen/funds/perf.asp?sec=all&status=all&def=1&txtS=&txtSS=&sort=4&page=33&ss=0&columns=

You can look up the Widows funds here, starting from no 3375(scroll down). As a general rule IMHO, it is often worth looking at the Property fund at an insurer, performance is often good and Widows is no exception.Unfortunately it doesn't appear to be a stakeholder charged fund.:( You quite oftne find this: cheap stakeholder charges don't apply to the best performing funds. Widows offers a lot of other good outside funds, so it might be worth opting for a non stakeholder pension and seeing if Cavendish can rebate the extra charges.

Depending on the size of your fund, you could also consider a SIPP, where you can obtain low charges and top performing funds at the same time (You will have to pay a bit upfront to set up the SIPP, but it's very economic over the longer term.)

gavcooper

Thanks for the info

From that it looks like the CONSENSUS MIXED PN and ALL SHARE TRACKER S1, look to be the ones to choose?

I already hold a stakeholder and I'm not sure I can change to a non-stakeholder transfering my existing investment.

I having a little trouble trying to get my head around it all, but I don't see why I should pay commission to my existing provider Abbey, when Cavendish will rebate them to me. Thats got to be worth transfering to them, hasn't it?

EdInvestor

Hi gav,

I agree it's confusing. A pension is made up of two things - the investment ( the funds or shares your money has bought) and the tax wrapper (the stakeholder or Sipp.)Same as an ISA - the first bit is the investment and the second the tax wrapper, as in "cash ISA" or "stocks and shares ISA".

You can move your stakeholder tax wrapper wherever you like.But before you move it you'll have to cash in whatever's inside it at the moment(the funds it is currently invested in). You can then tell Cavendish what new funds you want to put it in and they will give you a quote. They may be able to do a deal and get you stakeholder charges on non stakeholder funds, just ask them to try.Some companies offer stakeholder charges on all their funds, it's by no means unheard of.If you don't ask....

After you've chosen which funds, Cavendish will then move the wrapper and the money from wherever it is now to the new funds at the new life company.They will rebate the money they get from this to you minus the fee. Do they also rebate the "trail commission"? (That's the extra money they get from the lifeco every year to "represent you".If you can get some of that back too, go for it )

EdInvestor

BTW gavcon, is there any particular reason you chose Scottish Widows?

IMHO there is a much better selection of performance funds with stakeholder charges at Standard Life, see below.

http://www.trustnet.com/pen/funds/perf.asp?sec=all&status=all&def=1&txtS=&txtSS=&sort=4&page=44&ss=0&columns=

dunstonh

The scottish widows property fund is available on the stakeholder pension at 1.0%.

The all share tracker is fine but I am not a fan of the consensus fund. I would also include a bit more variety than 2 funds (sectors).

Standard Life no longer pay any commission so nothing will be rebated to you if they are used and you still end up on 1% amc.

EdInvestor

Standard Life no longer pay any commission..

Yes, I'd heard they had given up on unprofitable business.That's good news for existing Standard Life members btw, it's part of the company's new focus on profits pre demutualisation and should mean bigger windfalls.

But I'd suggest gavcom and anyone else looking for a stakeholder did compare the performance of the best funds at the four or five top companies, because charges are only half of the equation.A small rebate is helpful but consistent outperformance is much better.That's why funds like Fidelity Special Situations are so popular.

You need to take a little bit of time upfront to do a bit of DIY research to get the best out of these cheap products. It's not fair to expect IFAs to do the work as the commission is so low it's not worth their while.