Any experience/comments with X-O Liberty SIPP?

EnglishMohican

I have several money purchase pension funds held by several insurance companies in personal pensions, total value about £200k. I want to move these into a SIPP and in line with much of the advice on here, I have been looking for the cheapest SIPP I can find. I will want to move the SIPP into drawdown very soon (this year probably) and many providers seem to bump the charges up very considerably at that point.

I have always used tracker funds in the personal pensions so the 1% or so that I have been paying the insurance companies is quite high compared to the cost of a tracker "direct". I am considering converting to equivalent ETFs and possibly some shares - nothing fancy - really just the top 10 or 20 shares held by a typical UK tracker.

I am looking at the X-O Liberty SIPP which is a fixed charge of £114 per year and commission of £6 on each ETF or share purchase. There will not be many ETF/share purchases once I have it set up and there are no other unavoidable charges.

On the down side, they do not do funds - so no Vanguard Lifestrategy.

So far, so good but can anybody point out any gotchas I may have missed or tell me of any experience they have had with Liberty or X-O, good or bad.

Thank you in anticipation.

dunstonh

I have always used tracker funds in the personal pensions so the 1% or so that I have been paying the insurance companies is quite high compared to the cost of a tracker "direct".

And high compared to modern personal pension contracts where the pension funds are 0.4% TER. 1% is sooo 2001.

EnglishMohican

dunstonh wrote: »

...... modern personal pension contracts where the pension funds are 0.4% TER.

Do I get to choose the funds (OEICS or whatever) held in these modern personal pension contracts?

Can you suggest a reference (I know it's not a recommendation!) that I can look up to try to understand these better please? I do not seem to find anything at 0.4% TER when I google personal pensions - must be using the wrong search terms.

bigadaj

Gadetmind posted a link a few days ago, have a look for it. It was an updated summary of investment companies mainly looking at charges but includes isas, funds shares and SIPPS I think it was on monevator but would form a good basis for you. There's also a broker comparison on candid money which covers isas and shares and i think SIPPS but not certain.

grey_gym_sock

for personal pensions, there seem to be some around 0.4% p.a. (at least for trackers funds - other funds may cost extra) available via cavendish online: http://www.cavendishonline.co.uk/pensions/transfers-and-repensioning/

for SIPPs, if you want access to both shares and funds (including vanguard), might look at: alliance trust savings, sippdeal, interactive investor, bestinvest.

and see that monevator guide (for SIPPs): http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

dunstonh

Do I get to choose the funds (OEICS or whatever) held in these modern personal pension contracts?

You always have done. The only issue historically is that the range was light (depending on how far back you go). Nowadays the range is in the hundreds to the thousands and in some cases, full whole of market (almost SIPP like).