Scottish Equitable PPP

Death_Angel

I have a PPP with Scottish Equitable.

The current fund value was only £9781 on the 6/08/06.

At the age of 75, which is 19 years away, the projected yearly pension is only £824 which is hardly worth waiting for assuming I live long enough to collect it.

I would like to know if it is possible to claim any of this fund back as I could really do with cash a boost at the moment.

Thank you

EdInvestor

You can take 25% of it in cash plus an income if you are aged 50 or more.If it is your only pension (apart from the state ones) and you are over 60, you can take all of it (minus tax) in cash under the triviality rules.

Death_Angel

I also have a Teachers pension which is index linked and is paying me about £4800 a year.

I looks like I shall have enquire about the 25% plus income option.

dunstonh

Some of the projections use SMPI basis which factors in inflation at 2.5%. The figures you give suggest SMPI basis. So, its not as bad as you think.

jamesd

What is the money in the pension invested in?

Death_Angel

The funds are:

European Tactical 1299.12 units fund value £2116.14

Overseas Tactical 1345.72 units fund value £1670.98

UK Equity Tactcal 1686.25 units fund value £20034.63

EX BAL COLLECTION 3771.55 units fund value £3960.13

jamesd

Thanks. In addition to taking any of the money you need it looks as though you should consider moving the investments around a bit. Here are links to fund performance and their three year performance compared to others:

European Tactical from Europe Excluding UK ranked 107 out of 332. 1299.12 units fund value £2116.14

Overseas Tactical from Global Equities ranked 194 out of 713. 1345.72 units fund value £1670.98

UK Equity Tactical from UK All Companies ranked 121 out of 887. 1686.25 units fund value £20034.63

EX BAL COLLECTION (I assume External Balanced Managed fund) from Balanced Managed ranked 245 out of 528. 3771.55 units fund value £3960.13

What's really notable from this is if you look at the charts the blue lines for each fund are below the red lines for the average performance. That is, each of them is has delivered worse performance than a tracker fund for that sector, some quite substantially so. However, they seem to have been improving recently and now are about or a bit above average.

I don't know if these are available to you in your current plan but here are some alternative funds they do offer in some plans. Each one appears to be better than the corresponding current choice in some way.

Europe Excluding UK: it's currently doing a decent job as a European tracker. The Lazard European Smaller Companies might be interesting but as a smaller companies fund has significantly higher up and down movement risk so a mixture might be best. SW alternative.

Global Equities: It's currently doing quite a good job as a global equites tracker but the Scottish Equitable Global seems to be doing better, about as well as the SW alternative.

UK All Companies: nothing from them seems better for the whole market but they do offer the UK Smaller Companies tracker which has more up and down movement but has done significantly better. You might add some of this to the mix. SW alternative.

Balanced Managed: nothing from them seems substantially better. SW alternative.

What struck me was that in each case Scottish Widows offered a higher performing alternative in their personal pension, often much higher performing. I've linked to those above so you can compare, take care because the scale on the graphs changes sometimes. Other providers probably do as well but given this I strongly suggest that you consider switching to a different pension provider to get better growth.

You'll probably find that you need an IFA to get 25% and that seems like a good time to ask about switching to get better growth.

I did not look to see if Scottish Widows was the best of the alternatives. It's only the one I happened to notice because I have an interest in how they do. Another one might well be even better.