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Financial Review

AMO
Posts: 1,464 Forumite
Hi there,
I currently have 3 pensions....
a) one personal pension,
b) one group personal pension started with my old company,
c) one current personal pension with my current company with contributes 5% of my wage towards it. They have been taken over and are offering a new stakeholder pension and paying 4% towards it.
I wish to know whether its worth moving b) which no longer has contributions and whether to join the new pension scheme in c) and also get a full review of my current financial situation.
How much should I be paying in fees for this?
Thanx
AMO
I currently have 3 pensions....
a) one personal pension,
b) one group personal pension started with my old company,
c) one current personal pension with my current company with contributes 5% of my wage towards it. They have been taken over and are offering a new stakeholder pension and paying 4% towards it.
I wish to know whether its worth moving b) which no longer has contributions and whether to join the new pension scheme in c) and also get a full review of my current financial situation.
How much should I be paying in fees for this?
Thanx
AMO
0
Comments
-
It's not hard to do at least some of this yourself (if only to cut the cost).First write to all the providers and find out
1)The transfer value
2)The fund(s) the money is invested in
3)What other fund choices there are
4) The charges you are paying.
Then report the info back here. The next move may be fairly obvious.Trying to keep it simple...0 -
EdInvestor wrote: »It's not hard to do at least some of this yourself (if only to cut the cost).First write to all the providers and find out
1)The transfer value
2)The fund(s) the money is invested in
3)What other fund choices there are
4) The charges you are paying.
Then report the info back here. The next move may be fairly obvious.
I'll do what I can. I think that one some of my pensions, this will be hard for anyone to help as they are not commonly accessible pensions - they are ones developed for employees of companies (large ones so they don't use the usual pensions companies to service them).
Thanx
AMO0 -
If the pensions are "final salary" pensions (different from the "personal pensions" you have alluded to) then you can just leave them where they are.
If they are "money purchase" pensions, you can amalgamate them and this may be a good idea. You will usually find when you look under the bonnet that they are run by a life insurer or fund management company.Trying to keep it simple...0 -
EdInvestor wrote: »If the pensions are "final salary" pensions (different from the "personal pensions" you have alluded to) then you can just leave them where they are.
If they are "money purchase" pensions, you can amalgamate them and this may be a good idea. You will usually find when you look under the bonnet that they are run by a life insurer or fund management company.
One of them, under the Bonnet is run by Clerical Medical - this is my Group Personal Pension.
The only information I can find to my other pension is here...
http://www.financeweek.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=4564
This is the one I am currently contributing towards.
The new pension is a Standard Life pension by my new company, but it will contribute to the existing pension.
Here's the rub:
a) If I move from the existing pension to the new Standard Life pension, the company's contributions decrease by 1%.
b) The existing pension has a fixed annual charge to maintain the pension scheme which is around £80 / year. Therefore, the pot has to grow beyond a certain size to make this worthwhile (around £8K to get it under 1% of the fund) so I assume I will have to move if I stop paying into this scheme.
Thanx
AMO0 -
Oh, all my pensions are own pot pensions - not employee final salary pensions. They are all 100% unit-linked.
AMO0 -
The link you have supplied refers to a final salary scheme, so you need to clarify that.
For the other two, I would still suggest you obtain all the relevant information first.
IFAs will charge you up to 200 pounds an hour so there's no point in wasting money getting them to do clerical work such as obtaining routine information.Trying to keep it simple...0 -
Thanx for that. When I joined the company they said that you had your own pot and that it was a defined contributions scheme. I will get more information. Will also get the info on the other schemes.
Thanx
AMO0 -
My existing Standard Life Pension has investments in the following funds. They seem to be fine:
Fidelity Global Special Situations Fund
Fidelity Special Situations Fund
Pension European Equity Tracker One Fund
Pension Far East One Fund
Pension Japanese One Fund
Pension Pacific Basin One Fund
This is a) my personal pension.
This is a Personal Pension, but its stakeholder friendly when I choose funds that they supply to the stakeholder accounts. I have chosen Fidelity Funds that fall outside of this though.
Will find out more details on the others.
Thanx
AMO0 -
If what your'e saying is correct about the Clerical personal pension with an £80 a year cost, it sounds like a scheme set up under it's own trust. If this is the case, I suspect that it will be administered by a firm of consulting actuaries or someone similar. Try and find out who the advisors to the scheme are, they would be able to help you (but, as said above, check if any fees are involved). It may be that there are also dedicated funds to the scheme.
In any event, if your paid up fund is much less than £8000, I would suggest you think of getting out; only fees are certain, not performance.
You don't say if the new employer is going to close the existing SL scheme, if not stay with it as 1% of salary is better than you'll get in the new scheme.0 -
Sorry bigbloke45. I am not being clear.
a) is my personal Standard Life Pension which is fine (not to be confused with the new Standard Life Pension on offer).
b) is my Clerical Medical Group Personal Pension started by a consulting company called Buckles. I think it was front loaded as quite a lot of charges have come out of it (around £2000) that went to Buckles. However, charges should be quite low now - no money is going in at the moment because of c).
c) is my current pension with a company called VT . I've been with them for around a year. The company pays X% into this pension.
We have been taken over by another company which has a stakeholder pension offering with Standard Life. It pays X-1% if we move over.
The VT pension scheme is the one that has a flatrate charge of £80 per year, so I am unsure of whether I should transfer the VT pension to the newer Standard Life pension. Standard Life is supposedly persorming well and VT is supposedly performing poorly, so I don't know whether its worth moving especially as I get 1% less contributions.
Thanx
AMO
p.s. Will post more information on my Clerical Medical Pension when I get it as I don't know whether to leave it there or transfer it to one of my current pernsions.0
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