Pension advice

berbatov10

I have a friends life policy which has been in existance for ages but to which I have never contributed. The transfer value is around £8900. I have looked and seen that Friend life is not performing that well. Should I tranfer the money and hold a SIPP with someone like HL or should I top up what I already hold. Either way I intend to make further contributions and have some idea about shares etc. Any suggestions thanks

dunstonh

I have looked and seen that Friend life is not performing that well.

Friends Life is a big company that has many different policies and hundreds, if not thousands of funds. The performance of your funds has little to do with the performance of Friends life.

Should I tranfer the money and hold a SIPP with someone like HL

That is like asking us should you change one container for another container. We dont know what you have in the existing container or what you want to put in the potential alternative container. Let us know.

berbatov10

I have a final salary pension with my work but want to 'tidy things up' so wondered what to do with this

dunstonh

Moving one pension to another pension doesnt tidy anything up. it just changes the logo in the corner and the terms of the pension.

You have said that you have seen Friends Life is not performing well. However, that has little to do with your pension. Friends Life has issues certainly. However, more to do with lack of investment to remain open for new business. However, the bulk of the company is made up of closed books from other insurers and closed books can be quite profitable. The performance of a company has no impact on your pension unless that company is part of the shareholding you have in your pension or funds within your pension. So, you shouldnt measure the quality of the pension funds you have by the quality of the administrator. FL have some very good funds and some very poor funds available to it. Just as HL does. We need to know what you have and what you will use with HL to make any comparison.