Stake Holder pensions advice needed.

itsnotfair_2

My hubby paid into a private pensions for some years when self employed. We froze them in 1999. One has about £14000 the other about £2000. He also paid into a local government scheme for 2 years up to 2002.
We are now self employed again, paying only class 2 NI. We want to transfer all the funds and start paying in again.
I am 45 he is 49.
Any advice on a sensible way to go? I looked at pensions website but there are too many choices available to know what is right for us.

itsnotfair_2

The big sum is with NPI and smaller with Friends Provident. Would it make sense to reopen them and start paying into them again?

dunstonh

NPI are closed and FP's current pension is different to the one they offered a few years ago. I cannot recall from memory if you can restart older FP plans. That would take a phone call to find out.

EdInvestor

Scottish Widows and Standard Life both appear to offer decent personal pensions at present with charges at 1% or less and a good selection of funds, including external ones: these days you don't have to choose low level in-house insurance funds to invest in, you can have quality outside ones instead

If you do the transfers through a discount broker, it should be cheaper, eg https://www.cavendishonline.co.uk

I would leave the local govt pension where it is.

With the NPI pension, if it is in the With profits fund, it is worth checking if it has any guarantees attached to it (such as a guaranteed annuity rate or a guaranteed investment return) and also if there are penalties to transfer - ask for the current value and the transfer value and see if they are different.