Corporate bond ???? HELP

daithestag

Hi everyone , I need a little bit of advice regarding moving my pension to a corporate fund ?
Like many people of these days I had a mobile phone text claiming my pension had under performed over the years and would I like a review ? So for the very first time I replied to the text and duly received a phone call to make an appointments. I had the appointment last week - the guy turned up on time and was not at all pushy,anyway it turned out he was wanting me to consolidate my 2 pension funds (50K) into a corporate fund giving me a fixed rate of 8% !!! :j does anyone have any advice on this ? I know very little about pensions and corporate funds - he also said the the 8% is paid twice a year - 4% after the first 6 months and 4% at 12 months and so on, now correct me if I'm wrong and I may be missing something here but surely that's not an annual rate of 8% ????
Any advice would be very much appreciated.

kidmugsy

In your shoes I'd run a mile.

Linton

Anybody cold calling you on financial matters should be treated with suspicion. Reputable financial services companies dont look for business by sending out text messages. How could this text sender know your pensions had underperformed? And if that was a lie, what about anything else they tell you? So if you want to go into corporate bonds or make any other changes to your pension and dont know how to do it yourself I suggest you find your own IFA.

Now do you want to go into corporate bonds? Well, you can get ones that pay 8% annually. But of course should the company issuing them go bust you could be left with nothing. And the higher the interest rate paid, the more likely this is to happen. So it is usual to buy a corporate bond fund which holds many such bonds so that if one fails you dont lose very much.

But before you do anything else I suggest you find out how your pension is actually performing. You should be sent an annual statement. If you post some details about your pension and its performance people here can comment.

[Deleted User]

If you are cold called do not even consider following their advice. If you are concerned that your pension might not be performing as well as it could be then contact an independent financial advisor. do not go with a firm that cold calls. Cold calling is not supposed to happen: it indicates a company that couldn't care less about the rules. The fact that on top of cold calling they are offering you such a high fixed return should be sounding alarm bells. As kidmugsy said, run, don't look back.

If a company were able to offer a guaranteed return of 8% year on year, why would they be texting you (someone with a relatively small pension pot) out of the blue?

Lokolo

Eggs. Basket.

gadgetmind

daithestag wrote: »

I may be missing something

You may well soon be missing a pension!

surely that's not an annual rate of 8% ????

Yes, it could be. Lots of corporate bonds pay that if the companies issuing them are very high risk. Which company is it, which bond is it, and what's the credit rating of the company?

You could also name and shame the other companies involved.

daithestag

The company is "assist wealth management" I checked their website And worryingly it's still in development !!! I have a folder with some flyers/brochures which mentions iSIPP - James Hay partnership also mentioned OWG investments plc thread needle street ????

gadgetmind

OWG sound like an interesting bunch!

http://www.investegate.co.uk/article.aspx?id=20140225152630H4502

Loss making and rated at below investment grade.

https://www.check-business.co.uk/business/07871781/owg-investments-plc

This was all just a bit of lazy googling, but -
1) Make sure anyone giving you advice is authorised to do so by the FCA.
2) Don't do business with cold callers.
3) Don't get into anything you don't understand.
4) Understand that a "guaranteed" 8% pa is going to carry a fairly high risk of you never seeing your money ever again.

mania112

presumably just a coincidence they're only 5 miles away from Scottish Life (lol)