SIPP Providers

MrC100

Hi,

I know everyone is trying to keeps costs down to a minimum these days, but how long should I expect a company to respond to an email question?

I was looking at Youinvest and Interactive Investor SIPP's, and decided to ask a question relating to pension transfers. The idea being that I can assess their responsiveness to my concerns. 3 days and counting so far. (for both!)

Neil

OldBeanz

It's up to you,

HL win many awards for their level of service but will charge more. I think the older you get the more you are prepared to pay for a better service.

HL will answer your call in the morning.

Kendall80

Bestinvest were pretty good at responding... and are cheap too. At least for the first 100k or so.

Thrugelmir

MrC100 wrote: »

I was looking at Youinvest and Interactive Investor SIPP's, and decided to ask a question relating to pension transfers. The idea being that I can assess their responsiveness to my concerns. 3 days and counting so far. (for both!)

Neil

If you're not a customer. Then you'll be low priority. Far easier to pick the telephone up. I've found X-O to have excellent customer service in all my dealings. Whether it be trading, ISA or SIPP.

MrC100

Thanks. I went on comparefundplatforms dot com and the best option for me was Interactive Investor. (250K - no regular investments, due to having to be in my companies scheme currently)

I looked around the internet, and noticed a lot of people complaining about mishandled/time consuming pension transfers into iii. This is why I am concerned. AJ Bell are based near me, which is why I am considering them too.

ozzage

I have an III SIPP.

Here is my experience, as a customer, of asking them something SIPP related via their secure messaging system.

1st October question first raised
7th October no response so chased them
11th October received a response but it was a "rote" message and didn't address my actual question
20th October chased them for real answer
1st November finally got a proper answer

So one month, although I probably caused some of that by delaying my 20th October response so long (I was on holiday)

If service is important I would definitely go elsewhere.

gadgetmind

Kendall80 wrote: »

Bestinvest were pretty good at responding... and are cheap too.

Yes, I've always had very prompt and very personal service from BestInvest. The way they treated existing customers during the RDR change was also spot on, unlike HL with their "if you don't like it, pay to leave" attitude.

Dunnit

There is a difference between the cost of a service and the level of service. There are complaints about the cost of HL services but few complaints about their service level.

puk999

I'm not a customer of BestInvest yet. I emailed them on December 5th and got a response on December 9th. It seemed like ages to me but there was a weekend in between

Their email didn't answer my question but invited me to call with a direct phone number to the person who wrote the email. I called about 2 days later. The person remembered the query and spoke knowledgeably about it.

If I can get my employer to stop paying into my existing Standard Life pension plan and create another one (so existing can be transferred) then I'll probably transfer it to BestInvest. They seem to be cheap for SIPPs and pretty good for service. They do funds, shares and ETFs too so if I fancy having a punt on individual shares (was tempted by Tesco) then I can.

gadgetmind

puk999 wrote: »

If I can get my employer to stop paying into my existing Standard Life pension plan and create another one (so existing can be transferred) then I'll probably transfer it to BestInvest.

Good luck with that! It took me six months to get Friends Life to do this for me, and I had the valid reason of wanting a pension input period that was tax year aligned.

Is the Standard Life option really that bad?

puk999

gadgetmind wrote: »

Good luck with that! It took me six months to get Friends Life to do this for me, and I had the valid reason of wanting a pension input period that was tax year aligned.

Is the Standard Life option really that bad?

Based on my research the Standard Life charges are fairly high and the fund offerings small. My plan is a Group Personal Pension One (fixed). Using this page and putting "tracker" in the fund search shows some results. The Management & Charges tab shows the TERs are all above 1%. Other funds (e.g. small companies) seem to be more expensive on here than on platforms like Fidelity or BestInvest (even after adding in the platform fee of 0.35% or 0.3%).

I'm hoping my employer can simply setup a new plan for me leaving the other one ripe for transfer. I've requested it but waiting to hear the result.