SIPP Providers

gadgetmind

Wow, on the face of it, they are charging 1% even for the Vanguard and Blackrock trackers! Of course, this could just be an indicative change, and your employer might have negotiated a lower fee.

Linton

puk999 wrote: »

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.

Suggest you check with your pension people. Employer's pensions may well have lower than publicly advertised charges as the employer takes some of the admin load and also may be able to negotiate a good "bulk purchase" deal.

Why do you say the fund offering is small, looking at the list you link to I see more than 300 funds offered. Of course they may not all be offered in you employers pension.

Perhaps if you searched for "index" or even "idx" you may find more funds to your liking. I notice there is a range of Vanguard funds in the list if that's what you want.

gadgetmind

And some standard life "all in ones" that use either Vanguard or Blackrock trackers in various UK and overseas mixes. Those wanting more active have multi-manager funds, Jupiter Merlin portfolios, and much more.

If the fees are sub 0.75%, and ideally sub 0.5%, then there is little point in moving IMO.

kangoora

I'm with SL through my company pension scheme also and the charges are 1% on basic trackers - however, I'm led to believe this is an 'all-in' charge (need to confirm this soon). They add anything from 0.05% to around 0.35% (or so) for their 'management' of active funds, such as JP Morgan, etc - some going over 2% AMC. We get a 0.3% discount on charges, which applies also when I leave the company or retire.

I'll have to look at these when I am about to retire as I think the chances of me convincing my monolithic company to pay into a pension plan with another pension company are so slim as to be non-existent.

puk999

gadgetmind wrote: »

Wow, on the face of it, they are charging 1% even for the Vanguard and Blackrock trackers! Of course, this could just be an indicative change, and your employer might have negotiated a lower fee.

Linton wrote: »

Suggest you check with your pension people. Employer's pensions may well have lower than publicly advertised charges as the employer takes some of the admin load and also may be able to negotiate a good "bulk purchase" deal.

When I spoke to SL they said that was what I paid. I'm pretty sure I asked if there was any employer discounts and the answer was no. I will double check this point though. There are only about 15 of us in the company and they seem to be fairly clueless about pensions so I suspect they don't have a discount.

Why do you say the fund offering is small, looking at the list you link to I see more than 300 funds offered. Of course they may not all be offered in you employers pension.

Compared to fund supermarkets who have 2000+ funds, 300 seems small to me. I suppose 300 is ok for a personal pension. I run a SIPP (currently with Fidelity) alongside and for the purposes of portfolio simplicity having roughly the same set available makes things easier (e.g. rebalancing, sector analysis). For example, I hold AXA Framlington Biotech (not the core of my portfolio) and searching for "bio" or "biotech" shows nothing on the SL site. Another holding of mine is the Vanguard Global Bond Index which I couldn't find on the SL site. Ditto for Fidelity Index World fund.

Perhaps if you searched for "index" or even "idx" you may find more funds to your liking. I notice there is a range of Vanguard funds in the list if that's what you want.

I used the "tracker" just to get some search results to show the costs. Using "index" shows a different set of funds but all with TERs >= 1%.