how do you choose your pension funds

digg

I am in a prudential personal pension, mainly as my company match my contributions. Prudential let me split my contributions across many funds.

I understand the individual funds risk ratings. But when you are given the choice of similar sounding funds, from different providers. How do you know which one to go with?

Does anyone have any links to fund reviews / anticipated future performance?

dunstonh

But when you are given the choice of similar sounding funds, from different providers. How do you know which one to go with?

You choose your investment strategy and invest according to that. I use sector allocation and risk profiling and pick funds that match that. You wont be able to do that with a Pru pension as Pru are not a very good provider and dont have choice.

How do you know which one to go with?

Experience and knowledge (which go hand in hand with each other).

Does anyone have any links to fund reviews / anticipated future performance?

If you are talking about the Pru range, then you dont have a lot of choice and a lot of the funds are a variation of a theme. Some sectors have very little choice or no choice at all.

Personally, I would have it out of there in a flash and put into a better pension but thats your choice.

digg

My company will only match my contributions if I put it into the company pru scheme. I saw it as 'free' cash. It seemed silly to turn this down.

I guess if there was another provider that could guarantee they could make above and beyond my employers contributions, then having it out there in a flash would be the obvious thing to do.

Pru offer funds from UBS, Newton and a few others as well as their own.

It was how to get advise on these individual funds I was after.

How do you go about finding a good pension company then?

dunstonh

My company will only match my contributions if I put it into the company pru scheme. I saw it as 'free' cash. It seemed silly to turn this down.

ahh right, so its not a personal pension but an employer scheme. Free money is certainly worth it.

Company schemes rarely give an ideal choice. You can still do all right but you wouldnt pay in more than you have to to get the maximum free money. Anything above that can go into an ISA or your own pension.

How do you go about finding a good pension company then?

Research. I wont go into it any more though because in your case, you have to pick from the Pru.

digg

It's a personal pension contributed to by my employer. It's not a employers scheme. They went to great odds to point this out when it was set up. But they will only contribute to the pru scheme.

Again my question is Pru offer me a variety of funds, some from the Pru, some from other providers - of the top of my head all I can remember are UBS, Newton, but there were a few more.

How does one go about researching these different funds.

Given that Pru doesn't sound so hot, how do you go about finding a good one? If I went down the route of taking out another plan with a different provider.

EdInvestor

This site rates funds:

https://www.citywire.co.uk/Funds/home.aspx

Choose "ABI" funds to get to the ones available in the Pru pension.