Moving PP from Standard Life

Chickereeeee

I have a personal pension with Standard Life that I want to move to a low-cost SIPP provider. As it is a PP, the funds cannot be transfered in-specie. I want to minimise my time out of the market (SIPP provider says up to 6-weeks for the transfer). Would it be worth transferring to a Standard life SIPP first (so transfer to the low cost provider could be done in-specie) or does anybody have any ideas?

Thanks

C

dunstonh

Would it be worth transferring to a Standard life SIPP first

Will they allow that without incurring charges?

Have you considered a personal pension rather than SIPP? (many PPPs are cheaper than SIPPs if you have more than £25k)

Chickereeeee

Unknown Dunstonh. I hoped not, bur looking at their rather opaque charges, they may well do. They dont mention charges fot transferring out froma SIPP, but they dont say 'no charge' either. So that is probably a non-starter.

There may be a cheaper PP somewhere, but I am fed up with fund restrctions, opaque charging and inflexibility to move to another PP.

dunstonh

Generally, personal pensions are the most transparent on charges as most operate on a single charge basis. Pension funds by default declare the TER as the AMC. Long before that was fashionable on UT/OEICs.

Restrictions can be an issue if you go with a basic one. Personally, I prefer using UT/OEICs with more advanced investors but for the average consumer, I nearly always use a PPP using pension funds when it comes to trying to get lowest cost.

mgdavid

Chickereeeee wrote: »

I have a personal pension with Standard Life that I want to move to a low-cost SIPP provider. As it is a PP, the funds cannot be transfered in-specie. I want to minimise my time out of the market (SIPP provider says up to 6-weeks for the transfer). Would it be worth transferring to a Standard life SIPP first (so transfer to the low cost provider could be done in-specie) or does anybody have any ideas?
Thanks
C

I transferred a SL Stakeholder into a CSD SIPP, took just under 4 weeks - and that was over Christmas and New Year.

gadgetmind

Chickereeeee wrote: »

There may be a cheaper PP somewhere, but I am fed up with fund restrctions, opaque charging and inflexibility to move to another PP.

I know what you mean about restrictions (though many PPs actually give you a *huge* range of options) but the charging is less complex than all the SIPPs that I've seen.

My Group Pension is with Friends Life, and I'm happy with fund choices and fees. I run my SIPP with BestInvest *slightly* cheaper, but this took quite a lot of work. I'm charting their performance against each other, and it's really too early to tell

dunstonh

I transferred a SL Stakeholder into a CSD SIPP, took just under 4 weeks - and that was over Christmas and New Year.

That is actually really slow for an SL transfer out. SL get the instruction on a Monday and they normally send the money over by Wed/Thurs. SL are one of the better ones. Although the hold up may not have been their end.

mgdavid

dunstonh wrote: »

That is actually really slow for an SL transfer out. SL get the instruction on a Monday and they normally send the money over by Wed/Thurs. SL are one of the better ones. Although the hold up may not have been their end.

No holdup that I was aware of - that's just the middle bit; I had to make the formal request, download some forms, fill them in, post off to CSD, who pass them to their 3rd party admin company, who then contact SL etc. Have to wait until the cash comes across to find out exactly how much it is, then another form for the TFLS, then LTA check and eventually I see payment to my bank. Probably a few more steps I've forgotten but it's all quite quick and I was impressed by the general standard of service all round, especially across the holiday period.

dunstonh

mgdavid wrote: »

No holdup that I was aware of - that's just the middle bit; I had to make the formal request, download some forms, fill them in, post off to CSD, who pass them to their 3rd party admin company, who then contact SL etc. Have to wait until the cash comes across to find out exactly how much it is, then another form for the TFLS, then LTA check and eventually I see payment to my bank. Probably a few more steps I've forgotten but it's all quite quick and I was impressed by the general standard of service all round, especially across the holiday period.

It sounds like the hold up was with this third party company then. Perhaps they dont use the Options system and still do it the old way (Options is electronic and paper free). Standard Life do not need any discharge/transfer forms. A letter of instruction is enough. I am not a fan of Std Life in general but they do make leaving them very easy and their admin turnaround on things is one of the best of the "old" insurers.

If both pension companies use options, then a transfer should take place in about 3-8 days. If its the old paper method, then its 2-4 weeks.

Chickereeeee

gadgetmind wrote: »

I know what you mean about restrictions (though many PPs actually give you a *huge* range of options) but the charging is less complex than all the SIPPs that I've seen.

Maybe I am wrong but what I see with my SL PP is this:
- AMC is printed only on the fund sheet. I get a discount of 0.2% because of how the policy was set up.
- Fund prices are all high (even after discount) compared to currently available on SIP platforms (>1% more)
- The funds are mirrors of the actual funds, so difficult to track/compare actual performance as most sites dont show them.
- As they are mirrors, I cannot transfer easily to another provider
- I am sure there maybe more 'modern' PPs that have lower charges, but why am I stuck in an old one? and difficult to change
- Not possible to select low cost tracker funds
- It looks to me that different pension providers have different charges for similar funds. So you have to select the pension PROVIDER to get the lowest cost. Whereas with SIPPs, you can select a low cost platform, and then you select the FUND for lowest cost (and other parameters of course)

C

gadgetmind

Chickereeeee wrote: »

- I am sure there maybe more 'modern' PPs that have lower charges, but why am I stuck in an old one? and difficult to change

All of these old PPs are as much of a pain for the providers as for the customers, so I don't know why they don't offer to move everyone. Yes, they might extract less in fees, but running and maintaining all those old systems can't be cheap.

I guess what I'm getting at is that unless you want the bells and whistles of a SIPP, you may find a modern PP suits your needs.

As for low cost trackers, Friends Life have some good funds that use active asset allocation on top of passives, hence the 0.5%pa fees. They also have managed funds, separate tracker components, and much more.

Don't get me wrong, I like our SIPPs, and have managed to get fees very low with them, but it's a lot of work compared to a PP.

On the plus side, isn't it great that we now have so many low fee choices nowadays? Only a decade or so ago, 5% bid offer spread and 2% pa in fees was the norm and hard to avoid.