deciding whether to move my pension

Smokeyone

Hello

Is there a way to decide whether it might be wise to move my pension to a SIPP. My pension is currently with an Ins Co invested in their unit trusts and is worth around £100k

Thanks

kidmugsy

Costs. Start with costs. Look too at investment choices.

Smokeyone

Thanks for the tip....so start off with their costs/fees and follow on with their investment choices which I know are limited to their own unit trusts - the ins co is Sun Life of Canada -

kidmugsy

Smokeyone wrote: »

Thanks for the tip....so start off with their costs/fees and follow on with their investment choices which I know are limited to their own unit trusts - the ins co is Sun Life of Canada -

Visit two blogs to see how cheaply you can run pensions if you transfer.
(i) Monevator
(ii) The Lang Cat.
The Telegraph website also reports comparisons.

Then check whether there would be any costs involved in leaving Sun Life of C. Would there be any advantages forgone? If it's effectively free, and you're sacrificing no advantages, then why not transfer? Then invest as you think best: the Monevator blog makes repeated arguments for using cheap "tracker" funds, which may or may not appeal to you.

What you need to do is add the "platform" charges (i.e. of the online stockbroker that runs the pension) to the management charges of the funds you plan to buy. Compare those totals to whatever you're paying at your present provider.

Smokeyone

Thank you again for the help...there is hours of reading on the sites you mentioned - seems even the Telegraph has it's own SIPP

dunstonh

Is there a way to decide whether it might be wise to move my pension to a SIPP

Why SIPP or not Personal pension?
SIPP is a minority option aimed at people who want investments that are not available in conventional pensions or where they use a platform (perhaps due to multiple tax wrappers) and want to single trading platform.

SLFoC will likely be very old fashioned contracts. Maybe inherited from other companies they bought/merged with. Old is not always bad and some of these old plans have guarantees or very low costs. Although some have no guarantees and very high costs. A modern personal pension would fit most people better than a SIPP would.

Smokeyone

I appreciate your thoughts and I am still checking in to all the details but my initial thoughts are to transfer my pension to where I can make my own investment choices and maybe take advanyage of drawdown -

Chickereeeee

Smokeyone wrote: »

I appreciate your thoughts and I am still checking in to all the details but my initial thoughts are to transfer my pension to where I can make my own investment choices and maybe take advanyage of drawdown -

Both possible (and possibly easier) with a PP .

My own reasons for doing this include rationalising a large number of funds across various platforms into fewer funds on two platforms, but that does not sound like your case.

C