Transferring away from Virgin Stakeholder 1% fee

ericpode

I've had a Virgin Growth Stakeholder (index tracker) pension for many years. No payments in for several years. I've seen comments that their 1% fee is far too much, so I'm looking to transfer somewhere else, probably another index tracker - something that gives me a similar (or better) performance but with much lower fees than Virgin, and zero fees if I have to transfer out again in future.

It will only be 5 to 10 years before I retire, so is it worth transferring this close to retirement ?

I've looked at the cheap pension article here and done a variety of searches, and found various cheap trackers, but it's not clear if these can be used as pensions - e.g.:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/investing/article-1583915/A-guide-cheapest-index-tracker-funds.html

I've also followed the tip to go through a broker, but for example on Hargreaves Lansdown their pensions only list a SIPP

http://www.hl.co.uk/pensions/sipp?utm_source=moneysavingexpert&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=moneysavingexpert+SIPP+link+AFMSL&theSource=AFMSL&Override=1

which I think means I would have to choose the shares that I was investing in - but I really just want an index tracker.

It's very confusing.

Are there any tips for transferring an index tracker pension ?

bigadaj

The board or anyone on it isn't authorised to give advice so only suggestions or observations.

I opened a sipp with bestinvest a year ago, contributing to vanguard lifestrategy 80 currently, which is a globally diversified multi asset rebalancing fund, so should provide a better outcome and lower volatility than the virgin plan. Costs on this are 0.3% for the sipp and about 0.25% for the fund, you could get slightly cheaper if you held a range of trackers yourself and managed in more detail. There are charges for transferring out in many options, but you need to compare total costs, a relatively small transfer out charge is far preferable to a large annual ongoing charges, as you've experienced with virgin.

Another option is cavendish with whom you can hold personal pensions with a range of big insurers at a similar cost.