Money due from pension - under payment on transfer

wood1e2

hi,

I have just reived a letter from Aegon stating that the money I received from a transfer back in 1999, was to low.

Aegon are now offering a some of money to make up for this. The trouble is they are offering to place it in a 'Stakeholder Pension', which on the face of it is fine, but my dislike of this is that would give me 4 pensions with them!!

1) Original Pension - which this money mentioned above is for
2) Monies from another company who shut down their Final Salary Scheme
3) New moneis from employer number 2 replacing the final salary scheme they shut down!

At the time I remember telling any borker the company gave us that I wanted all pensions in one. My argument being that I don't want to pay 3 x charges on 3 pensions, when all three were so small.

And now to be forced to open a fourth pension just smacks of more 'broker/supplier' generate income for themselves.

Now I presume there is nothing I can do about the fact that three pension as inexistance, but I would love to be able to stop this offer of a 'Stakeholder Pension' and stick the £1700 in one of the other three...preferable the biggest....there is almost nothing in all pensions, certainly nothing to retire on.

So costs are something of an issue with me, as I am dealing with such a small amount.

Is there anything I can do regarding the offer?

greenglide

Well if you feel like that you could always turn down the offer from Aegon.

Normally the charges on pensions are a percentage of the funds held, not a fixed amount per pension plan so, on that point, it makes no difference whether you have 1 or 100 pensions all of them tiny.

The pension scheme that your employer closed down could well be a Defined Benefit scheme so a transfer into that would not be practical. The current employer scheme may not accept transfers from other schemes but you may be able to transfer the money Aegon give you into it once you have it - they may just be reluctant to pay the money by any other mechanism than setting up a new scheme.

It could be that the new scheme they want to set up may be the cheapest of all of them in which case that is the best place to have it.

jamesd

You should have no problem transferring money placed in a stakeholder pension to any other money purchase pension. Given the ones you list it appears that you need to have only one pension with all of the money in it if you want to do the moves.

dunstonh

And now to be forced to open a fourth pension just smacks of more 'broker/supplier' generate income for themselves.

Which is a strange opinion to have as a modern plan would be cheaper than a 1999 plan and there is no commission to pay on modern plans. Whereas there would be on a non-advised increment to a pre RDR plan.