Is this correct?

dunstonh

"The Virgin Money personal pension is still classed as a stakeholder pension and as someone stated they only allow one option when accessing your pension, that is to withdraw the whole amount with the first 25% tax free".

Is that right?

One of the worst stakeholder pensions on the market. It just happens to have a very niche area where it can be useful for people (although that applies to most stakeholders. At least the few left that still offer a stakeholder now that it is a virtually obsolete option)

The plan was to stash in £10k in March and then to drip feed £500 a month in 2017/18.

So, more personal pension territory if advised or SIPP is non-advised.

jamesd

Acquinas wrote: »

The plan was to stash in £10k in March and then to drip feed £500 a month in 2017/18. I realised when I took it out that there was no annuity option, but I had not twigged that I would be tied into one, single withdrawal. I chose the SP because I don't have the time/application/intelligence to run a SIPP. But is there an alternative low-cost SP/PP wrapper that anyone would recommend instead? I'll be paying 40% tax next year so the prospect of being taxed on all but the first 25% is a bit off-putting.

It's not low cost for larger amounts in funds but Hargreaves Lansdown is around half to seventy percent of the Virgin product if you use comparable tracker funds.

For many years all Virgin offered was a UK FTSE tracker fund with charge of 1% a year. A comparable option at HL would be Legal & General UK Index Class C - Accumulation (GBP) with 0.06% annual charge plus 0.45% HL platform charge, so 0.51% total, a hair over half the Virgin cost. HL provides the full range of full and partial UFPLS and Flexible Drawdown options. Assuming that electronic identity checks work you could expect to have an account open online or by phone inside an hour start to finish, including debit card deposit. No problem to transfer what you have in your Virgin account, also by phone or online.

It would be better to also use Legal & General International Index Trust Class C - Accumulation (GBP) as well, same cost.That one tracks the FTSE global index, excluding the UK. You might put 80% in it and 20% into the UK one.

If you want UK company bonds you could add say BlackRock Corporate Bond Tracker Class H - Accumulation (GBP) at 0.12% and for UK government bonds Legal & General All Stocks Gilt Index Trust Class C - Accumulation (GBP) at 0.1%.

You'll often find the Vanguard Lifestrategy funds mentioned here but at 0.22% you can get to close to half their fund cost by mixing others.

For larger pots HL caps their 0.45% at £200 a year for ETFs, investment trusts and shares, plus trading costs and those could be cheaper above around £50,000 depending on what you invest in and how often you trade.

Acquinas

Big thanks to jamesd and asghar. All is not lost. Looks like HL probably what I should be looking at.