Wealth at Work

sarahsmm

Hi. Is there anyone out there who has dealt with Wealth at Work recently. I have read some old threads on here but there is nothing recent from this year. We have had a representative round to discuss our retirement planning but wanted to know if anyone has had any recent experience of them. Thank you

madeinireland_2

Think they charge about 2% for there service which I thought was expensive but maybe ok for someone who has no idea what they are doing.

jennyjj

sarahsmm wrote: »

Hi. Is there anyone out there who has dealt with Wealth at Work recently. I have read some old threads on here but there is nothing recent from this year. We have had a representative round to discuss our retirement planning but wanted to know if anyone has had any recent experience of them. Thank you

Nothing recent. As an ex BT employee, I went on one of there retirement planning days and have been on their mailing list ever since.

pro's:-
I believe that they have a very good understanding of BT's scheme and their general advice was good and sound. They didn't push their own products and services aggressively
con's:-
I understand the management fees on those investment services are quite on the high side.

robin61

sarahsmm wrote: »

Hi. Is there anyone out there who has dealt with Wealth at Work recently. I have read some old threads on here but there is nothing recent from this year. We have had a representative round to discuss our retirement planning but wanted to know if anyone has had any recent experience of them. Thank you

Ok I always speak as I find so here goes. Others may have a different opinion.

I've attended a couple of their seminars for BT which were good and informative. Definitely worth going to especially if you haven't paid much attention to retirement planning. So if you work for BT go on this you have nothing to lose.

After that I didn't like dealing with them. I had to wait an awfully long time every time I wanted to see someone. They had a high turnover of staff so there wasn't really an opportunity to form a trusted relationship. Plus their performance wasn't great although I accept that the markets were going through a tough patch at the time.

We switched our business to a local IFA and have been much happier.

As I say others may have had a better experience.

Kynthia

I went on a redundancy seminar with them and the gentleman did seem fairly knowledgeable about the civil service pension scheme which was good. He also gave some good infornation about state pension and applying for benefits. They then offer to have someone call you another time and from there you probably get a sales talk as the seminar didn't have one, but I've not bothered having a call.

One thing though was he told me that I wouldn't be able to put some of my redundancy payment into a private pension as my earnings this year wouldn't be high enough to use any carry forward annual allowance this year. However someone else now has told me that the redundancy payment in excess of the tax free £30k would count as relevant earnings which would mean I could use previous years carry forward. So not too clear on that.

madeinireland_2

They are definitely a benefit to anyone that does not understand the basic options but they do not completely understand all the quirks of the BT pension scheme. They had no idea that with the section B scheme you can convert some of your lump sum into more pension for example so you just need to be a little careful if you were planning something that the masses would not normally do. I had good reason to do that conversion which they initially could not understand but after getting confirmation that it could be done they finally agreed it was a good idea in my circumstance - I wonder what the advice would have been if I had not already thought this part through myself.

I do agree it is worth attending their seminars as I did learn some things I didn't know - so it does work both ways.

tigerspill

I have attended several sessions in BT. In general they were quite good with a good understanding of pensions and the specifics of the BT pension.
However, over the years, I think they are becoming less useful and I think on the last one I attended, they presented some errors and lack of understanding.
I did invest with them, but closed these last month as their charges are high and I needed the cash.
But if you get the chance to attend one of their sessions - go for it.