Scottish Widows Early Bon

finellah

Hi - hopefully an easy question for someone to answer...

I have an old Scottish Widows Personal Pension with a small amount invested. I'm considering either moving this elsewhere or paying into it again.

Each month I have a policy fee deduction and a "early bon" credit.

I'm not clear what these are or if the difference is the total monthly charge or if there are other charges. If anyone can explain it will be much appreciated.

Thanks

finellah

Found something in old docs

"If the policy fee comes to more than 0.125% of the value of the policy then early bonus units are added to the policy on a monthly basis to reduce the effective charge to 0.125%. "

Seems strange that Scottish Widows couldn't have had that info to hand when I spoke to them earlier...

dunstonh

Scottish widows repriced a lot of their legacy plans to match stakeholder many years ago. They did it though a rebate.

Seems strange that Scottish Widows couldn't have had that info to hand when I spoke to them earlier...

Call centre workers are not qualified and many are part time workers on a short contract. In most cases, they would not have built up the knowledge or experience to know details of ancient financial contracts. Balances and taking requests to pass on to others is the bulk of their work.

finellah

Thanks

Do you know if Scottish Widows would typically calculate the estimated cost for avg growth% for me to leave the money where it is for the next 20 years or will I need to do that myself. Seems that the early bonus is also an advance on a loyalty bonus...

"Some or all of the payments made into this policy are eligible for a loyalty bonus."

"The loyalty bonus on the policy is that units held for 15 or more years will have additional loyalty bonus units purchased to reduce the total annual fund charge applying to them by 0.875%. "

"Please note the early bonus units mentioned under the monthly policy fee section above are considered early payment of the loyalty bonus and as such the loyalty bonus units will not be paid until the total number of loyalty bonus units due is more than the total of early bonus units paid to date."