Would Aviva be a good company for a basic pension?

TanDiy

Hi, regarding the previous post below, my brother has decided to go with salary sacrifice and start a pension.I know that you cannot give investment advice but would just appreciate your view. He wants to open a pension plan that he can just put the money in and not worry about. There are lots of people offering this but he likes the look of the Aviva Ready Made Pension products where you choose your risk and they handle everything in their default funds. Just wondered if anybody had experience with them, are they a good company to deal with or should we be looking elsewhere. Thanks so much for your help.

PREVIOUS POST:
I am posting this for my brother. He is a director and shareholder in a small company. Five directors are also the shareholders and all take the same 29k salary and about 10K dividend each year. There is more profits but they are keeping the money in the company because they want to sell it in a couple of years and apparently it will be better for tax. This year my brother has put in a lot of extra effort to win new business and the directors want to pay him a bonus of £20k. They do not want to pay different dividends to different directors and their accountant has told my brother he should start a pension plan and let the company make a payment to the pension. The other directors have agreed with this and said they will let him add the employers NI so it will be £22,760 they pay to the pension. My brother is 50 years old and has always hated pensions. I know he owns his house and invests in things but he has never had a pension. He really wants the cash and just wants to take the money as pay but, he showed me the example from the accountant and he is going to pay thousands of pounds in tax which seems silly. He might also get further bonus payments in the future. I wanted to post this to check if people agree that the pension is the better option? If so, are there any particular kinds of pension or company where he could just make the payments without having to make decisions on funds and how to invest, he just wants to pay the money in and leave it. Thank you for your help.

xylophone

https://www.pensionbee.com/pensions-explained/pension-contributions/contributing-to-your-pension-from-your-limited-company?ast=JlFLld might be worth a look.

Or try here https://directory.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en

wooder

We started a Aviva pension for my wife this year and it seems ok up to now. Once set up, the 'My Aviva' website is easy to negotiate and has most of the info on it that you would want and gives you lots of control over your investments.

We already knew what investments we wanted, so didn't need to use their suggested products, and so far we have, moved a db pension into it (though that did need an IFA to co-ordinate), moved a dc pension into it, crystallised the pot and taken the 25%tfls.

You can open one without going through a financial advisor, which may or may not be an advantage, and they were fairly good at answering the phone if any queries arose. Only a couple of times were there lengthy waits to speak to someone.

The main criticism I have is that they are a bit lethargic in getting things done - transactions take weeks instead of days and you have to jump through hoops and send blood samples to get your money out, but I don't know if they are any worse than other providers in that respect - I think most of them could do with a good kick up the !!!!, to be honest.