Advice please. Firms for Final Salary Transfer £330k

redux

iro wrote: »

'Commercially stupid' sounds a lot like 'commercially beneficial' from the POV of the client!

Please feel free to PM me IFAs with your best quote for a notional DB transfer of 100k.

I will start off at a rate of 3% (the rate I paid) can anyone beat that?

It seems to me you've already been advised of the forum rules here.

Promotion of a business, whether open on the forum or by private message, isn't allowed.

Customer service representatives of certain companies are allowed to post, for customer service type reasons, but not promote the business or products.

Your post is asking other people to bend or ignore the rules. In effect that should also be outside the rules.

It is paradoxical and ironic to criticise some financial advisers, as a generic category, then announce you want to deal with the most desperate or of lowest integrity.

redux

iro wrote: »

To be clear my sole purpose is to reduce the costs that IFAs feel that they can charge customers and at the same time encourage IFAs to be clear on their websites about the business they can complete and the business they cannot complete.

Is that too much to ask for in the 21st century?

To introduce the possibility of uncertainty about the actions of other IFAs in their pricing will likely move the price down not up.

Good.

Given that you have not removed your incitement for IFAs to PM you with their best quote, your sole purpose still seems to be ambiguous.

Whingeing about low standards of integrity isn't properly accompanied by attempts to lower them further.

There are plenty of businesses where it isn't useful or appropriate to advertise fixed prices for indeterminate amounts of work.

.

iro

Brighter_FS wrote: »

I agree, I would be delighted if all IFAs put their charges up in lights for all to see. Best practice would be to make the Terms of Business (including charges) available on the firms website so people could review before engaging with the IFA.

I will delete all my messages (they are clearly upsetting some IFAs and others on this forum) as I think that this poster sums up my attitude to the issue perfectly.

redux

iro wrote: »

I will delete all my messages (they are clearly upsetting some IFAs on this forum) as I think that this poster sums up my attitude to the issue perfectly.

Before this one goes as well, may I point out I am not an IFA.

I stand by the commment of no pre-advertised price for unknown amount of work.

I don't know what IFAs earn per hour on average, but I can imagine some of them get fed up with people who insist slightly too hard on more work for less money, giving them a dilemma of squeezing the margins or not doing the job properly. If the job takes a day or half a week, it needs to earn a certain amount accordingly, whether figured as flat rate or pro rata.

Sometimes the cheapest is not necessarily the best, a principle that applies anywhere, but I imagine especially here.

Linton

I agree with redux - how can an IFA provide a price for a piece of bespoke work until he/she has some idea as to what the job would entail? This can only come after the potential client has contacted the IFA and they have had a chance to meet to discuss matters.

If they had to commit to an advertised price there is a danger that a client with complex needs would prove to be uneconomic or someone with simple needs would be put off by an apparently high price.

iro

Would you agree that clarity about the ability to deal with DB transfers prominently displayed on the website would be an improvement?

HappyHarry

iro wrote: »

Would you agree that clarity about the ability to deal with DB transfers prominently displayed on the website would be an improvement?

As an IFA with the qualifications and permissions to deal with pension transfers, I wouldn’t want such a thing prominently displayed on our website.

The reason being that my value to my clients is as a financial planner. That involves me looking carefully at a clients current position and future objectives, and armed with that information, I then work with a client to plan the best way forward for them.

A client approaching me because they have decided that they want to transfer their DB pension is far from the best starting point. Often, transferring a pension is not in the clients’ best interest, and so can result in nothing but a disappointed client.

Having a large influx of people demanding that I help with a pension transfer that they themselves have deemed appropriate is not a business model I would ever want.

Lummoxley

Linton wrote: »

I agree with redux - how can an IFA provide a price for a piece of bespoke work until he/she has some idea as to what the job would entail? This can only come after the potential client has contacted the IFA and they have had a chance to meet to discuss matters.

Not an area I know a lot about but would an hourly rate alongside a verified customer rating system work? Do IFA's charge variable hourly rates for any reason apart from the value of the client's assets?

iro

Would you agree that clarity that an IFA CANNOT deal with DB transfers would be an improvement?

I wasted days phoning IFAs who were on a list of pension transfer specialists who said they could not handle DB transfers or said they could handle through some 'third party arrangements'.

The fact is that you only have 3 months to complete the process.

leicestersq

Having a large influx of people demanding that I help with a pension transfer that they themselves have deemed appropriate is not a business model I would ever want.

I can sort of understand that.

But in turn, can you understand that there are some people who want to manage their own affairs and move their own defined benefit pension? I am such a person.

The reason I want to move my pension is to reduce the risk of inflation. My DB plan is index linked only up to a max of 5%. Inflation higher than this will rip the real value of my pension to shreds and there is nothing I can see to protect myself from this outcome.

I am happy to manage my own money, I have managed my own investments for years and year. An execution only SIPP is something that meets all of my needs and a quick look at the numbers shows that even if I make only modest returns on my investments it wont be far behind that of the DB plan. Also, I can buy investments that are much better inflation proofed.

So that is what I want to do, move from a DB plan to an execution only SIPP. But in order to do this I need to find a financial advisor who will help. I have to go to one according to the law. I would prefer not to, it would save me a lot of money but I do get the reason for this.

Then after that the financial advisor will charge me a large amount of money to transfer my pension. Again, I would rather not have to pay this, it would be far better for me to just get the money moved to a company that I trust.

So what should the system do about people like me? The current set up is designed to stop people taking responsibility for themselves and it costs a huge amount of money to take that responsibility. Unless we can find financial advisors who are willing to help us do what we want to do, a lot of the good pension scheme people wont even take our money!

Interestingly, I contacted one very well known execution only SIPP provider, and they pretty much told me that they wouldnt advise me to move my money, and that they wouldnt take my transfer either unless they approved the decision to do so. They said that they would decide the model that would be used to make the decision and decide the inputs to that model. I asked about their inflation assumptions, crucial to the real returns on my DB plan, and they said that they didnt even recognise that high inflation was a risk and that it wouldnt be one of the major things that they would look at when assessing the DB/SIPP comparison.

So it looks to me as if people like me who do see risks in DB plans, and who want to mitigate them and manage their own money, are almost in a Catch 22 situation. In order to gain control over your own capital, someone else who might not be competent, gets to decide whether or not you can take control of your own money. How did we get to such a situation?