To move, or not to move...multiple pots

AnotherJoe

What @point5clue said, look at the costs and options for investment of each scheme and how that fits with what you want to do, and make a case by case decision.
Dont rule out an entirely new pension either, to move some or all iof the existing accounts in, dont just choose the least worst of the ones you happen to have basically just through happenstance.


FWIW i have two, HL and Standard Life. Consolidated a couple of other pensions into the HL over the past few years, I'm leaving these two, HL and SL separate for multiple reasons, including not having all my eggs in one basket (even if there's full protection, any number of "near worst case" events could cause a providers funds to be inaccessible for months)
Plus, i use the SL as my fire and forget provider and the HL as my "tinker toy", keeps it simple, avoids me having the temptation to mess with half my funds.
HL is where i add each years £3,600, have my ISA and S&S accounts and so on, buy and sell shares and funds etc. Yes its more expensive than some but i really like the ease of use, its facilities, the ability to talk to people there, and since I"m never going to run it down to zero, I can rationalise the slightly higher costs as less money to my descendants, and it wont affect me.

Tammer

cfw1994 wrote: »

Thanks for those last replies!

There is always a background concern of "all eggs in one basket", but Aviva ought to be a pretty well protected basket, right?!
thx!

Ordinarily, as Aviva is still an insurance company, the compensation is unlimited under the FSCS. However, Aviva qualify this by saying money held in "external funds" is not covered by the FSCS... I am guessing that Vanguard etc. are included in this category and presumably will have their own compensation schemes in place which will include the FSCS (probably up to £50k) although why Aviva don't mention this is a mystery.

cfw1994

Clearly many pension funds will be well over the normal regulated amounts for banks etc (the £85K).

https://www.pensionwise.gov.uk/en/protection suggests "You can be compensated for up to 100% of the value of your pot if your pension provider can’t pay you and is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)" by claiming from the FSCS, which sounds nice...
...but "up to 100%" could mean 99%, or 50%, or 1%!

Heading to the FSCS site, there is a lot of detail, but it can be a little confusing (to a novice like me!): for example, on the same page

"Pension Life Savings
If you are still building up your pension pot, 100% of your pot will be protected if it's directly managed under a life insurance contract."
sounds great, but

"Investments
If you choose to place your pension funds directly in investments (other than insurance products), you are protected up to £50,000 per person per firm. "
perhaps less so: my pot is with through work in a "Group Pensions Scheme" with Aviva, spread amongst several funds....is that 100% protected, or only to 50K...hmmmm! I suspect it *is* protected....

but maybe I need to dig deeper just to get a bit of reassurance on things with Aviva!