Standard Life Easy Pension VS Royal London

shoppingnoodles

Hello!


I am quite literally driving myself nuts about this, so I would welcome some sensible (and hopefully kindly!) advice.


I have 2 old pensions worth around £60k that I would like to consolidate. Also I would like to put an annual sum of around £2000 to £3000 into the new pension. I am 53.


Having been contacted by a financial advisor via Unbiased, he recommended Royal London Portfolio 5. I won't go into detail here, but there were things that the advisor did / said that made me feel uncomfortable with his advice and I wondered if I would be better going it alone with a Standard Life Easy Option pension? The fees are significantly lower and given that I would like to retire at 60, I am wondering if this route would be more beneficial?


Has anyone any thoughts on this option? I would be really glad for some constructive input before I drive myself completely insane!

dunstonh

Standard Life are about to sell up their life and pensions business to Phoenix. They are keeping their Elevate and Wrap platforms.

Royal London is one of the biggest on the market. Indeed, they are the UKs largest pension drawdown providers. The Governed Portfolios are highly regarded and they support all pension freedom options as well as being relatively low cost. RL is also a mutual and return a share of the profits each year to policyholders. It equates to around 0.15% of the fund value.

I don't know anything about this SL easy option to compare it with. usually the insurance companies dont make good DIY options.

Albermarle

Royal London pension can only be accessed via a financial advisor . They are a major player and seem to have a good, up to date and competitive product as mentioned above, but you would have to take account of the fees from the advisor, although they could probably get a lower charge rate on the pension than you could get directly with Standard Life yourself.
I have a DIY pension with Standard Life and find it very easy to operate ( not the 'easy' version but the 'DIY' one with more fund options). The website is very good and they respond to queries quickly.
Three points to note though:
1) The charges are discounted depending on the size of the fund , I think the discounts start at £50K

2) I am still investing rather than taking the pension . They claim to have full functionality for drawdown etc but I have obviously never tested this aspect.

3) This part of Standard Life has been sold to another company but it is unclear whether this will have any effect in future , probably not.

shoppingnoodles

Thank you for your really informative replies. Food for thought.


I realised that Royal London deal only through advisors, but I am considering going through the advisor to set up the RL pension, but not taking up the ongoing service from him. What are your thoughts on this?


I called RL this afternoon and they didn't seem phased by this suggestion and said that it was completely OK, but can you see any pitfalls I might face doing this?

dunstonh

I realised that Royal London deal only through advisors, but I am considering going through the advisor to set up the RL pension, but not taking up the ongoing service from him. What are your thoughts on this?

We normally use it for transactional clients and not ongoing servicing clients. It's fine for that.

shoppingnoodles

Thank you so much - I might stop driving myself bonkers now!


I feel so much better about it -the RL plan without the ongoing advice seems to be my best bet.


Many thanks Dunstonh and Albemarle for your help today.