Annual Charges

stevechoo

Hello all, i'm new here so please be gentle.. If anybody can help with the following i'd be very grateful..

I have 2 private pensions, 1 main one where the bulk of my funds are invested and 1 smaller one which is currently active through my current employment.

The larger main one is currently inactive in terms of payments in (and out), i'm 49.

This pension was recently transferred into a different product by the provider, ie, Aegon into Retireready.. It has been in Retireready now for a few months.. I have noticed (and learned) today they are charging me a 0.59% annual management charge (deducted monthly).. I have a basic?!? knowledge regards pensions and was always under the impression that fees were collected when payments were made in to the fund.

To my knowledge i didnt pay these charges on my previous Aegon account or my currently active smaller pension.. Can some of you please shed some (more) light on this for me, and possibly suggest some better ways forward (if there are any...)

Thanks

HappyHarry

stevechoo wrote: »

Hello all, i'm new here so please be gentle.. If anybody can help with the following i'd be very grateful..

I have 2 private pensions, 1 main one where the bulk of my funds are invested and 1 smaller one which is currently active through my current employment.

The larger main one is currently inactive in terms of payments in (and out), i'm 49.

This pension was recently transferred into a different product by the provider, ie, Aegon into Retireready.. It has been in Retireready now for a few months.. I have noticed (and learned) today they are charging me a 0.59% annual management charge (deducted monthly).. I have a basic?!? knowledge regards pensions and was always under the impression that fees were collected when payments were made in to the fund.

To my knowledge i didnt pay these charges on my previous Aegon account or my currently active smaller pension.. Can some of you please shed some (more) light on this for me, and possibly suggest some better ways forward (if there are any...)

Thanks

All funds charge a fee, and did previously too. The fund managers salaries, trustees fees, admin team salaries and costs, web team salaries and costs, insurance costs, regulatory fees and so on, all have to be paid somehow. You should have a factsheet on each of your funds (or you can get one), and the fees will all be clearly shown on these.

The fees will be shown as annual % fees, and are taken out of your fund on a regular basis.

This will be the case if you buy any fund yourself, or have one chosen for you (e.g. Retireready).

You may also pay additional pension provider fees, again, see your key Features Document.

Albermarle

and was always under the impression that fees were collected when payments were made in to the fund.

I think in fact charging when money is contributed is relatively rare nowadays .
As said above normally the pension provider has a % charge and the fund(s) have a % charge .Although I have an Aviva pension that only has one charge, but in this case bothe provider and the fund are both Aviva.
in the past pension providers charges were less visible than today ( and usually higher ) so it could be you were being charged and the info was buried in the small print.
Suggest you contact the old pension providers for clarification of their charging sructures so you then have the full picture

dunstonh

This pension was recently transferred into a different product by the provider, ie, Aegon into Retireready.. It has been in Retireready now for a few months.. I have noticed (and learned) today they are charging me a 0.59% annual management charge (deducted monthly).. I have a basic?!? knowledge regards pensions and was always under the impression that fees were collected when payments were made in to the fund.

No.
You have an annual charge. Old pensions often had an annual charge AND an initial charge. Hardly any providers have initial charges nowadays.

To my knowledge i didnt pay these charges on my previous Aegon account or my currently active smaller pension..

You probably paid more in charges as most of the Aegon plans are cheaper today than the old ones. Although the IFA version is cheaper than their retireready version (0.29%+0.05% for fund = 0.34% tiered at levels which reduce as fund values go up). However, 0.59% all in is not bad.

Modern pensions are much more transparent on charges than legacy pensions. You have always paid charges. Just not told about them in the same way.