Two Final Salary Schemes - SIPP Transfer

BQF

Good afternoon
My first post on this forum so please be kind :-)

My wife and I both have final salary pensions with a large bank (boooo). Our CETVs are £650k and £40k.

We're both keen to get these into our (already open) SIPPs with HL.

Health problems, concerns about the financial strength of the parent firm(!), and inheritance are our major concerns, and we are both savvy enough to invest ourselves.

I've been quoted some LUDICROUS sums to provide the mandatory advice.

Are there any IFAs on here that can:
1 Do their investigative work over the phone, and
2 Not charge an absurd amount
3 JUST offer the advice, not a follow-up suite of investment advice


I want to get this all sorted by Christmas. HELP!

MallyGirl

There are IFAs on here but this is not the place for them to get business. You will need to do the legwork to find a pension transfer specialist.

Aegis

Unfortunately the mandatory advice is complex and very risky for firms, hence they tend to be the most expensive projects. this may explain the ludicrous costs quoted (though you haven't stated what they are to allow a judgement call to be made).


Just bear in mind that, from an insider's perspective, offering any sort of "quick and easy" pension transfer advice service is begging for a very large compensation payment further down the line.

BQF

Let me phrase this a different way then:

Does any user of this forum have experience of a DB pension transfer where they could do it over the phone for a sensible fee?

tacpot12

No IFA will do the work over the phone. If you find an adviser who will do the work, expect to have to go to see them at least twice, and probably three times. First Meeting is an initial discussion to agree the service that is needed so that a fee schedule can be propsed. The second meeting is a detailed data gathering exercise, and the final meeting is where they present their advice. At the initial discussion ensure that the fee for the advice will include signing any forms to confirm that you have received the advice.

As has been said, you need to call around to find an advisor that will do the work for a reasonable fee. Be aware that some of the fee is covering the liability insurance that the IFA has to have, and the insurance premiums are currently very expensive. VAT is also payable on the advice.

I was able to get exactly the service you are looking for from a local IFA for a very reasonable price (about 1.5% of the CETV of £70K), but this was about 2 years ago when there was less concern about insurance claims arising from giving this advice.

HappyHarry

BQF wrote: »

Good afternoon
My first post on this forum so please be kind :-)

My wife and I both have final salary pensions with a large bank (boooo). Our CETVs are £650k and £40k.

We're both keen to get these into our (already open) SIPPs with HL.

Health problems, concerns about the financial strength of the parent firm(!), and inheritance are our major concerns, and we are both savvy enough to invest ourselves.

I've been quoted some LUDICROUS sums to provide the mandatory advice.

Are there any IFAs on here that can:
1 Do their investigative work over the phone, and
2 Not charge an absurd amount
3 JUST offer the advice, not a follow-up suite of investment advice


I want to get this all sorted by Christmas. HELP!

You'll struggle.


This kind of business is the most high risk an adviser can do. In the majority of cases, it is not good advice to transfer.

There is a huge amount of work involved in producing a recommendation. From producing the APTA to the final recommendations. Specific investment advice needs to be provided. Analysis of your future income need is required. Understanding your scheme in depth is a pre-requisite before any advice can even be started.

If you were unhappy in the future (at any time in the future), you could complain, and the adviser may be on the hook for the advice given.

No decent adviser is going to do this kind of work, and risk their own future, without charging a substantial fee.

Albermarle

Also be aware that it could well be ( is likely in fact ) that the advisor will recommend that you do not transfer .
Although having taken the mandatory advice you can then still transfer against the IFA recommendation, be aware that some pension providers will not accept the transfer in this case .

3 JUST offer the advice, not a follow-up suite of investment advice

I think this should be possible, although it might be easier to find the right IFA if there is some ongoing work for them as well. . Also the expert/expensive IFA is only really needed for the mandatory advice/recommendation and the pension transfer itself can be handled by someone else.
However again if the recommendation is not to transfer you might have trouble finding someone to do the transfer .

Thrugelmir

BQF wrote: »

concerns about the financial strength of the parent firm(!)

A bank? :think:

we are both savvy enough to invest ourselves

I would caution against the belief that investing in the longest bull market on record makes oneself savvy.

Plenty of well written studies on Behavioural Finance, i.e. investors optimism and overconfidence. More information being available doesn't improve the accuracy of future predictions either.

I've been quoted some LUDICROUS sums to provide the mandatory advice.

Hence why investors need protection from themselves.

Aegis

Albermarle wrote: »

Also be aware that it could well be ( is likely in fact ) that the advisor will recommend that you do not transfer .
Although having taken the mandatory advice you can then still transfer against the IFA recommendation, be aware that some pension providers will not accept the transfer in this case .

I think this should be possible, although it might be easier to find the right IFA if there is some ongoing work for them as well. . Also the expert/expensive IFA is only really needed for the mandatory advice/recommendation and the pension transfer itself can be handled by someone else.

Bear in mind that it is not permissible to decouple the investments in the receiving scheme from the advice on whether to transfer, so clients wanting to invest themselves actually add rather than remove complexity from the initial advice because the adviser has to analyse their investment strategy rather than using one they are already familiar with. One could of course ask for their advice (including investments) and then take the advice and use it to transfer to an alternative provider with an alternative set of investments, but the VAT rules would consequently make that advice 20% more expensive than it would have been if implemented as advised.

p00hsticks

tacpot12 wrote: »

No IFA will do the work over the phone.

I'm not so sure about this - an old employer of mine (a large international IT company) approached me (and others of a similar age) a couple of years back following a restructure and asked if we would be interested in transfering our existing DB pensions out. They offered to pay for the required advice, which I think was with a finance services company called Origen. The consulatation was done via me completing a questionnaire and then having a hour long discussion with the advisor over the phone who subsequently produced a report which was e-mailed to me.


Although the recommendation was to do the transfer (the pension in question is the smaller of two DB pensions I have) I didn't go ahead as I didn't think the CETV offered was particularly good (as I recall, about £162K for a pension of just under £9k) when balanced against the security I woud be giving up.

fjh

I want to get this all sorted by Christmas. HELP!

Good luck !!

I moved mine from a large bank- started Dec 17 - finally moved mid July 2018!