Pension transfer speed

Albermarle

I just transferred my first pension , from Aviva to Fidelity.
I initiated the transfer with Fidelity at the weekend and they said it would take 10 days, or maybe a lot longer depending on the transferring provider . In fact the money has arrived already today ! Is that a record ?

user1168934

Traditionally, pensions transfers have taken weeks if not months becasue it has mostly been a manual process with lots of calculations and checks, but there have been efforts to reduce this delay and automate the transfers. Origo is one such service that pension providers can use these days and if both providers support Origo based transfers, I read somewhere the record time for transfers is something like 20 minutes

Ofcourse there are many factors it depends upon such as the transfer amount, tax implications, liquidity of your assets, etc. For straight forward cases and small amounts i.e. <50K or so there may not even be any human intervention involved so may be yours is one of those cases.

dunstonh

Aviva normally transfer most of their plan types within 3 days.

msallen

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but this is where a search for "Origo" took me....

I recently initiated a transfer of my Cavendish/Fidelity SIPP into my existing Jarvis (Gaudi) SIPP.

According to Gaudi, the funds arrived on 31/5 but the status in Origo hadn't been updated so they couldn't release the funds to Jarvis. The "message log" for my account shows they telephoned Fidelity about this the same day.

Since then I have messaged Fidelity via their website - no answer. I have telephoned to be told "yes I can see you're waiting for this to be updated - its with the team that will do that". I have contacted Cavendish to get them to put pressure on Fidelity (which they did do as revealed by a Fidelity agent on one of my calls), and I have continued to make Gaudi aware that I see this chasing as their job.

Anyone who works in pensions and knows Origo - is this normal?

To a mere layman like me, I can understand if it takes a few days for it to be reviewed and authorised, but surely it should be smooth after that. I don't expect the cash to be sent to the new SIPP and only then go into a queue for someone at the sending platform to do something. It just seems bizarre!

Is there anything more I can do - I'm sitting out a rising market. Is this the cost of using budget platforms?

AnotherJoe

Ive just closed one account opened another, transferring some shares and cash, that took about 6 weeks including a couple of missteps where i didnt tell them something i shoudl have and then needed to get forms sent for signatures. And thats just an ordinary share dealing account, not even an ISA let alone a SIPP.