A J Bell passive SIPP

shepht

Hi, I am thinking about transferring a small Aviva personal pension (£27,000) to A J Bell passive SIPP, I am a tax payer having a DB pension & working 2 days a week, mortgage free with £100,000 savings and full state pension at 66. We are saving £2000 a month into fixed interest accounts, premium bonds and my OH Old Mutual retirement platform. My OH is still working with a good pension, I am likely to give up work in the next year due to family care needs. I would prefer a passive SIPP as I am not investment experienced and I tend to get a bit obsessive if I have to control things! Any advice please?

Albermarle

You have to be careful with the wording with pensions or there can be confusion.
A SIPP in itself is not passive , or active . It is just the pension wrapper ( to use the jargon ) that investments are held in . These investments can be passive or active type investments .

Apart from that the first question that comes to mind is why move it from Aviva? In some cases a personal pension is better , especially for less experienced investors . So what has motivated you to think of changing ?

shepht

Thanks Albermarle, I meant passive fund. I have had poor customer service with Aviva, the pension was a work pension that was Friends Life, Aviva took it over, lost it, then when my ex employer went under I had wrong advice & was denied online access, basically it is now a personal pension charging .75% annual fee and it has taken me over a year to get it sorted, I want carry on contributing to the £27,000 but would prefer to move it away to a company I have more confidence in.

Audaxer

shepht wrote: »

Thanks Albermarle, I meant passive fund. I have had poor customer service with Aviva, the pension was a work pension that was Friends Life, Aviva took it over, lost it, then when my ex employer went under I had wrong advice & was denied online access, basically it is now a personal pension charging .75% annual fee and it has taken me over a year to get it sorted, I want carry on contributing to the £27,000 but would prefer to move it away to a company I have more confidence in.

I assume you mean the passive portfolios of funds that AJ Bell brought out a couple of years ago. When I last looked at what the portfolios contained, I noticed that some of the passive funds in them were actually ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). I know ETFs are quite popular, but when I last looked they weren't covered by the FSCS like other funds are - it may not be a problem but just something to be aware of. Another option would be still to transfer to an AJ Bell SIPP, but invest the money in one of the popular low cost multi asset funds - examples being Vanguard LifeStrategy, HSBC Global Strategy or L&G Multi Index funds at a risk level of your choosing.

tacpot12

I would check to make sure you understand the charges for AJBell Passive Funds and the separate custody charges that AJ Bell levies for all fund holdings, and how these charges are collected if there is no cash held in the account. Bear in mind that your contract with AJ Bell will require you to always have enough cash in the account to pay any charges when they are due.

I use AJ Bell and find them very good, but you need to understand their charging structure to ensure that you don't have any surprises. I don't hold any of their passive funds.

SonOf

I would prefer a passive SIPP as I am not investment experienced and I tend to get a bit obsessive if I have to control things!

A SIPP is just an administration platform. It is neither passive or active. Just the same as your Aviva pension. It is the investments you select that are either active or passive. However, if you build a portfolio of index trackers, then you will need to do some work and how much you place in each tracker is an active decision that you need to keep under review.

A multi-asset fund is the "lazy" option. Not passives.

I have had poor customer service with Aviva, the pension was a work pension that was Friends Life, Aviva took it over, lost it, then when my ex employer went under I had wrong advice & was denied online access,

FL administration is not up to usual Aviva standards and the onlione side of FL is rubbish. It may have an Aviva brand but its really just old AXA or Friends Provident systems that are not fully migrated to Aviva systems yet.

Albermarle

A multi-asset fund is the "lazy" option. Not passives

Although some people refer to multi asset funds as passives , because the investor does not have to do anything to manage them and they are not actively managed .

I think on another very long thread on the subject there was some consensus they were 'passively managed '

jsinc

I transferred into an AJ Bell SIPP. Was easy enough and website is fine. You then need to pick fund(s) and maintain adequate cash for platform charges.

I know you want to leave Aviva, but for info they offer Stakeholder and Personal pensions with lower fees than you're paying as many available funds have no additional management charge. (e.g. via Cavendish - https://www.cavendishonline.co.uk/choose-your-pension). That can sometimes work out cheaper than a DIY SIPP platform + fund costs, and it's simpler to manage.

No doubt there are other providers offering similar things, Aviva's just the one I'm aware of.

Audaxer

Albermarle wrote: »

Although some people refer to multi asset funds as passives , because the investor does not have to do anything to manage them and they are not actively managed .

I think on another very long thread on the subject there was some consensus they were 'passively managed '

A multi asset fund like Vanguard LifeStrategy for example is basically a portfolio of passive indexes with fixed percentages of equities and bonds - VLS60 for instance is automatically rebalanced every day to ensure the equities remain at 60%. Other multi asset funds like HSBC Global Strategy funds and L&G Multi Index funds are also in effect portfolios of passive indexes, but there is more active management of the weightings as the funds managers can alter the percentage of equities within a defined range to keep the funds to a particular risk range. I think the AJ Bell passive funds are similar to those although they contain mainly ETFs rather than indexes.

shepht

Thank you everyone, I can see the sense in staying with Aviva, I have tried to speak to them twice today and both times got cut off mid conversation and I am still unable to login to their user portal! I am probably cutting off my nose to spite my face but the customer service is so poor!

FatherAbraham

shepht wrote: »

Thank you everyone, I can see the sense in staying with Aviva, I have tried to speak to them twice today and both times got cut off mid conversation and I am still unable to login to their user portal! I am probably cutting off my nose to spite my face but the customer service is so poor!

Yeah, but SIPPs are so costly.