Who will accept a DB to SIPP transfer from "insistent client"

NotaBene12

AlanP_2 said:

I must be lucky then. Transfer analysis, positive recommendation and transfer to Royal London completed by IFA two months ago with no ongoing service wrap.

Yes, you are probably lucky.

I contacted +20 IFAs and all but two either don't provide pension transfer services or won't deal with my DB transfer. Some mentioned that the DB pot is too small for them, others that I'm below 50 (or 55). Not sure whether it was just a polite way to say "no".

Anyway - good for you. Would you share (could be via a direct message) the IFA you used and the costs you had to pay?

BPL

Your DB pension also had to be invested somewhere... A transferred pension has 25% Tax free cash to play with. CETV of 10x obviously not worth it 40x worth it so where's the threshold...?

NotaBene12

Linton said:

NotaBene12 said:

dunstonh said:

And the alternative to science is what?
Magic? Tea leaves reading? Gut feeling?
This is precisely what I meant - the process is made deliberately obscure.

It is not made deliberately obscure.   It has a range of unknown variables that require some assumptions and variances on tolerances.
Tell me how science can tell us what risk profile the person has?  Or what their investment behaviour is going to be like? Can science tell us the date of death before it happens?   It's not all hard data that can fit into a calculation.

Please, don't take this as an accusation against yourself - judging from your posts you seem like a decent person who genuinely tries to assist. You deserve only kudos for your pro bono work here.

My post is not about you (or any other person posting here).

Back to your questions:

No, science cannot predict the exact date of death. Nobody can. But science (more precisely actuarial science, demographics and public health research) can provide us with probabilities.

The risk profile is also not a magic - it can be entered as "low", "medium", "high" on some sort of online calculator to find out the answer.

This should be a classical probabilistic model - and as such can should be open to scrutiny. The model used to predict Covid fatalities which was widely derided last year (but turned out to be roughly accurate) was available on the web for everyone to check and scrutinize. And many did so.

Nothing of this sort happens here. We are, instead, offered some sort of voodoo magic that in the hands of IFA1 can say "yes" in the hands of IFA2 can say "no". They might as well use some sort of oija board to come up with the answer.

Probabilistic models would be a terrible way to make major life decisions.  Someone aged 30 has about a 1% chance if dying in the next 10 years.  Clearly taking out life insurance to support dependents would be a waste of money.  Much the same can be said about buying house insurance - how many people's homes are destroyed or seriously trashed each year?

Why bother to get a Covid jab?  Only about 0.2% of the population have died from Covid.

A much better approach is to accept bad things will happen and then question whether one would be able to withstand the consequences.  That is the justification for insurance and covid injections, and in my view the only sensible basis for retirement planning.  It is the reason why most DB to DC transfers should not be recommended.  If you lose your life savings in a massive fall in the markets it is of little consolation that such a fall is exceptionally rare.  If you live to 100 having to scrape by on minimal income after spending your money on luxuries before survival became very unlikely wouldn't you wish you had been more prudent? 

Probabilistic models are not what you presented here.

In such models, the probability of an event is combined with the cost of this event happening. Obviously, death is a very "costly" event - even a small probability leads to a large overall concern.

Anyway, unless one uses explicit assumptions in numerical form about risks and payouts we don't have a scientific approach but, rather, a mambo-jumbo for which the public is asked to pay through the nose. It is one of those vested interests issues that the law was supposed to ameliorate.

AlanP_2

NotaBene12 said:

AlanP_2 said:

I must be lucky then. Transfer analysis, positive recommendation and transfer to Royal London completed by IFA two months ago with no ongoing service wrap.

Yes, you are probably lucky.

I contacted +20 IFAs and all but two either don't provide pension transfer services or won't deal with my DB transfer. Some mentioned that the DB pot is too small for them, others that I'm below 50 (or 55). Not sure whether it was just a polite way to say "no".

Anyway - good for you. Would you share (could be via a direct message) the IFA you used and the costs you had to pay?

I used https://www.wpsadvisory.com/.

The costs I paid won't be relevant to you as they were the "partner" for the scheme trustees and my costs were subsidised (and their costs were lower as they know the scheme details and so didn't need to ask the scheme admins as many clarification questions).

I found them very good in all honesty, the only weakness was in keeping me as informed as I would have liked to have been on progress, had to chase for that.

Comprehensive fact-find meeting to go through circumstances & plans for the CETV if it was transferred and a detailed report summarising my situation, planned approach for the transferred CETV and comparison to DB on offer. 


NOTE: This was at the point of "retiring" in as much as I stop work end of August this year and I am early 60s so age not a barrier.

Additionally my wife is working and earning twice what I do and we both have other DB pensions as well as 6 figure SIPP/ISA/Savings so were not reliant on this DB pension for guaranteed income in retirement.

In all honesty this pot will be used for future luxuries or inheritance.

xylophone

Just had it confirmed in writing from Standard life
"If the DB pension has a value over £30,000 you do need to liaise with your financial adviser throughout the journey and if you go against the advice of your IFA, Standard Life can't accept the transfer in from the DB scheme."
In case anyone else is thinking of using them.  My current employer is using them for my contributions now.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/78396644#Comment_78396644

Is your current workplace pension a stakeholder?

 If so, what does the Standard Life information you were given when the policy commenced have to say about transfers in?

Does it specifically say that transfers in will only be accepted through an intermediary?

Linton

NotaBene12 said:

Linton said:

NotaBene12 said:

dunstonh said:

And the alternative to science is what?
Magic? Tea leaves reading? Gut feeling?
This is precisely what I meant - the process is made deliberately obscure.

It is not made deliberately obscure.   It has a range of unknown variables that require some assumptions and variances on tolerances.
Tell me how science can tell us what risk profile the person has?  Or what their investment behaviour is going to be like? Can science tell us the date of death before it happens?   It's not all hard data that can fit into a calculation.

Please, don't take this as an accusation against yourself - judging from your posts you seem like a decent person who genuinely tries to assist. You deserve only kudos for your pro bono work here.

My post is not about you (or any other person posting here).

Back to your questions:

No, science cannot predict the exact date of death. Nobody can. But science (more precisely actuarial science, demographics and public health research) can provide us with probabilities.

The risk profile is also not a magic - it can be entered as "low", "medium", "high" on some sort of online calculator to find out the answer.

This should be a classical probabilistic model - and as such can should be open to scrutiny. The model used to predict Covid fatalities which was widely derided last year (but turned out to be roughly accurate) was available on the web for everyone to check and scrutinize. And many did so.

Nothing of this sort happens here. We are, instead, offered some sort of voodoo magic that in the hands of IFA1 can say "yes" in the hands of IFA2 can say "no". They might as well use some sort of oija board to come up with the answer.

Probabilistic models would be a terrible way to make major life decisions.  Someone aged 30 has about a 1% chance if dying in the next 10 years.  Clearly taking out life insurance to support dependents would be a waste of money.  Much the same can be said about buying house insurance - how many people's homes are destroyed or seriously trashed each year?

Why bother to get a Covid jab?  Only about 0.2% of the population have died from Covid.

A much better approach is to accept bad things will happen and then question whether one would be able to withstand the consequences.  That is the justification for insurance and covid injections, and in my view the only sensible basis for retirement planning.  It is the reason why most DB to DC transfers should not be recommended.  If you lose your life savings in a massive fall in the markets it is of little consolation that such a fall is exceptionally rare.  If you live to 100 having to scrape by on minimal income after spending your money on luxuries before survival became very unlikely wouldn't you wish you had been more prudent? 

Probabilistic models are not what you presented here.

In such models, the probability of an event is combined with the cost of this event happening. Obviously, death is a very "costly" event - even a small probability leads to a large overall concern.

Anyway, unless one uses explicit assumptions in numerical form about risks and payouts we don't have a scientific approach but, rather, a mambo-jumbo for which the public is asked to pay through the nose. It is one of those vested interests issues that the law was supposed to ameliorate.

Yes, but I would contend that cost X probability is not a sensible approach for planning one's life, in particular retirement planning. Using probabilities at all here is suspect:  

1) The first reason is that probabilities are useful when you have multiple runs so that things even out.  We only have one life, we cannot take advantage of averaging.

2) Secondly the probability of a future economic event is meaningless.  It is either 100% or 0%, the problem is that we dont know which in advance. If something happens there is no way of discovering in how many alternate universes it didnt.  There is no repeated cycle with comparable data from which to calculate the probabilities required for your "scientific" approach. We can say how often things happened in the past but that is not a good guide to the future.  

3) Finally for planning purposes future events are either catastrophic or irrelevent. If you can deal with the catastrophes the rest wont matter or can be dealt with at the time.  A high probabililty of a minor inconvenience does not outweigh a low probability of a disaster.  Looking at things from a cost X probability point of view the cost of something is effectively either infinite or zero. How likely it is to happen does not therefore come into the equation.

A mathematical report with probabilities and graphs showing how different future retirement investment strategies have a x% chance of one return and a y% chance of another  and a z% chance of running out of money may look good, but it's GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out).  Not onjly is it GIGO but it is unprovable.  If something unlikely happens is it because you were unlucky or the probabilities were wrong?

Rather than attempt to predict the future I would look at things the other way around:
1) What is your objective?  eg income of £x adjusted for inflation.
2) What is required to make it possible given the current situation? eg investment return.
3) How could one achieve (2)? eg a portfolio with a particular asset alllocation

And then monitor progress re-evaluating  (1) (2) and (3) over time as reality changes the situation.

Dale72

Marcon said:

Just goes to show what a slewed bunch of posters there are posting here - and plenty of them confuse 'the financial services industry' with the role of the FCA...

A quick look at what the FCA demands of advisers who advice on DB transfers gives a pretty clear indication of what, and just how much, they have to take into consideration: https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/pension-transfer-defined-benefit/advice-checker

The clue is in the job title - 'financial adviser' [preferably independent!]. An adviser who gives vague and woolly 'advice' is pretty useless. If as a client you know so much better, then you don't have to follow that advice.

Slewed bunch of posters, what a ridiculous thing to say. You talk as if only people with a grudge post here, rather than a random bunch of people with various problems/enquiries. If it's slewed in any way, then this is only as a result of those random peoples dealings with the financial service industry.

RoadToRiches

AlanP_2 said:

I used https://www.wpsadvisory.com/.

The trustees recommended them, what they did not tell me about was their waiting lists. By which time they take on the case the CETV value will be outdated. Wasted 3 weeks waiting for them to tell me I am due a call back end of JUNE !!!!

All well and good trustees telling me I should have waited until I got an appointment before requesting the CETV but if I have no idea on what the transfer value is I have no idea if I want to progress. There was a certain figure I was looking for and they hit it so then I decided I can work with that and put the wheels in motion ( and they turned very slowly with this firm)

RoadToRiches

Thrugelmir said:

RoadToRiches said:

Silvertabby said:

As for the flood of transfers out after the 'freedoms', many of these were by lower paid manual workers to whom a pot of money of, say, £50K, was the equivalent of a lottery win and a sum of money beyond their wildest dreams.  I know from several conversations that 'their' money wasn't going to be invested - it was destined to pay for a new car, kitchen, wedding, holiday etc.

Gilt rates are low, that won’t always be the case, the transfer values won’t be so attractive then that’s why sooner rather than later is best for me.

Nor can market performance of equities remain detached from economic reality indefinitely. Paying an ever increasing price for future profits is something constantly overlooked. 

Stock Markets are inherently bullish, they may have pull backs and have bad days and even crashes but if you hold onto them for long enough you will probably find you recover any loss given enough time. Trick is to diversify I guess, get the right funds and get them proportioned / hedged accordingly.  I'll let the IFA I take on do all that for me though. There is always the option to hold back and wait for the value before investing :-)

[Deleted User]

AlanP_2 said:

Dale72 said:

dunstonh said:

Dale72 said:

HappyHarry said:

The advice should only be negative if it is determined that it is not in your best interest to transfer.

There is a repeated implication on these boards that an adviser will almost always give advice to retain a DB pension as it is safer for the adviser.

This is not my experience, nor of other advisers in this area that I have spoken to. You should expect a good adviser working for a fee to give you advice suited to your circumstances, not theirs.

Nonsense, and I think most on here know it.

What bit do you consider nonsense?   I cannot see anything in what HappyHarry wrote that could be considered nonsense.

All of it. Best interest of the client? If you can find someone that can be bothered to advise you when they know there will be no ongoing business for them, then you'll be lucky, or their fee from your pot size doesn't make it worth their while because of potential liabilities. Not saying these are not valid points or that an IFA isn't within their right to use them. Just saying none of it points to clients best interests.

I must be lucky then. Transfer analysis, positive recommendation and transfer to Royal London completed by IFA two months ago with no ongoing service wrap.

What would you have done if the IFA had recommended leaving your DB pension where it was, Alan_P?