Are Scottish Widows a good bet?

sterling2

Opinions please. Am 65, self employed and have 3 small paid up pension pots totalling £150.000 with providers who do not offer draw down. Have been told that a Scottish Widows Retirement Account is a solid performer with reasonable charges, a choice of investment risk level and flexible access to the fund. Could this be considered a wise move, are they any good?
Many thanks

Prism

I would avoid. The charges are not especially cheap (around 0.4% for your amount), you need to also pay a SW advisor or an IFA and the investment choices are limited.

Either move to a SIPP provider which allows drawdown and manage it yourself or find an IFA who will recommend their own choice of platform

sterling2

Hi Prism. Thank you for your reply
I can do the account set up and fund transfer online thus avoiding adviser charges.
 I have had one 'presentation' from an IFA which was not attractive and a quote on fees from another which were 0.5%p.a. plus a set up fee of £2500.00 (negotiable) I do not feel confident enough to manage my own SIPP.

Prism

From what I could see the only way to access the Scottish Widows Retirement Account was to do it through one of their advisors which has a charge or through an IFA. Out of those two choices I would go with an IFA rather than paying a SW advisor to select one of their limited range of choices. My wife uses SW with for her company pension and investment options are underwhelming

SonOf

Have been told that a Scottish Widows Retirement Account is a solid performer with reasonable charges,
pensions do not perform.  The investments within the pension perform. 
SW is not a whole of market platform.  It has a large range but nowadays, not being whole of market is unusual on contracts like this.

I can do the account set up and fund transfer online thus avoiding adviser charges.
 I have had one 'presentation' from an IFA which was not attractive and a quote on fees from another which were 0.5%p.a. plus a set up fee of £2500.00 (negotiable) I do not feel confident enough to manage my own SIPP.
You do realise that SW will not tell you what investments to use unless you pay one of their reps a figure that is similar to an IFA.
The SW website says it can be bought via an IFA or an SW rep.  Have you checked the charges to see if they are including a SW rep charge.

sterling2

The scheme I have looked at is applied for online. There is a choice of four pension portfolios (Governed Investment Strategies) ranging in risk from cautious to adventurous. There is no adviser involved and therefore no fees. 

kinger101

As well as the comments already raised about lack of funds and high charges, I'd like to add that the functionality of Scottish Widow's web interface as pretty poor.  It took several communications with them before they confessed their site doesn't work properly with Chrome.  Only Internet Explorer.  As Internet Explorer is now a legacy product, it's possible one day you won't be able to do anything online.

SonOf

sterling2 said:

The scheme I have looked at is applied for online. There is a choice of four pension portfolios (Governed Investment Strategies) ranging in risk from cautious to adventurous. There is no adviser involved and therefore no fees. 

Right.  So, it is a cut down version of the retirement account.   A very very basic plan similar to a stakeholder in terms of fund choice.   

There is no adviser involved and therefore no fees. 
Dont assume that makes it cheaper.     Many direct to provider plans are actually quite expensive.  Have you got a link so we can look at the charges