Should I transfer my work pension to new provider?

mummybot

Hi, 
I'm looking for some advice regrading my pension? I have a pension through work that was with Aviva, It was worth £31500 roughtly in Jan. But since then dropped 5-10%. The company changed pension providers from Aviva to Scottish widows at the end of Jan, so my contributions and my employers contributions since have been invested in a new pension with scottish widows. They have contacted me to ask if I want to transfer my pension pot over to Scottish Widows so it's all in one place. Should I leave it where it is or transfer considering the recent drop? If I leave it where it is, I wont be making any further contributions to it. I'm 34 so won't be retiring any time soon.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Dox

The recent drop resulted from your choice of funds within the pension scheme, not from being invested through Aviva or SW. If you were in equity-heavy funds (likely at your age), a drop of 25% in the last quarter would be perfectly typical, but the funds have years to recover.  There's no hurry to move your fund over; what are the charges like for the two providers?

dunstonh

Should I leave it where it is or transfer considering the recent drop? 

Which is better? the old pension or the new pension?

You need to compare them. We don't have the info here to compare them and workplace schemes are all different (even from the same providers as they have negotiated terms and different fund availability depending on what the employer is after or what version of the product they have gone for)

AnotherJoe

mummybot said:

Hi, 
I'm looking for some advice regrading my pension? I have a pension through work that was with Aviva, It was worth £31500 roughtly in Jan. But since then dropped 5-10%. The company changed pension providers from Aviva to Scottish widows at the end of Jan, so my contributions and my employers contributions since have been invested in a new pension with scottish widows. They have contacted me to ask if I want to transfer my pension pot over to Scottish Widows so it's all in one place. Should I leave it where it is or transfer considering the recent drop? If I leave it where it is, I wont be making any further contributions to it. I'm 34 so won't be retiring any time soon.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

The recent drop should have nothing to do with your decision as to whether to move it.

Whether to move it would depend on the choice of funds and the charges between the two different schemes.

Everyone's pension funds will have dropped since January, since stock markets have fallen.

Believe it or not at your age this is great news as it means for the next few years you'll be buying investments at a cheaper price so that when they eventually go back up, and you've got 30 years for that, your gains will be even greater.

Without knowing your details my guess is, the company is unlikely to have put you in a worse scheme and so you'd be better off having it all in one place, SW, with one selection of funds to choose. But you'll have to check the two schemes to know that for sure.