Consolidation advice

doodlez1612

LHW99 said:

Why don't you find out the charges on all of them, and consolidate into the (existing) one with the lowest charges?

That was my theory but was just checking whether there was anything else I needed to check in order to compare. There seem to be so many figures on the paperwork (eg provider fees, projected growth rates etc) I wasn’t sure where to start!

Albermarle

it’s just that I’m not clued up enough to choose investments myself and I’d rather some investment company made the decisions on my behalf!

Investment companies do not make decisions for you,  they are not allowed. If you want someone to give you personal investment advice you will need to pay an IFA( Independent Financial Advisor ) .

There are some pensions where if you do not specify what investment you want your money to go into , it automatically goes into a default fund, which is a kind of decision I suppose, but it may or may not be suitable for your circumstances. There are others ( SIPPs mainly) where if you do not actively invest the money yourself it just sits in cash account earning zero,

MallyGirl

doodlez1612 said:

MallyGirl said:

You use the term 'bitty' which implies a few thousand here and there to me - is that the right ballpark?

Correct but it all adds up. 

Have you asked whether you can transfer into your current employer's pension scheme?

That’s an option but trying to work out which is the best policy to stick with. For example it would presumably be a bit silly to transfer them all into my current one if say the one with the most money in at the moment had the highest transfer value based fee meaning it might make more sense to consolidate everything there. Or one with a low sum in at the moment had some other good rate meaning it makes more sense to consolidate there. (Obv will still have to have my current company one open for the time being but could put that in once I move jobs - 2 pensions for the time being is better than 5.)

Not belittling the amounts at all - it definitely adds up but if you were talking about a sum of £100k across them all then the approach could be different. I chose a SIPP provider with a fixed fee rather than percentage based because of the sums involved.
I have consolidated 6 old pensions into a SIPP and I paid no transfer fees at all. Do you have documentation that makes you expect fees?

doodlez1612

Ah I see. Yeah it’s probably no more than £10k in total! I can see how going for one with fixed rather than % fees makes sense with a large amount. I think with the amount I have at the moment it’s fairly irrelevant whether the provider fees are eg 0.25% or 0.5% so transfer fees is probably the only thing worth really considering. I looked at the paperwork ages ago and it looked a bit daunting and time consuming so ignored it until recently and decided to get some advice on how to tackle it before I spent too much time looking at it again (so I wasn’t scared off it before I even started again!).
I feel capable to tackling it now though so thanks everyone. I’m going to focus on transfer fees for helping select the right one for me.

Albermarle

I’m going to focus on transfer fees for helping select the right one for me.

Most likely there will not be any transfer fees. They are less and less applied nowadays .

In fact some SIPP providers will pay any transfer fees incurred by transferring to them - although terms and conditions apply of course.

MallyGirl

No mainstream provider will charge you to transfer in - it would just make you go elsewhere. It is possible that you might be charged a fee by the one you are leaving but that is getting less common.