7 Pensions to combine - PensionBee?

citroen999

Hi
I’ve got a total of 7 work pensions to combine. I been looking at the PensionBee site and I like the idea.
But when I asked about the exit fees for the Abbey Life £5681 pension the person said I would get £5172, so £509 less. Is this an exit fee , seems a lot, basically 10%. Can I expect 10% to be taken off all my others which would amount to over £8k... so I can’t see how I would benefit swapping them to PensionBee or have I got my wires crossed,

Heres my pension amounts below 
Abbey Life Pension 1 £5681
Abbey Life Pension 2 £51546 old serps 
Prudential £7512
Royal London Pension 1 £10257
Royal London Pension 2 £896
Aegon Pension 1 £7230
Aegon Pension 2 £1218

greatkingrat

Impossible to know without more details about the pension. Where did the £5681 figure come from? If it was from an annual statement, it is possible the value has gone down since then and £5172 is the current value?

Certainly there will not be any across-the-board 10% reduction though, individual schemes might have specific rules though.

Notepad_Phil

The 10% could be an exit fee or it could perhaps be a MVR (market valuation reduction) because you are in something like a with-profits fund and this MVR might then be reduced/removed at some point in the future. Unfortunately the best way to find out the current costs of exiting is to check with each of your pension companies.

As to whether it would be better to transfer or not, that depends on many factors but some of the main ones are a) the costs of the pensions that you currently have (i.e. how much in management fees, platform fees, etc, you have to pay), b) the costs of the pension you would transfer to, c) whether the company that you are transferring to have investment funds that would be more suitable for you, d) how long is it before you reach retirement, e) will the pensions allow you to do what you want to do when you do reach retirement, and potentially f) how long you will be in retirement for.

Even if every pension does have a 10% exit fee then it could still be worthwhile to transfer if PensionBee has funds that you prefer and would be cheaper over a long period of time, but it's very much an individual choice to make.

dunstonh

Old Abbey Life plans tend to have capital and accumulation units.   The capital units are effectively the up front fees deferred over the period in a slow decline.   When you transfer out, you get them immediately taken away.  Hence the reduction.

citroen999

greatkingrat said:

Impossible to know without more details about the pension. Where did the £5681 figure come from? If it was from an annual statement, it is possible the value has gone down since then and £5172 is the current value?

Certainly there will not be any across-the-board 10% reduction though, individual schemes might have specific rules though.

from what i understand i was getting was the value of my pensions as of yesterday prices, each pension company i rang said they could only give me a value based on the previous days prices which is subject to change.Notepad_Phil said:

The 10% could be an exit fee or it could perhaps be a MVR (market valuation reduction) because you are in something like a with-profits fund and this MVR might then be reduced/removed at some point in the future. Unfortunately the best way to find out the current costs of exiting is to check with each of your pension companies.

As to whether it would be better to transfer or not, that depends on many factors but some of the main ones are a) the costs of the pensions that you currently have (i.e. how much in management fees, platform fees, etc, you have to pay), b) the costs of the pension you would transfer to, c) whether the company that you are transferring to have investment funds that would be more suitable for you, d) how long is it before you reach retirement, e) will the pensions allow you to do what you want to do when you do reach retirement, and potentially f) how long you will be in retirement for.

Even if every pension does have a 10% exit fee then it could still be worthwhile to transfer if PensionBee has funds that you prefer and would be cheaper over a long period of time, but it's very much an individual choice to make.

So taking this step by step, step 1 being finding out how many old pensions i had ... what would be my next steps... find exit fees, management charges, transfer values etc??

.... if someone could tell me my next 3 or steps that i should do now i have firstly found my pensions that would be greatly appreciayed

Albermarle

I think that you have to see that Pension Bee is offering you a service.
Having seven smallish pensions is a hassle to monitor , keep paperwork , notify all of every change of address.
Pension Bee will combine them all in a relatively simple , reasonably priced new pension, you can easily monitor on line.
It could be when you analyse every charge of the old pensions, maybe an exit free for a couple , there could be a better cheaper way than Pension Bee. However it will take more effort on your part contacting all the providers etc ; deciding how best to consolidate etc .
It's your call in the end. 

Borisjake

There should be no fees from Abbey Life. I am transferring 2 former Abbey Life pots to PensionBee and between 2nd July and last week the total transfer value actually went up.  The values are variable until the point of transfer. I'm comparing Abbeylife info and confirmation of transfer amount from PensionBee.

dunstonh

There should be no fees from Abbey Life.

A lot of Abbey Life plans have an early transfer penalty.    Some don't.  So, it is not safe to assume that they do not.