Ethical Personal Pension Funds

dward1996

Hi Everyone

I am looking to transfer my current personal pension to a more ethical pension fund as having looked into more detail at the companies that my current pension is investing in, some are questionable from an ethical viewpoint in my humble opinion. Unfortunately I am not knowledgable enough to take out a pension where I select all of the companies to be invested in. Is anybody aware of (and ideally have experience of) any more ethical personal pension schemes? The only ones I have managed to find online are still investing in similar companies as my present pension.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

David

AnotherJoe

Unfortunately you are confusing pension and pension fund throughout. Think of pension as an envelope and fund as what you put in the envelope. 

How much is in your pension ? I ask because unless it's a reasonable sum, an IFA won't be interested unless it's large enough. Nor will it be worth your while. But perhaps you need one to help you choose. OTOH if it's a smallish amount then probably you could select one or two funds yourself. 

There are many "ethical" funds which can be held within a pension,  look at the current thread on ESG. Which brings out the point many times that one persons ethical isn't another. 

Hard to comment much further without more details

Marcon

Have a look at https://good-with-money.com/2020/06/10/top-5-ethical-pension-funds/

dward1996

Marcon said:

Have a look at https://good-with-money.com/2020/06/10/top-5-ethical-pension-funds/

Thanks Marcon. That looks like a really useful link.

dunstonh

Is anybody aware of (and ideally have experience of) any more ethical personal pension schemes?

Pensions are neither ethical or unethical. They are just containers for the investments of your choosing.   A whole of market platform/provider will give you virtually all the ethical/sustainable etc funds you could want.   The more you restrict choice though, the less the ethical options will be. (i.e. a stakeholder pension with 30 funds will probably only have one ethical option).

[Deleted User]

Don’t mix up investment and charity. The former has an important objective to ensure you don’t die in abject poverty. The latter has an important objective of helping others and whatever causes are important to you. You try to do both with the same money, you achieve neither. 

AnotherJoe

Deleted_User said:

Don't mix up investment and charity. The former has an important objective to ensure you don’t die in abject poverty. The latter has an important objective of helping others and whatever causes are important to you. You try to do both with the same money, you achieve neither. 

Don't mix up ethical and charity

bigadaj

Don't mix up scams and ethical.

[Deleted User]

AnotherJoe said:

Deleted_User said:

Don't mix up investment and charity. The former has an important objective to ensure you don’t die in abject poverty. The latter has an important objective of helping others and whatever causes are important to you. You try to do both with the same money, you achieve neither. 

Don't mix up ethical and charity

 “Ethical” funds are a marketing ploy for those who want to do charity and pension savings with the same money. 

dward1996

Deleted_User said:

AnotherJoe said:

Deleted_User :

Don't mix up investment and charity. The former has an important objective to ensure you don’t die in abject poverty. The latter has an important objective of helping others and whatever causes are important to you. You try to do both with the same money, you achieve neither. 

Don't mix up ethical and charity

 “Ethical” funds are a marketing ploy for those who want to do charity and pension savings with the same money. 

Sorry, I didn't mean to start an argument. Just to clarify though, I am not thinking of an ethical pension fund as a form of charity giving. When I want to be charitable, I do pursue charitable means. Rather, I do not want my pension farm to be doing harm to the societies in which they work.

Thank you to those who have offered some useful advice here.

green_man

If you fancy some reading, this guys blog could be worthwhile.  He has been moving his investments to his idea of being more ethical. It might give you some inspiration.

http://diyinvestoruk.blogspot.com/2019/06/sipp-drawdown-year-7-update.html