Defined contribution pensions, partial transfer with Aviva - the segments affair

rachelism26

anselld said:

From a pragmatic view why not just transfer half of the remaining units each year.  It would take you 12 or 13 years to get down to one segment.  By that time something may have changed.

excellent idea!  thank you.

twilek1982

Would be interested if anyone found a way round this? Aviva didnt make this clear when I transferred overy my work pension over the last 2 years to my SIPP. My SIPP growth is much greater than Aviva funds. 
Having spoken to Aviva they've said if I want to transfer the last segment over then that closes my workplace pension & my employer may not opt to open it again... which sounds restrictive! 
The lady admitted that segments is an archaic system that is fairly unique to Aviva.
 

Malthusian

Would be interested if anyone found a way round this? Aviva didnt make this clear when I transferred overy my work pension over the last 2 years to my SIPP. My SIPP growth is much greater than Aviva funds. 

The OP found a reasonable workaround, but as I understand it you have already transferred all the segments of your pension but one, meaning a partial transfer is no longer possible?

Having spoken to Aviva they've said if I want to transfer the last segment over then that closes my workplace pension & my employer may not opt to open it again... which sounds restrictive! 

Employers generally don't want to go through the paperwork of opening a new pension every single year just because one of their employees is chasing higher returns.

Have you tried explaining the situation to your employer and asking if they will re-open a new pension for you if you transfer out the old one? They may do it as a one-off, and then you will presumably be back to the original number of segments with the new plan, and in the future you will be able to make partial transfers until you end up with 1 again.

If the SIPP has grown more than the Aviva pension over the past 2 years then that's down to the investments within it, not the SIPP and Aviva. (And performance over 2 years is just short-term luck anyway.) Have you looked at whether you can hold something similar to the SIPP investment within the Aviva pension?

dunstonh

Aviva didnt make this clear when I transferred overy my work pension over the last 2 years to my SIPP

Did you ask them?  it's not the sort of thing that you would expect to be mentioned otherwise.

Having spoken to Aviva they've said if I want to transfer the last segment over then that closes my workplace pension & my employer may not opt to open it again... which sounds restrictive! 

Unless you are in the Aviva SIPP then the rest of the products are restricted products.

The lady admitted that segments is an archaic system that is fairly unique to Aviva.

It's not fairly unique to Aviva.   Whilst it is very unusual (probably non-existent) with modern plans, it was very common with legacy plans. You see it with other providers.    Friends Provident plans used segments and some AXA Sun Life (both of which now with Aviva) but you rarely saw it on Aviva's original plans (e.g. ex Norwich Union).   You don't see it on Aviva's modern product range.   So, it's more of an age of product thing rather than a provider-specific thing.

Albermarle

Point is, old company charges 0.35% fee, new one 0.65%.   We'd therefore like to do a partial transfer of as much as possible to get to the lower fees. 

Assuming that both charges include everything - platform/management charge + investment funds charges - then just to point out that 0.65% is only marginally higher than what  is fairly typical for a modern workplace pension . ( 0.35% is very much on the lower side ) 

Also for the amount mentioned ( £18K ) a difference of 0.3% is only £54 pa and your investment funds could change by that amount in a couple of seconds. 

Just maybe helps to put the issue in perspective.