Transfering Company Pension into SIPP with Vanguard?

krish123

Morning All, 
I was made redundant in December 2020 and was wondering if i could transfer my existing company pension (with Aviva currently) to Vanguards SIPP so i can manage this myself and reduce on the fees?
The Aviva pension fund was actually not too bad (my future growth), a generic 80% equity and 20% bond allocation. If i were to go down the Vanguard route i would be more aggressive and have no bond allocation.
Im not sure of the exact charge of the Aviva fund but i would expect it to be above 0.5%.
Do you think this would be a good idea, or best to leave things as they are?

jimjames

I don't know what the Vanguard SIPP charge is but my Aviva one is 0.58% all in. Originally I was looking at transfer to HL but realised that would be more expensive so I'd check costs first

krish123

0.58% sounds about right. Vanguards platform fee is 0.15% plus fund charges so very cheap. My parents have a portfolio with them and the site is very good to use, everything makes sense, so i could happily manage things on this platform.

krish123

I just had a look at the charges for the funds i would select with Vanguard and they average 0.25. so overall fee would be 0.4% with vanguard which is good.

Albermarle

It might be a good decision but at the moment you do not seem to be fairly comparing the two options .
to Vanguards SIPP so i can manage this myself 
What is stopping you managing the Aviva pension yourself? It probably has more choice than Vanguard.
Im not sure of the exact charge of the Aviva fund but i would expect it to be above 0.5%.
Why not actually find out ? You will need to call them to be sure as employer pensions tend to have discounts from the standard charges , which are not always obvious from the paperwork .
My current workplace pension with a multi asset fund costs 0.27% all in , although that is lower than normal.

krish123

Albermarle said:

It might be a good decision but at the moment you do not seem to be fairly comparing the two options .
to Vanguards SIPP so i can manage this myself 
What is stopping you managing the Aviva pension yourself? It probably has more choice than Vanguard.
Im not sure of the exact charge of the Aviva fund but i would expect it to be above 0.5%.
Why not actually find out ? You will need to call them to be sure as employer pensions tend to have discounts from the standard charges , which are not always obvious from the paperwork .
My current workplace pension with a multi asset fund costs 0.27% all in , although that is lower than normal.

I am more familiar with Vanguards offering, and has been my understanding that generally there are cheaper than the competition. 
I will however ring Aviva on monday to establish the current fund charges and other offerings they provide, based on this i will make a final decision.

Albermarle

You should have on line access to Aviva, where you can see the fund range on offer .
At the end of the day the investments you choose on either platform is more important than shaving a few fractions of a per cent of the charges.

dunstonh

I was made redundant in December 2020 and was wondering if i could transfer my existing company pension (with Aviva currently) to Vanguards SIPP so i can manage this myself and reduce on the fees?

Will it reduce fees?  A lot of people who say that are surprised to learn that their existing pension is cheaper. That may or may not be the case here.
Also, there was a thread in the pension section earlier this week where someone was looking to transfer their Aviva pension to Vanguard using VLS40 and it turned out the Aviva pension had outperformed VLS40 in the same period.  

Im not sure of the exact charge of the Aviva fund but i would expect it to be above 0.5%.

Not necessarily.  I have seen Aviva pensions as low as 0.1% on company schemes.  You need to check to be sure. Do not go by the fund factsheet (as that will display the generic maximum).    Ask them. Some aviva plan statements show it.

Ciprico

It may be cheaper to hold your preferred Vanguard funds on a non Vanguard fixed fee platform like interactive investor. Where the vanguard percentage based fee ceases to be cheaper is around £75k