Please help me choose stakeholder pension provider

slopemaster

Hello.

I have a stakeholder pension worth £70 000. It was with Legal and General and I was happy with it but it was tranferred to ReAssure and their customer service is very poor;

they "do not do e-mails" (seriously!) So I want to find another stakeholder pension to transfer it to.

I thought i would be able to find tables of providers on comparison sites, like you do for banks or insurance, but it seems not. So can anyone help either with specific recommendations, or with any pointers for where to look?

My criteria so far are

good customer service – phone calls and e-mails answered promptly

low management fees

choice of funds including non-UK investments

can make flexible payments in

can do flexible drawdown with low or no fees

can be managed online – including changing funds and making withdrawals with no paper forms to send back, if this is even possible?

There may also be other criteria i should have, but haven't thought of yet...

slopemaster

Sorry, I should have described my situation also.

Age 63, no longer working, living on small pension from work plus rent income. So the plan is to draw on the stakeholder pension for extras in some years, and also put the £2880 into it some years if Ihave it spare.

dunstonh

Please help me choose stakeholder pension provider

There are hardly any left.  Any reason it has to be a stakeholder pension?

My criteria so far are

My criteria so far are
good customer service – phone calls and e-mails answered promptly
low management fees
choice of funds including non-UK investments
can make flexible payments in
can do flexible drawdown with low or no fees
can be managed online – including changing funds and making withdrawals with no paper forms to send back, if this is even possible?

Stakeholder pensions do not meet all those requirements.  You need to be looking at personal pensions or SIPPs.  And as you are looking at DIY, that pretty much means SIPPs only.

Marcon

Have a look at https://www.pru.co.uk/pdf/SHPK0337.pdf

slopemaster

Thank you, I didn't realise there are hardly any stakeholder pensions any more.

But I felt like a SIPP would be too complicated for me - I don't want to buy and sell shares etc. just  choose the funds the pension goes into and then maybe tinker every year or so, which is what i used to do with L and G - they had 20 or 30 funds to choose from, and met most of the other criteria except "no paper forms"

Anyway, thanks for the pointer to why I wasn't finding suitable stakeholder ones! I'll look at SIPPS

Just out of interest, why?

Marcon

slopemaster said:

Just out of interest, why?

Why so few stakeholder plans? They were products designed to be bought and sold without advice (to keep down their costs), so were clearly never going to be a favourite with financial advisers! After they were introduced in 2002, providers of other types of personal pension started to reduce their charges and were soon comparable, and sometimes cheaper, than stakeholder plans. 

They have some useful features - they can't charge an exit fee if you transfer out of a stakeholder plan, and they are the only type of pension in the UK which must accept a transfer in from any other UK registered pension scheme, which can be handy if you are trying to find a home for benefits you are transferring out of a defined benefit scheme against the advice of your adviser. They are also required to have a default investment fund, which means those who don't want to take any investment decisions don't need to do so (although no guarantee the default option if the best option for them).

dunstonh

Just out of interest, why?

Stakeholder pensions were mostly sold by financial advisers and were introduced in 2001 but pensions were required to be stakeholder friendly by 1998.   Their purpose was to reduce charges.   They achieved that and were very good products for their era.   However,  by around 2004, personal pensions started undercutting stakeholder pensions. Many by removing commission and becoming fee-based.  That continued to gather pace and stakeholder pensions only really were suitable for small investors at that point.

It costs more to operate stakeholder pensions as they use insured life funds. SIPPs were cheaper to operate as there was lower consumer protections.  So, the DIY providers ignored stakeholders and focused on SIPPs.

davidr1964

I have had a stakeholder pension with Standard Life for 20 years. They respond quickly to my queries.

The_Green_Hornet

You could take a look at Pension Bee. It does most of what you want but the choice of funds is limited.

https://www.pensionbee.com

Albermarle

slopemaster said:

Thank you, I didn't realise there are hardly any stakeholder pensions any more.

But I felt like a SIPP would be too complicated for me - I don't want to buy and sell shares etc. just  choose the funds the pension goes into and then maybe tinker every year or so, which is what i used to do with L and G - they had 20 or 30 funds to choose from, and met most of the other criteria except "no paper forms"

Anyway, thanks for the pointer to why I wasn't finding suitable stakeholder ones! I'll look at SIPPS

Just out of interest, why?

Even if you have a SIPP that offers thousands of possible investments ( such as HL, AJ Bell, Fidelity and Interactive Investor)including individual shares etc , there is no problem to pick just one simple fund.
Or you can have a restricted SIPP, or a Robo Sipp where there is a more limited choice . Such as Vanguard, Legal & General, Nutmeg , Evestor etc 
Or you can stick with the traditional pension providers , like Aviva, Standard Life etc.

slopemaster

Thanks all. I'm thinking Vanguard...