How many baskets do you put your eggs in?

agent69

I'm 64, single and retired, eligible for a deferred DB pension at the end of the year, and the state pension 12 months later (combined value circa £21k after tax).

I recently opened a Vanguard account and have about £90k invested, mainly in the Lifestrategy funds (concentrated at the lower risk end). I am thinking of cashing in my £50k of premium bonds which, along with other spare cash will give me a further £60 - £70k to invest.  Is there any benefit in opening a new account with another platform, or is it sensible to just add it to the Vanguard account?

In addition to the investments above I have £280k in a SIPP, which I am not currently drawing on, and another £20k in 'bank accounts' for day to day spending.

Linton

If you wanted to invest in products from other fund managers than Vanguard you would have to open an account elsewhere.  If you want to keep to Vanguard the inconvenience of maintaining 2 accounts would, in my view, outweigh any advantage.

The risk that some people raise is the security of the money should the provider go bust.  Vanguard is one of the largest fund managers in the world and in any case the funds you hold with them remain your property and could not be taken by the creditors should Vanguard go bust.  This is very different to the situation with cash deposited with a bank.

DiggerUK

Your sums seem to have you expecting SP at 66, have you applied for an SP forecast of what to expect. As you are to receive a DB pension it would be wise to do so. You also seem to have the best part of half a million in cash and investments.

Is that a fair representation of your finances to date? 

I would advice that the best plan of action is to do nothing other than make what you have as 'bomb proof' as possible, your retirement is safe and secure in my opinion. 

"Enough is as good as a feast" as the old proverb says..._

Edit, in answer to your thread question. We put all our retirement savings in to a gold 'basket' before we got to pension time. We have state and DB pensions on top.
I feel the only thing we might have done differently if starting out now would be to have put the gold in tax wrappers, not physical as we did..._

Albermarle

I would not worry about keeping £150K with mainstream investment platform , like Vanguard. Many posters on here have a lot more than that with one platform.
In any case you already have double that in a SIPP , presumably that is on one platform ?
Just for peace of mind though I would keep the pension and the non pension investments on separate platforms .

ChilliBob

At what point do people think you should diversity platforms? Size wise that is, not due to investment options. 

cattie

I have close to £200k in an isa with iweb & just on the verge of putting more cash into my Fidelity isa account to bring me to the max isa £20k allowance for this year. I shall continue to use the Fidelity account for quite some time yet & aim to put another £20k into that once the new isa tax year for 21/22 comes into effect.

Alexland

ChilliBob said:

At what point do people think you should diversity platforms? Size wise that is, not due to investment options. 

Depends how much you can afford to lose based on your overall financial position and approach to risk.
For us the biggest unprotected exposure (above FSCS limits if they apply) to a single platform or fund manager is about 1/3rd of our S&S portfolio.
For £150k+ you wouldn't want to be paying 0.15% platform fee plus 0.22% fund manager fee it should be possible to build a 2 fund portfolio of global equities and bonds with a fixed price platform for under 0.20% pa.
Charges are especially important to keep low if going for low risk and likely low return.

El_Torro

I currently pay monthly into my employer's pension scheme, I also own SIPPs and ISAs with two other platforms. The money in each platform isn't huge, but I still have about 20 years until I plan to retire so they will all grow to a significant size.

Some people might think I'm a tad paranoid to have 3 platforms, especially considering it's some time before I'll even be allowed to access my pensions. Still, I'm happy with it. My biggest concern with having only one platform (especially for Stocks & Shares ISAs) is if the platform suffers a serious IT problem I don't want to be left with no access to money for an extended period of time. 

I also invest in 4 different multi asset funds across these 3 platforms. Again, this might be overkill, but I'm happy with it

BananaRepublic

Is that £280,000 in cash? If so, it’s inadvisable to have that much cash in one account, in case the provider goes belly up. Spread it round to take advantage of the £85,000 FSCS limit per account (assuming totally separate companies). 

enthusiasticsaver

agent69 said:

I'm 64, single and retired, eligible for a deferred DB pension at the end of the year, and the state pension 12 months later (combined value circa £21k after tax).

I recently opened a Vanguard account and have about £90k invested, mainly in the Lifestrategy funds (concentrated at the lower risk end). I am thinking of cashing in my £50k of premium bonds which, along with other spare cash will give me a further £60 - £70k to invest.  Is there any benefit in opening a new account with another platform, or is it sensible to just add it to the Vanguard account?

In addition to the investments above I have £280k in a SIPP, which I am not currently drawing on, and another £20k in 'bank accounts' for day to day spending.

I think given you will have access to a DB Pension, a SIPP with a comfortable balance in it and state pension plus £20k in cash there is no problem with having £150k in the Vanguard LS on one platform. 

 

Albermarle

ChilliBob said:

At what point do people think you should diversity platforms? Size wise that is, not due to investment options. 

From what you can read on here it seems to be less of a monetary figure and more that people with larger pots seem to just have two or three on the go regardless of the actual size. Often it is probably a legacy issue that they have a current workplace pension , a previous workplace pension moved to a SIPP maybe and S&S ISA with someone else. Or they keep funds with one provider and ETF's IT's etc with another, due to the charging structures. I do not think that many people deliberately split up pots with multiple providers , it just kind if happens over time . When it comes to drawdown etc the advice is not to have too many pots as it complicates things too much , tax for one thing and , often people will consolidate at that point.