Reasonably priced pension advice?

petewales

Hello
I have two old pension pots that I need to do something with. From what I can make out from the paperwork they are 'worth' about £110,000. I contacted a pensions adviser last year and was pretty happy with the introductory advice but to action the advice and move the pensions etc their fee was around £3000 which struck me as quite high. Could anyone recommend some more reasonably priced advice? Please do not message telling me I can sort it myself or similar. I would like some professional independent advice. 
Many thanks

Marcon

If you're talking about transferring funds out of a defined benefit scheme to a defined contribution scheme, then £3K looks pretty cheap - but why do you want to transfer any of them? Why do you need to 'do something with them' - what's the driver for doing so now?

[Deleted User]

I paid 3% so that sounds about right (DB to DC transfer)

dunstonh

If they are defined benefit schemes then £3000 is cheap.  If they are defined contribution schemes you are at the upper end of the reasonable ballpark. i.e. you can get cheaper but it wont be by much (£2k to 2.5k perhaps) but you could also get an awful lot worse.   

I would like some professional independent advice. 

Make sure it is an independent.  Over half of people seeing restricted FAs think they are seeing an IFA when they are not.

eskbanker

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/best-financial-advisers/ offers guidance in the MSE house style, although it's only a matter of time before this thread becomes infested with the vocal IFA bashers who'll clamber onto their well-worn soapboxes to tell you how the entire industry is a scam, populated by bandits, etc....

Malthusian

You will need to shop around to find a lower quote. As DunstonH says, you could get lower but trying to find much lower than 2% could easily be fruitless.

Personally I don't think it makes sense to go with an adviser that you have less confidence in just because they charge £1,000 less. Your pension fund can gain or lose that in a single day.

To put it into perspective, the cost of putting £100,000 in a fairly typical "medium risk portfolio" (around 60% equities / 40% bonds), instead of a high risk one (mostly equities with minimal bonds) was £23,000 - £27,000 over the last ten years. (Medium risk grew to ~£240k, high risk to £265k.) And yet that's the price that everyone agrees the vast majority of people should have paid to save them sleepless nights from being invested above their risk profile, and from potentially losing tens or hundreds of thousands if the unnecessarily dramatic crashes cause them to panic and cash in.

Next to those figures, £1,000 gets lost in the noise. If you are investing a £110,000 pension fund, the peace of mind that you are doing it correctly is far more valuable.

Albermarle

You need to advise whether they are Defined Benefit or Defined Contribution pension . If you are not sure what that means then read this
Workplace Pension Schemes - The Pensions Advisory Service

Thrugelmir

£600 of the £3k fee will most likely be accounted for by VAT.  

dunstonh

Thrugelmir said:

£600 of the £3k fee will most likely be accounted for by VAT.  

Advice should not be Vatable if there is an intention to purchase a financial product and the fee stages have not been broken down into stages.  The "intention" is the important bit. It doesn't have to be the outcome.  If there is no intention to buy a financial product from the advice then it is vatable.  Some firms also break their fee down over the stages.   That introduces VAT to some of those stages.