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Going into Drawdown either Aviva or Quilter
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Run away. Stop. Wait. Review the portfolio where it is and understand the fund choices and all costs.
Work out what investment risk level suits your pot size, income need and age and attitude. Assess whether a portfolio like that can be done where you are presently in the saving stage and the drawdown stage. Do not rush.
Do not assume an IFA will magically be better - they will offer a wider range of product but can use the same stunt to recommend a transfer even if the logic for it is dubious on costs and speculative around investments.
If you really can't be bothered to learn and do this step yourself then do yourself the favour of finding an IFA and getting an alternative proposal from them.
Existing occupational trust DC schemes can be cheaper or more expensive from a platform and drawdown admin choice. Check carefully do not assume or use a rule of thumb here. It is the mother of all screw ups. Do not assume that the adviser will check this honestly or not recommend a transfer because it is bad for you on cost. They have trivial ways and means to get around that. Moving back in is often not possible at all so it is one way door once stepped through. Don't be bumped along by their sales business process.
Existing occupational trusts often carry the 100% protection vs 85k (which demonstrably of limited value due to the way investment funds are held but still a value >0) but it is a thing you lose upon transfer most of the time
Fund choice will be indeed be wider after a move out and the active selection may include forum favourites or indeed be reputationally "better" than a life company list.
But CRITICALLY this investment choice factor matters IF and only IF you need the flexibility because you can't achieve an equivalent or good enough/similar portfolio goal to meet your objectives more cheaply where you are. This is how the trick is done. The cheeky trick used here is to justify the transfer (which would fail all cost comparison tests) upfront and ongoing, protection etc. by moving you to a different objective, investment posture and portfolio and fund selection which can then be claimed to be more likely to address your goals and risk appetite and *potentially* superior on returns (which it may or may not prove to be net fees). This is then still suitable advice. Even if it increases your fees, your portfolio risk (risk of volatility or losses). They do get a LOA and go and get details of your scheme (it's a compliance item so they can't not do it). They don't have to take much notice of it though.
The claim is linked back to your disclosure and documentation to make the advice look reasonable and that is all that is required to take the 2% and any ongoing arrangement you sign up to. Be aware IFAs can perform this trick as well as FAs when faced with a well subsidised employer scheme as it's the only way to get the assets out, transferred and under management - whether or not it's actually a pragmatically good decision for you.
Believing that it theoretically *could* be a good decision for you is part of the required belief system to do this self serving transaction and sleep. Not everyone working in advice is evil or exploitative but there is plenty of goal misalignment to be aware of.
That which is best for you but makes them no money is unlikely to be recommended if a regulator defensible alternative can be drawn up which does.
Caveat emptor.
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alan014 said:pip895 said:So Quilter has both higher long term charges and an initial 2% charge?Why can’t you pick Active funds in Aviva? Very few transfers are charged these days - or is this actually the advice charge? Is your FA an IFA? I would be most concerned about the ongoing charges being higher..2
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alan014 said:MallyGirl said:alan014 said:Financial Adviser
The fund chosen by the FA has quite high fees:Platform - 0.4%Fund - 1.15%IFA - 1%That's 2.55% a year costs before you break even not allowing for inflation.
Then an initial 3% to set it up.
The fund is Quilter Investors Cirilium Moderate Portfolio R Acc.I cant post any snapshots but it hasn't done any better than VLS60 or HSBC Global balanced in the last 5 years
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Thank you so much everyone! A lot of great comments and tips much appreciated.
Would an IFA do all the dealings with the pension companies and transferring of funds etc (As my FA would be doing) as I am in a total of 4 schemes the main one Aviva or do they advise and I do the paperwork. I only ask as i have tried to phone each pension scheme that i am in and they are not at all easy to deal with!
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Aviva is one of the best pension scheme administrators in the UK - I'd stick with them.1
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Spears123 said:Aviva is one of the best pension scheme administrators in the UK - I'd stick with them.0
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Would an IFA do all the dealings with the pension companies and transferring of funds etc (As my FA would be doing) as I am in a total of 4 schemes the main one Aviva or do they advise and I do the paperwork.
Yes they would. Effectively the only difference between an FA and an IFA is that the FA is restricted to offering their own product range. The IFA is whole of market . Sometimes FAs will present soltuoins and ask you to pick where an IFA will eliminate unsuitable options and only present multiple solutions if there both are suitable but have pros and cons. Both would do all the paperwork.
The fund chosen by the FA has quite high fees:
That's 2.55% a year costs before you break even not allowing for inflation.
Then an initial 3% to set it up.Platform - 0.4%Fund - 1.15%IFA - 1%
The fund is Quilter Investors Cirilium Moderate Portfolio R Acc.That almost certainly won't be an IFA but an FA. Quilter platform and Quilter fund would indicate a Quilter FA.Aviva is one of the best pension scheme administrators in the UK - I'd stick with them.
I wouldn't go as far as that. They are only around 2 years in with the Aviva platform and it lacks a lot of functionality present on others. We were told that more will be configured and turned on as time goes on but that hasn't happened. Possibly due to CV. Recently, we were told there is still more coming but not much has arrived since they moved to it and it remains at a similar level of configuration as Quilter. All the platforms using FNZ have pretty much identical pension administration in terms of the electronic side because they are all using the same software. Differences will be on the human side and to be honest, neither Quilter nor Aviva are particularly strong on that part. Quilter may have an excuse as they only recently moved to the FNZ and are probably fielding a lot more calls from users getting used to the new software. Aviva turned off their telephone lines during the first lockdown which was an awful decision.
We recently had an LTA case with Std Life Elevate and Quilter. Std Life is another FNZ platform. The Elevate form was simpler than Quilters version and both were posted to the respective platforms on the same day. Elevate put a copy in the client documents folder on the receipt confirming it was received. Three weeks later, Quilter still has yet to show it in their documents folder and have not acknowledged it. Std Life show the full audit trails yet Aviva and Quilter show hardly anything. They have their configuration opened up.
We position Aviva as a budget option, with budget functionality and service (as we usually see platform charges in the 0.1x% range) whereas the quality platforms tend to start around 0.20%. Then you have the expensive ones are 0.35% and above. Many of which don't justify their extra charges. All things being equal (i.e. if costs were all the same across the board). I personally wouldn't use Quilter or Aviva as neither meets the functionality that others have.I am an Independent Financial Adviser (IFA). The comments I make are just my opinion and are for discussion purposes only. They are not financial advice and you should not treat them as such. If you feel an area discussed may be relevant to you, then please seek advice from an Independent Financial Adviser local to you.1 -
For historic pensions admin - some big companies like Aviva and L&G and others - with a lot of schemes under admin - you will find that queries on exact rules for old timed memberships of particular schemes often need a specialist to look at it and reply (work queue) and that this can regularly take 2 weeks or more to queue up and go through. And with miscommunication or misunderstanding it can take a couple of cycles to get clarity. No phone numbers to get to those people.
Once you internalise this expectation. It's fine. Transfer teams do queries when there aren't transfers to process.
The case for getting enough experts (for all schemes) on the frontline and charging all the scheme members for having it sat there to answer in three rings just isn't there so it wouldn't make sense. So they don't do it. And trustees don't ask them to do it. So expecting it to happen is unwise.
You also need to stick strictly to questions of fact about the scheme and funds, specific benefits, as by law and for risk management reasons they are strongly allergic to anything which strays towards suitability or advice and you will get an unhelpful non-answer to anything that strays. This too is part of why the front line customer services are less than "helpful" if you haven't thought it through before calling - even if it's because you don't know what you don't know. They can't be seen to lead you through to a decision about their product.
If you expect speed of digital then you are going to be disappointed. But the digital new entrants don't have the historic complexity to deal with and often don't have the people and process to deal with the wheels coming off at all. Pick a poison.
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The AVIVA FNZ platform was launched late Jan/Feb 2018 so it has been running for 3.5 years not the 2 years mentioned by dunstonh. I happen to remember as I placed one of the first advised cases onto the new platform for Aviva Financial Advice (AFA). Just be careful that the platform you choose has the functionality that you require - for example the non-advised AVIVA platform does not support phased drawdown only single drawdown i.e. where you take all your tax-free cash up front. If you require true phased drawdown you need the advised platform which requires you to take advice with the resultant advice charges applying.1
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So much useful information and thank you so much! I can now appreciate a lot better why Aviva do not respond instantly .....
Talk about timing - I have just received a written response from Aviva which was reassuring stating "If transferred to the Aviva - Investment Pathway 3. The annual management charges for investment pathway 3 are 0.1%"
This seems really too low?? so have now asked if there are any other charges that i am not seeing? This would blow out of the water the charges I have been quoted from Quilter and demonstrated by dunstonh and appear to be similar investment types?0
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