One drawdown plan or two?

JoeEngland

I currently have several DC pension pots with different providers. Would it be better to consolidate all of these into one plan with a provider that allows drawdown, or for security reasons is it worth considering having two drawdown plans with different providers? By security I mean the risk of someone hacking or scamming.

AlanP_2

Scamming is usually "human error" of some kind so no matter how many accounts you have you are vulnerable to that, although exposure might be limited to what's in the account.

Hacking, well the provider should be defending against that and would be liable if they let someone in.

To my mind multiple accounts protects against "annoyances" e.g. IT issues that stop you doing what you need to do when you need to do it.

dunstonh

Would it be better to consolidate all of these into one plan with a provider that allows drawdown, 

Yes it is unless there are justifiable reasons not to.

or for security reasons is it worth considering having two drawdown plans with different providers? By security I mean the risk of someone hacking or scamming.

You are the biggest risk of that.  Not the provider.  You having multiple providers/platforms doesn't mitigate that risk.

Albermarle

Another alternative is to have one pension in drawdown and leave the other ones uncrystallised for now .
You could then intermittently top up the drawdown pension with the other ones.

Or consolidate down to just two pensions. One in drawdown and one not .

I know the chance of a major pension/fund provider having big problems is very unlikely, but having all eggs in one basket is not always the best idea for peace of mind.

jamesd

First determine whether you'll be 57 or older on 6 April 2028. If you will be 55 to 57 then it'll matter whether one of them has a protected 55 access age.

Hacking and firm failure are both risks. While your money will largely be safe in the failure situation, subject to FSCS limits, you may lose access for several years. No great harm to have some in a fallback account but that could be ISA at a different place from pension.