Final Salary Pension Transfer

RoadToRiches

rich744 said:

no one has been able to name a scheme that will accept an insistent client since AJ Bell closed the door. 

Many suggest that it 'should' be possible, but there is no evidence of a successful route.

We will see, I have one that has agreed to accept the transfer on proof of me taking regulated financial advise.

I won’t give the name on here until it is confirmed my funds have fully landed from the fund trustees. Hopefully in a few weeks.

AlanP_2

As is often the case with this subject the regulations and market reality are getting conflated.

The regulations say you need advice.

Market reality is that a small % of IFAs are qualified to offer the advice and they charge a hefty fee for doing so (supply and demand?). Market reality is that their insurance premiums are very high for those transactions hence inflating the price again.

The regulations say you can transfer even if you got a negative recommendation.

Market reality says that nearly all (if not all) potential receiving schemes don't want that business as they foresee future compensation claims aided and abetted by the same sort of companies that were involved in PPI claims. Whether they end up paying compensation or not the aggro involved in dealing with it all is not worth it compared to the extra few quid they would get in platform fees.

The regulations say that a Stakeholder must accept the transfer.

Market reality says that Stakeholders are less popular than they were and the overwhelming majority require an IFA to be the intermediary (they wholesale rather than retail essentially).



It's a mess and may not be what Parliament intended but moaning about advisors and platforms and stakeholder companies won't change the realities.

Contact your MP and request that Parliament looks at the situation again as the "regulations are no longer fit for purpose". That won't get anything done but has a much greater chance than moaning on here.

Albermarle

It's a mess and may not be what Parliament intended but moaning about advisors and platforms and stakeholder companies won't change the realities.

Absolutely spot on !

Linton

AlanP_2 said:

....


It's a mess and may not be what Parliament intended but moaning about advisors and platforms and stakeholder companies won't change the realities.

Contact your MP and request that Parliament looks at the situation again as the "regulations are no longer fit for purpose". That won't get anything done but has a much greater chance than moaning on here.

tbh I dont think Parliament or the government ever decided what they did intend for DB pensions at that level of detail, beyond discouraging the buying of Lamborghinis and protecting unfunded public sector pensions.  They achieved both those aims pretty successfully.  So the FCA is completing the job that Parliament and the Government left half done, which lets both parties off the hook.

Malthusian

I think we can be fairly definitive that Parliament did not intend for people to start cashing in DB pensions in large numbers (unfunded or funded), as otherwise they wouldn't have reduced people's freedom to do so, by imposing the advice requirement and banning transfers from unfunded pension schemes.

I think Parliament has got exactly what it wanted. People who had a clear reason to transfer out of their DB pension got positive advice and did so. Most of those who didn't but were still keen to transfer either a) got a chicken-and-chips positive recommendation from one of the dodgy advisers that has now shut down or b) did an insistent client transfer while it was still pretty easy or c) decided they weren't actually that fussed.

Only a trickle of people still keen to transfer out against advice remain and most of them apparently don't want to do it that badly, given that their reaction on being told how they can still do it generally boils down to "That sounds like a faff, I can't be bothered". As a political force they are non-existent. If they manage to get Parliament to drop the advice requirement or set up a statutory safety valve (e.g. requiring NEST to accept all transfers a la stakeholder pensions) I will happily eat my words.

Parliament's main intention was to end the problem that people were being railroaded into buying annuities with their DC pension funds which offered extremely poor value. The fact that their solution made cashing in a DB pension more attractive (if only superficially) was a side-effect. The advice requirement was the sticking plaster on that side-effect.

RoadToRiches said:

We will see, I have one that has agreed to accept the transfer on proof of me taking regulated financial advise.

I won’t give the name on here until it is confirmed my funds have fully landed from the fund trustees. Hopefully in a few weeks.

That would definitely change the game if you named them. Just to double check, they have agreed to accept the transfer even if the advice is negative?

Linton

I agree that in the end Parliament got what it wanted. But it also didnt do anything about the matters it didnt really care about.

The advantage of the solution Parliament chose was that it satisfied both the libertarian tories and the socially minded liberals & labour so the Act could be passed - remember this was in the days of the Cameron/Clegg coalition government 

RoadToRiches

Malthusian said:

RoadToRiches said:

We will see, I have one that has agreed to accept the transfer on proof of me taking regulated financial advise.

I won’t give the name on here until it is confirmed my funds have fully landed from the fund trustees. Hopefully in a few weeks.

That would definitely change the game if you named them. Just to double check, they have agreed to accept the transfer even if the advice is negative?

Correct the provider has had confirmation I have taken full advice. They do not care if it is positive or negative result. They agreed to accept the funds, and put the request in to the DB scheme for same. Hopefully all sorted in a couple of weeks when it lands.

Pablo7474

But still won’t name them apparently 🤣

hyubh

Malthusian said:

I think we can be fairly definitive that Parliament did not intend for people to start cashing in DB pensions in large numbers (unfunded or funded), as otherwise they wouldn't have reduced people's freedom to do so, by imposing the advice requirement and banning transfers from unfunded pension schemes.

If there was no expectation of an increase in DB transfer outs (due, as you say, to the liberalisation of DC pensions), there would have been no reason to introduce the ban on transfer outs from unfunded public sector schemes. Prior to 2015 there were no special limits on doing so; the ban was introduced on the expectation of an upsurge that would have happened otherwise, disrupting what is essentially a cash accounting system in place for those schemes. 

RoadToRiches

Pablo7474 said:

But still won’t name them apparently 🤣

I will not name them here until it’s landed, even then I am reluctant 

why? Cause I feel pressure from this forum forced the closure of AJ Bell. It would not be fair to anyone who really wants to transfer against advice