Pension advice

boknaai

Good morning everyone. I have an old workplace stakeholders pension which I have continued paying into, even though I am no longer working there.
I have since moved on and have another, much smaller workplace pension.
My old pension is with Royal London, worth just under £100 000.
I recently asked if I could increase payments, and they said that as it was an old workplace pension I am not able to increase payments. Only option is to continue as is or move to another scheme.
So what are my options? I would like to move to another scheme, do I need a financial advisor?
I contacted a local advisor who wanted to charge me 3% of my pot, which seems a bit much 
I found some cheaper online alternatives such as pension egg and pension bee are they any good?
I don't want anyone to manage my scheme, I purely want advice on where to move it and what type of scheme I should go for.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Pulpdiction

You could just open a SIPP and transfer it for free, I've just consolidated 2 pensions into a SIPP and filled in the forms online and it took less than a week to complete.  Just look at the benefits based on your requirements, but AJ Bell, Vanguard or HL are all options.  

Took 10 mins to open my account, was very easy all done on their website.

boknaai

Pulpdiction said:

You could just open a SIPP and transfer it for free, I've just consolidated 2 pensions into a SIPP and filled in the forms online and it took less than a week to complete.  Just look at the benefits based on your requirements, but AJ Bell, Vanguard or HL are all options.  

Took 10 mins to open my account, was very easy all done on their website.

Thanks. I'm just so clueless I didn't want to transfer it and choose the wrong provider and see my pension tank.
So those three are good providers?

MEM62

boknaai said:

Pulpdiction said:

You could just open a SIPP and transfer it for free, I've just consolidated 2 pensions into a SIPP and filled in the forms online and it took less than a week to complete.  Just look at the benefits based on your requirements, but AJ Bell, Vanguard or HL are all options.  

Took 10 mins to open my account, was very easy all done on their website.

I didn't want to transfer it and choose the wrong provider and see my pension tank.

The choice of provider does not dictate whether your investment tanks or not.  That is dictated by the funds (investments) that you choose.  In simple terms, the provider just takes care of the administration.  

The options suggested are all well respected companies.  Personally, I have an ISA with Vanguard and fine the platform very easy to use.    

Albermarle

I don't want anyone to manage my scheme, I purely want advice on where to move it and what type of scheme I should go for.

You may not be fully aware of it , but you manage your current stakeholder scheme now .

Within the stakeholder there is a choice of investments ( presumably ) . Either you picked these investment(s) at some point or probably you did not pick anything and your money has been invested in what is called a default fund, which may or may not have been the best fund to be in for you.

If you transfer to another pension , the money will move over as cash and you will have to choose the investments for the cash to buy . 

As said the companies mentioned above are all good pension administrators , with a large choice of different investments ( which you have to choose from ) Some try to make it as simple as possible for inexperienced investors ( Nutmeg& PensionBee come to mind) but their fees are a bit higher.

I have since moved on and have another, much smaller workplace pension.

Another possibility is to transfer the RL scheme into your current workplace scheme . Normally this is no problem but you would just need to check first . Then you could increase your workplace contributions . Often workplace pensions are competitively priced . If you tell us the provider you could get some feedback .

Again though in your workplace pension , your money is invested in investments within the pension , and not the pension itself. Again you would have to choose how to invest the transferred cash .

Or maybe the simplest solution is to leave the RL one where it is, and increase contributions to your current workplace pension.

boknaai

Thanks for your response. I really don't know enough to choose the investments, so I guess it would be a default.

My current workplace pension provider is NOW pensions. Only started putting in a few years ago when the new laws regarding workplace pensions came in 

I did consider transferring it over, but I kind of liked the idea of having 2 pensions, don't know why. 

dunstonh

Thanks for your response. I really don't know enough to choose the investments, so I guess it would be a default.

In some cases, the default will be high risk. In some cases very cautious.  Some will be middle of the road.  Often the default funds are basic and middle of the road in terms of performance.

So, don't rely on default unless you know it is right for you.

boknaai

dunstonh said:

Thanks for your response. I really don't know enough to choose the investments, so I guess it would be a default.

In some cases, the default will be high risk. In some cases very cautious.  Some will be middle of the road.  Often the default funds are basic and middle of the road in terms of performance.

So, don't rely on default unless you know it is right for you.

I really don't have the knowledge to manage it, so I'm guessing my only options are to leave as is, transfer to my current workplace pension scheme or pay for a managed pension? Pension egg, pension bee or nutmeg, etc

dunstonh

boknaai said:

dunstonh said:

Thanks for your response. I really don't know enough to choose the investments, so I guess it would be a default.

In some cases, the default will be high risk. In some cases very cautious.  Some will be middle of the road.  Often the default funds are basic and middle of the road in terms of performance.

So, don't rely on default unless you know it is right for you.

I really don't have the knowledge to manage it, so I'm guessing my only options are to leave as is, transfer to my current workplace pension scheme or pay for a managed pension? Pension egg, pension bee or nutmeg, etc

Or use an adviser.  You said one would charge 3%.   You may find cheaper or more expensive but remember that a one off charge to an adviser can result in your going into a pension that is a 1/3rd of the annual cost of what you have or some of the alternatives you have mentioned.   Plus, the adviser picks  the investments to match you.   So, dont rule out that option. It may be an initial hit but there could be a breakeven point within just a handful of years.

boknaai

dunstonh said:

boknaai said:

dunstonh said:

Thanks for your response. I really don't know enough to choose the investments, so I guess it would be a default.

In some cases, the default will be high risk. In some cases very cautious.  Some will be middle of the road.  Often the default funds are basic and middle of the road in terms of performance.

So, don't rely on default unless you know it is right for you.

I really don't have the knowledge to manage it, so I'm guessing my only options are to leave as is, transfer to my current workplace pension scheme or pay for a managed pension? Pension egg, pension bee or nutmeg, etc

Or use an adviser.  You said one would charge 3%.   You may find cheaper or more expensive but remember that a one off charge to an adviser can result in your going into a pension that is a 1/3rd of the annual cost of what you have or some of the alternatives you have mentioned.   Plus, the adviser picks  the investments to match you.   So, dont rule out that option. It may be an initial hit but there could be a breakeven point within just a handful of years.

I think the advisor I spoke to said he uses the 3 and 1 rule. 3% initially followed by 1% yearly to manage it

Albermarle

My current workplace pension provider is NOW pensions

They only have one investment fund to choose from . It changes as you approach your retirement date . It has very competitive charges and is happy to accept transfers in .

Just make sure that you give them your best guess for a retirement date ( even though in reality you can actually take the pension before or after this date, within limits )