What are the costs involved in the USS pension?

dllive

Hi,

I currently have a SIPP with Vanguard (Life Strategy 100 fund). I also have a USS pension that I pay into each month.

Im thinking about making AVCs to USS, but my colleague said Id be better off paying into my SIPP becuase *he thinks* the USS costs are high. Is that the case?

Unfortunately Im not able to SS my AVCs 

My colleague also said that USS no longer off 'The Match'? (even though it still displays this option on their website).

Thanks

Marcon

dllive said:

Hi,

I currently have a SIPP with Vanguard (Life Strategy 100 fund). I also have a USS pension that I pay into each month.

Im thinking about making AVCs to USS, but my colleague said Id be better off paying into my SIPP becuase *he thinks* the USS costs are high. Is that the case?

Unfortunately Im not able to SS my AVCs 

My colleague also said that USS no longer off 'The Match'? (even though it still displays this option on their website).

Thanks

If you've not yet done so, have a look at https://www.uss.co.uk/for-members/your-pension-explained/mpavcs and if necessary contact the Member Services Team on 0333 300 1043 – lines are open 9am-5pm Monday-Friday.

grumiofoundation

Marcon said:

dllive said:

Hi,

I currently have a SIPP with Vanguard (Life Strategy 100 fund). I also have a USS pension that I pay into each month.

Im thinking about making AVCs to USS, but my colleague said Id be better off paying into my SIPP becuase *he thinks* the USS costs are high. Is that the case?

Unfortunately Im not able to SS my AVCs 

My colleague also said that USS no longer off 'The Match'? (even though it still displays this option on their website).

Thanks

If you've not yet done so, have a look at https://www.uss.co.uk/for-members/your-pension-explained/mpavcs and if necessary contact the Member Services Team on 0333 300 1043 – lines are open 9am-5pm Monday-Friday.

From that link

Since 1 October 2019, it’s not been possible to pay MPAVCs to any Prudential Funds.

The OP can make additional contributions to the USS investment builder (I assumed this is what they meant by AVCs?).

dllive said:

Hi,

I currently have a SIPP with Vanguard (Life Strategy 100 fund). I also have a USS pension that I pay into each month.

Im thinking about making AVCs to USS, but my colleague said Id be better off paying into my SIPP becuase *he thinks* the USS costs are high. Is that the case?

Unfortunately Im not able to SS my AVCs 

My colleague also said that USS no longer off 'The Match'? (even though it still displays this option on their website).

Thanks

https://www.uss.co.uk/for-members/your-pension-explained/investment-builder
The investment chargers are subsidised, meaning for most funds the cost is actually 0% (so not going to get cheaper elsewhere!)

If you login to my uss you can look at fund factsheets for each option.

Tomatillo

The link in the post above is for the old AVC scheme, which is no longer accepting new contribiutions. 
You need to look at this one https://www.uss.co.uk/for-members/your-pension-explained/investment-builder and download the guide on that page.

On whether the costs are high, the costs depend on what you are doing. If you are contributing AVCs then the employer subsides the fees (and for any contributions over the salary threshold) and my understanding is that this takes the fees to 0 for most (all?) of the funds (but do check this to be sure). You pay an unsubsidised fee if you move existing pension funds from elsewhere to the scheme. There are also charges for buying and selling funds that you might want to be aware of if this is something you intend to do regularly. Check the information for you but for most people in most years that means the fees are 0%, which is hard to beat...

There's a very limited range of funds in USS so that might be a reason for choosing a SIPP instead depending on what you want to invest in.

The Match is no longer offered in the sense that you don't actually get the employer's matching contributions. You can tick it if you want them to take 1% AVC from your salary but as they don't actually match it there isn't much of a reason to do that unless you have a particular reason for wanting that amount. 

Tomatillo

By the way, if you search there has been quite a bit of discussion of this Q in the past and on the investment builder in general e.g. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6268961/uss-investment-builder/p1