Advice on relatively unknown ethical pension provider (Circa5000)

RyanONeill1970

Hi all,

I have a pension which is not doing much and has £45k of value. It is currently with Aegon and is not invested as ethically as I'd like so I'm considering moving it to Circa5000 . I'll be able to set what I want my pension to fund and it won't have any Oil & Gas components.

I've checked Circa5000 out via the FSCS system, but is there anything else I should look at? I've not heard of them before but they fit my needs very well.

I'm not sure if this is a big enough question to make an appointment with an IFA although I will if it is suggested it is more complex than I think.

Thank you in advance,

Ryan

dunstonh

Have you considered a whole of market platform?  These will give you all the ethical options you could want (being whole of market)

I've checked Circa5000 out via the FSCS system, but is there anything else I should look at?

I have never heard of them.  Their website says they offer a SIPP. So, that would give them the same ethical/ESG options as others (unless it is claiming to be a SIPP when it doesn't really offer whole of market options).   In which case, you would be looking at charges, software, financial strength and service.

Albermarle

This well known website gives them a decent review,
CIRCA5000 review: Is this app the best way to invest in the planet's future? - Money To The Masses

To digress a little, although £45K sounds like a lot of money, in pension terms it is not a lot of money.
Now if you are young and not on a great salary, then it is fine, but generally people underestimate how much of a pot they need to build up to be able to retire a few years early/ have a decent retirement income. 

[Deleted User]

Its questionable whether this has any impact on oil and gas generation. If their stocks are undervalued because of ESG, it just means larger future returns on these stocks.  Production isn’t really impacted by stock prices; its impacted by the demand and supply and profitability.

Malthusian

Renaming from "tickr" to "Circa5000" is a great example of going from the crap branding frying pan into the fire. Neither name tells you anything about the company. I can guarantee you that whether we melt the planet or not, nobody in 5,000AD is going to care about present day crises apart from historians of antiquity (which is the conceit behind the name). It would be like the Ancient Egyptians worrying that people in 2,000AD would blame them for wasting all the known world's stone on pyramids and colossi, and cutting down a tiny swathe of Gaia's forests. 
On the face of it their portfolios (the equity slices of which are entirely invested in sector ETFs) look very concentrated, to the point where there could be a material risk of the portfolios failing to deliver real growth. Or they could massively outperform conventional portfolios, nobody knows. However, I would question whether anyone using a "robo-sales" outfit like this truly appreciates the risk they are signing up for. If your objectives are that specific and you don't want regulated advice to achieve them, you should be able to DIY.
Betting the farm in specific sectors is a good way to lose money (as the people who piled into the tech sector in 2000 found).
Having a very concentrated equity portfolio and then bolting on government bonds to "balance the risk" doesn't make internal sense. If you are happy to invest in governments (and therefore all the bad things they do as well as the good ones), what's wrong with investing in the less evil multinationals as well via a mainstream ESG portfolio, instead of betting your entire retirement on food, renewables and "data privacy"? 
(Why data privacy is more virtuous than any other sector I have no idea; computers help to melt the planet. Presumably one of the bros behind the company was big into BitTorrent and Tor.)

sandsy

I've not heard of them. I'd be wary of using a firm I'd never heard of, when there are so many well established pension providers. 

The FCA register shows they don't have permission to establish/operate/windup a pension. A bit of searching on their website showed they are white labelling another firm's SIPP.  I'd also never heard of that firm (Gaudi Regulated Services Ltd) although I did recognise a couple of the directors' names as being well known in the pensions industry.

You want to invest in specific ETFs. Presumably those ETFs are also available through other SIPP providers? Might be worth checking out. 

[Deleted User]

I heard of Gaudi. They are regulated by FCA. They administer my X-O/Jarvis SIPP. They are fine; no issues.