Pension Review after going with financial advisor - Negative Growth

NannaH

A more pragmatic view for you : 
Add up what you ( and employers)  have paid in over the last 20 years,  don’t forget the valuable tax relief too. 
I bet you will be pleasantly surprised at the long term growth.   I imagine you also have another 20+ years to go.
Prices falling mean you get extra funds for your future contributions,  just keep drip feeding.

tony4147

Mine was £386k last Dec, today its £375k...............but I've also made contributions of £38k since last Dec!..........I know in the long term it will bounce back.........hopefully

thriftytracey

I am with Royal London, although it is a drawdown pension.  As of last month I've lost £35k since this time last year.  Coincidentally, today, I checked the value and it has gained £10k so loss now £25k.  It's quite depressing!

bostonerimus

A financial advisor is no guarantee of financial success and without knowing how the pension is invested there's no way to know if a 24k loss is good or bad given today's economic environment. I think people think of DC drawdown pensions as a pot of money when they are an investment portfolio with all the associated risk and volatility in the balance. Your investments and eventually your drawdown have to be managed to align with the a pension strategy in mind as well as your personal circumstances.

[Deleted User]

You should know enough to at least understand and evaluate the advice your advisor is giving. There are good and bad advisors but in all cases you are paying good money, so investing in reading up on the subject is well worth it.  In the end its yours rather than his/hers financial well-being that will be impacted.  This will also give you conviction to stick with his approach (or not as may be the case). 

In order to answer how well your pension did, you need to compare against an appropriate benchmark over a similar period of time.  If we assume that you still have a couple of decades to go before retirement, should probably be in shares rather than bonds (but this opinion).  You could compare against something like VLS100 or FTSE All world.  As noted, you should make sure to compare over similar periods of time.  

Gareth77

What resources are available to understand this at a high level? - for me to compare the fluctuations over these periods.

bostonerimus

Gareth77 said:

What resources are available to understand this at a high level? - for me to compare the fluctuations over these periods.

Start by just googling the exact Royal London pension you have and find out how it is invested. If you tell the folks on here I'm sure there will be lots of keen folks who will compare the return to some benchmark multi-asset funds/portfolios.

Billxx

A lot of advisors use Royal London:
a) They are a mutual
b) Their charges are generally low compared to other providers
c) They have a wide range of portfolios which can be selected depending on your attitude to risk and where in the pension lifecycle you are currently.
Lots of people are seeing a downturn, that's the market!

Qyburn

You should be able to set up online access to Royal London. On mine I can see the overall strategy in place (from memory "cautious lifestyle something") and the actual funds invested. 

bostonerimus

Qyburn said:

You should be able to set up online access to Royal London. On mine I can see the overall strategy in place (from memory "cautious lifestyle something") and the actual funds invested. 

Would the portfolio be on the OP's statement?