Lifesight DC Pension

Spivo46

Any thoughts or experience with Lifesight. I am not reading good reviews? I am currently with them and will be looking to move or access next year. 

mark55man

I haven't heard of them - I think therefore (and a quick google confirm this) thy are providers of employment schemes - "LifeSight is Willis Towers Watson's UK DC Master Trust for employers who would benefit from high quality, lower risk, commercially attractive pension" - and to me looks like their priority is the employers not the employees and cautious investment.

I have heard of WTW and I think they are pretty mainstream.

But mainstream is as mainstream does - I am sure there are plenty of cheaper ways to get a mainstream fund.  The key question is how happy you are to be in charge of your fund.  The market provides many funds aimed at people with different requirements / interest / experience levels and many more market focussed funds for you to choose between.

It boils down to how interested you are in manging your money - and what that pension can do for you in retirement.

As far as Lifesight is concerned my view:
* If you are super interested in pensions then there will be cheaper better ways, and with reading and care you could do better (or worse) - plenty of threads on cheap providers
* If you are not interested at all then there will be cheaper better ways but you might have to pay an IFA for one off and possibly ongoing advice to help you avoid obvious mistakes.  Aftr that you could still do better or worse but Lifesight type pension with higher fees (I guess) and inattentive fund managers (I guess) the costs will likely make it worse for you

gm0

MT not signficant. It's a tax wrapper in the form of a new trust deed.

It will have its own bespoked fund list. Which may be shortish. Possibly from one fund house - maybe a bit more.  Needs checking.  As do prices.  It will have enough to do a version of most things you need to hold as like as not.
Passive coverage especially. Wider range of active choices is less likely.  Not what it does.

Cost and list and fund prices are bespoked to a degree to the trustees. One Lifesight instance may not be identical to another (based on what other outfits do to dock existing schemes with MT). 

The size of the original scheme and options will change the platform and fund fees you are offered based on the deals WTW have done at both ends.

So the question becomes - can I build the total portfolio I want here.  And how much would that be to run if I did. Is that good bad or meh.

You will definitely get a lot more investment choice at an HL iWeb. Fidelity etc. individual consumer providers. 
So if you want those things it most likely won't be right for you.  Prices are posted.  Rebates are sometimes offered to attract business.

So if you know what you want to hold.  And you know the WTW offering details.
Then you can look at the alternatives and one of them will suit you.

I did not find the master trust fund list I was offered by my scheme sufficiently compelling alone to go with it 100%.  Not that it was bad per se.  Covered the ground. Limited choice of each.  I could build a perfectly adequate compromise portfolio but not the one I wanted to build.  Yet it was cheap as a platform and from a big provider I need to carry on with for other reasons.
So I did a partial transfer out for half.  If didn't want two providers then I would have either accepted the compromise or moved 100% to the retail SIPP in order to access to the additional fund choices.

It's worth exploring the detail of the drawdown offer before pushing through the one way door.   The deal done by trustees with WTW could be terrible or it could be interesting.  Read T&C attentively.

green.lander_2

I am with life sight as a corporate customer they seem okay and have lots of useful info on their web site which are very useful as well as the odd webinal

randomusername12345

Recent user of LifeSight and their parent company Willis Towers Watson. In 2024 these companies represent the state of the art for pension funds, in 1997. In the opinion of those work in the industry both these companies forego digital transfers in favour of traditional paperwork purely as a means to provide customer friction and prevent customers from leaving their platform or fully utilising the tools available to them.

LifeSight also hide their phone number so here it is: [Removed by Forum Team]. You will have to go through a menu and needlessly enter your national insurance and postcode via the keypad but it's better than the email support.
Note that if this company has 10 days to do something they will use every single day to delay your progress. I have called up and requested information via email only to wait 5 days for an email to be sent to me. Appalling service.

In 2024 any company foregoing the digital ORIGO digital transfer service in favour of the prior paper-based system is not doing so to help the customer. This is to provide friction and disincentives to customers wanting to transfer to another provider. Avoid.

arthur_fowler

mark55man said:

I haven't heard of them - I think therefore (and a quick google confirm this) thy are providers of employment schemes - "LifeSight is Willis Towers Watson's UK DC Master Trust for employers who would benefit from high quality, lower risk, commercially attractive pension" - and to me looks like their priority is the employers not the employees and cautious investment.

I have heard of WTW and I think they are pretty mainstream.

But mainstream is as mainstream does - I am sure there are plenty of cheaper ways to get a mainstream fund.  The key question is how happy you are to be in charge of your fund.  The market provides many funds aimed at people with different requirements / interest / experience levels and many more market focussed funds for you to choose between.

It boils down to how interested you are in manging your money - and what that pension can do for you in retirement.

As far as Lifesight is concerned my view:
* If you are super interested in pensions then there will be cheaper better ways, and with reading and care you could do better (or worse) - plenty of threads on cheap providers
* If you are not interested at all then there will be cheaper better ways but you might have to pay an IFA for one off and possibly ongoing advice to help you avoid obvious mistakes.  Aftr that you could still do better or worse but Lifesight type pension with higher fees (I guess) and inattentive fund managers (I guess) the costs will likely make it worse for you

I have two Lifesight DC pensions from my current and a previous employer. I'm curious about your comments on high charges and inattentive fund managers. Why do you believe these to be the case? (I may have misunderstood your second bullet though).

DW2000

I've dealt with WTW for just over a year about my Vodafone pensions.  Thankfully they are in the legacy scheme and haven't been affected by Lifesight issues.  WTW were nothing but efficient at processing them.

Unfortunately I had a much smaller and older pension from another company dating back to 1983/84.

Despite it being a small pension they have broken it up on to two parts, one part I've been able to take as a DB type one but the DC part has been transferred to the lifesite scheme.  What a mess.
Finally thought I'd got to the end of it, they sent me the quote of lump sum and residual amount that can be transferred to an annuity.  Unfortunately as it's a small one I've spoken with two annuity providers, including one I already have an account with, but the amount to be left from Lifesight was below the threshold of what they could take on.   What a mess they have created by splitting a small pension up in to two small parts.  Trying to make a complaint to the trustees but they are just ignoring me.  I've opted to take the Lifesight one in another way just to bring the matter to a close even if I do have to take a small hit on tax.  I'll be glad to see the end of the matter that has dragged on for almost 8 months.

dunstonh

 What a mess they have created by splitting a small pension up in to two small parts.

They didn't create it.    The rules of the scheme are based on legislation at the time.

Scrudgy

I quit my employers WTW Lifesight scheme to move the bulk of my funds to a SIPP, and then re-joined the Lifesight scheme to take advantage of my employer contributions and salary sacrifice.

The funds available are selected by my employer trustees and the choices are ok with a limited but decent mix of cash, bonds, multi-asset, and various equity options but not a huge range. I am now only using it to build up cash in a money market fund in readiness for retiring next year.

The actual transfer out to the SIPP takes a while. Like mentioned already everything takes an age. Every letter is 10-14 days, every email is 10 days or never. Very archaic admin system it seems. You can't ever get through the the correct person on the phone, you can only ever speak to customer support type roles who will take your details and pass your query to the relevant team, which then starts another 10 day wait for an email or letter. 

However, everything did work as it should have, it just takes a while, its a 3 month process. Although the process takes 3 months, the time out of the market until the cash hit my SIPP was about 10 days from the date my Lifestyle funds were sold.

The Lifesight website and app is ok. Changing funds and investment choices is a bit clunky and not the most intuitive. There are a couple of gimicky tools to predict your "Lifesight Age" which is your predicted pull the retirement trigger date.

My fees are not too high, and most of the funds seem to be pretty cheap, I think that is mostly down to my employer negotiating a good deal at the start of the agreement with WTW.

GenX0212

My active workplace DC pension is with LifeSight. I have found them to be good so far. They have an app which you can check your current pension value with, see the history, payments and fund details (I will admit to being addicted to checking it almost every day even though I know it doesn't make any real sense to do so).

My Employer transferred us over to LifeSight last September. I have roughly a 66% / 33% split between a Diversified Growth fund (12% growth the in last year) and LifeSight Equity fund (23% growth), since September my fund value has risen from £400k of contributions to a current value of £470k. That's a decent return in my view and is far outperforming the return on my other Aviva and L&G pensions. Total charges are less than 1%, costing me about £38 a month at the moment.

I'm intending to retire within 12-24 months. Drawdown is available through the LifeSight Spending tool which according to the information provided 'works just like a bank account'.

So far I don't have any complaints.

leosayer

I'm pretty much stuck with LifeSight for my largest DC pension pot until I take my DB pension, due to protected tax free cash.

The app and website is pretty good if a bit dumbed down which is fair enough because the audience isn't the same as AJ Bell, HL etc. I like the (terribly named) Age-O-meter which, if you delve down, is pretty detailed.

I raised one question with them regarding the subject on my post linked below. They (seemingly deliberately) misundersood a question I asked on more than one occasion and I gave up in end. 

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6470886/dc-pension-doesnt-have-short-term-bond-funds

They have a limited selection of funds but this includes cheap Developed and Emerging Global equity index funds and cash fund which is good enough for most people who are looking to self-select beyond the default options. If you want more complex funds then look elsewhere.