Pension switching incentives

vacheron

artyboy said:

And on a separate note, I see that Fidelity have today paid out cashback from their late 2025 promotion - I suspect it may have hit for everyone, if you got your transfer completed by the deadline, so worth checking your cash management account.

Fidelity SIPP (mine contains ETF's) 
 Good spot! Just checked and my cashback is there. It wasn't this time yesterday. 

I think Fidelity had a clawback clause, but to be honest, my cashback was £600 and I would stand to lose almost £2500 by NOT also moving this to Freetrade too, so I think I will and fidelity can keep the £600 if they want to! 

II SIPP (mine contains an OEIC) 
Also, your earlier comment about quite liking II. I thought they were OK too. The reason I moved to them a couple of years ago was that the fund I wanted to transfer "in-specie" was an OEIC (HSBC Global Strategy Dynamic Portfolio C Accumulation), and not many other cashback offering SIPP providers supported OEIC's at the time. 

It appears that Freetrade does though, so happy days! 

artyboy

vacheron said:

artyboy said:

And on a separate note, I see that Fidelity have today paid out cashback from their late 2025 promotion - I suspect it may have hit for everyone, if you got your transfer completed by the deadline, so worth checking your cash management account.

Fidelity SIPP (mine contains ETF's) 
 Good spot! Just checked and my cashback is there. It wasn't this time yesterday. 

I think Fidelity had a clawback clause, but to be honest, my cashback was £600 and I would stand to lose almost £2500 by NOT also moving this to Freetrade too, so I think I will and fidelity can keep the £600 if they want to! 

II SIPP (mine contains an OEIC) 
Also, your earlier comment about quite liking II. I thought they were OK too. The reason I moved to them a couple of years ago was that the fund I wanted to transfer "in-specie" was an OEIC (HSBC Global Strategy Dynamic Portfolio C Accumulation), and not many other cashback offering SIPP providers supported OEIC's at the time. 

It appears that Freetrade does though, so happy days! 

A couple of years back I transferred out of Fidelity well before the 18 month holding period was up (it was only for £350 cashback and I could make £1500 from an HL offer at the time) - they never tried to claw it back. Of course YMMV...

This time round I've got £1000, and could only make another £600 from moving to Freetrade as I'm nearly maxed out there already. So I'll wait for the next promotion to come along 

Must admit I thought Freetrade was only ETF for funds, will have to take a closer look there...

artyboy

...as a side note, I do wonder how any clawback could practically work, if all you had was pension wrapped funds in your account. I know there seems to be a specific allowance for platform fees to be taken directly out of pension funds, but I wonder if legally they could claw back cashback in that way...

Because to all intents and purposes, it looks like you're using cashback mechanics to make a tax free withdrawal from your pension...

Gambler

I'm looking to open my first SIPP and am currently researching which provider to opt for.

If I were to deposit £40K would I also receive commission on the Govt contribution of £10K or only if it landed in my account before the end of the tax year?

I don't have enough experience and knowledge with pensions yet to have the confidence to transfer my workplace DC with Scottish Widows. But the savings in costs would be significant. I currently pay in £1200 per month and 10% of that is taken in monthly fees!

Thanks

artyboy

Gambler said:

I'm looking to open my first SIPP and am currently researching which provider to opt for.

If I were to deposit £40K would I also receive commission on the Govt contribution of £10K or only if it landed in my account before the end of the tax year?

I don't have enough experience and knowledge with pensions yet to have the confidence to transfer my workplace DC with Scottish Widows. But the savings in costs would be significant. I currently pay in £1200 per month and 10% of that is taken in monthly fees!

Thanks

All my cashback has come from transfers rather than new money in, but from what I recall from T&Cs, it tends to be calculated on your net contribution, and ignores the tax relief addition.

As for your workplace pension, I think you are comparing apples and oranges. The fees you pay are presumably based on your entire pot, and so therefore will (in percentage terms) be a lot lower than the 10% you are coming up with, based on a single month's contribution.

Just to illustrate that point, I pay nothing into any of my various pension pots, but they all charge me something. Which I guess must mean they are taking infinity percent of my contributions