The Pensions cashback and incentives discussion thread

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 

Gambler

artyboy said:

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 

Ah yes sorry just my way of looking at it 

I know it's based on the whole value but £120 per month is the annual fee on some of the providers I've been looking at.

Thanks for the net contribution confirmation.

vacheron

artyboy said:

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! 

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

You made me think too, as I have fallen into that trap before, so I logged in and asked Freetrades' chatbot, which said:

You can transfer your HSBC Global Strategy Dynamic Fund if we offer it in our mutual funds universe. You'll need to check our current funds list to see if your exact fund and share class is available.

I included the link it provided as it could be useful to others, but my HSBC fund is there. so all looks good!

artyboy

Gambler said:

artyboy said:

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 

Ah yes sorry just my way of looking at it 

I know it's based on the whole value but £120 per month is the annual fee on some of the providers I've been looking at.

Thanks for the net contribution confirmation.

Agreed, there are certainly cheaper options, depending on what you're actually looking for by way of fund coverage, service and functionality. But then again, many workplace pension schemes are quite basic so the odds are you will find something better/cheaper.

As you're still paying into it, are you looking to make a partial transfer out, and if so have you checked that this is possible? Or is your employer one of a very rare breed that would actually pay into whatever pension you asked them
to? 

Albermarle

Gambler said:

artyboy said:

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 

Ah yes sorry just my way of looking at it 

I know it's based on the whole value but £120 per month is the annual fee on some of the providers I've been looking at.

Thanks for the net contribution confirmation.

Make sure you check the fees situation in advance very carefully. 

Often a workplace pension will just have one charge- a % of your total funds. Can be anything from 1 % to 0.2%.
Some have two charges, one for the pension provider and one for the investments.

The largest SIPP provider has a platform charge of 0.45% + the fund cost which could be anything from 0.2% to 1.8% ( depending on what funds you choose)

If there are two charges, you only pay directly the platform/provider charge. The investment fund fees are paid from within the fund.

Cheaper SIPP providers are available, but how cheap depends on what kind of investment funds you would plan to buy and how.

There is a tendency amongst many new posters to think - Workplace pension bad - SIPP good, but for sure in many cases the workplace pension is more suitable, and quite possibly cheaper. 

PropertyGuru_Wannabe

Albermarle said:

hara____ said:

Fidelity have a new offer for SIPP and ISA transfers that runs from today to 5 April https://www.fidelity.co.uk/currentoffers/

£50k minimum and various tiered amounts, including £1,000 cashback for £100k transferred.

May be worth a look if you can live with ETFs, to stay within the capped fee.

Yes if you hold mainly OEICs,  Fidelity's standard platform fee of 0.35% is expensive for larger funds.
However it is not just case of you pay that, or just stick with ETFs to get the capped fee of £90.

Funds on the platform ( held in any type) > £250K drop the fee to 0.2%.
You can also hold a mixture of OEICs and ETF's and Investment trusts and get a blended fee.

I have mainly ITs and ETFs, but also a couple of OEIC's and my overall platform fee is more than £90 but is still only 0.04%. Then apart from trades, almost no charges at all for anything else, and pretty good and responsive customer service in my experience.

I initiated the transfer on 30/12/2025 and the transfer was completed this morning 13/01/2026 at 7am.  I then purchased an ETF on an open market order with the funds and there were no FX fees and only the £7.50 share dealing charge.  My annual fees are estimated to be £97.50 until my next top up in next financial year.  Much cheaper than any other platform except Invest Engine which the £1,000 transfer bonus cashback easily trumps over.  I'm super impressed!

Thanks ever so much for the valuable information you give out daily to people like me.  Appreciated!