Standard Life with Profits - Performance

Kinclad

Hi there,

I have a DC in place with Scottish Widows through my current employer that i salary sacrifice into.

I also have a previous DC pension with Standard Life (approx 25 years) ago and i'm trying to get some performance number to allow me to make a decision regarding moving the old SL to SW.

The SL investment is as follows..

17K in Pension Millennium With Profits Find
11K in Pension With Profits Fund
113K Standard Life Managed Pension Fund

I have tried to look into the way the 2 with profits schemes work and i understand that they are designed in a way where sometimes profits are held back, so that they can be paid out in the poorer times, so that the fund is less liable to fluctuate.

But i believe that a lot of performance is based around annual bonuses. Which often are not always paid.

Do you know if i actually have to go directly to SL in order to get some previous years performance numbers (including annual bonuses)? or is this sort of info in the public domain? 

The app does not show any details, in fact its says the last transaction was back in 2012.

Many Thanks for any help.

Mark.

dunstonh

I have tried to look into the way the 2 with profits schemes work and i understand that they are designed in a way where sometimes profits are held back, so that they can be paid out in the poorer times, so that the fund is less liable to fluctuate.

Its slightly different with unitised WP.     The unit price cannot go down. It can only stay the same or go up.   However, behind that you have the final bonus which can go up and down as you go along but as it is less visual and not included in the unit price or current value, it doesn't alarm nervous investors as much.   An element of smoothing applies.

But i believe that a lot of performance is based around annual bonuses. Which often are not always paid.

The bulk of the performance is in the final bonus, not the annual. The exception is on those WP funds with a guaranteed minimum annual bonus.  You have both of these.

But i believe that a lot of performance is based around annual bonuses. Which often are not always paid.

There is no annual bonus as such. The unit price change over the year is the annual bonus.

Kinclad

Thanks for your response.

Does anyone have a view on the best way i can evaluate If i should just leave the SL as it is (im guessing the final bonus is on my specified retirement date (65 - 12 years time), or move to SW. 

I obviously feel i should be comparing performance between the 2 and understanding what else i could lose by transferring.

Interestingly there is a total transfer value of £155,629.89
and a total fund value of £144,072

So maybe that suggests that im getting some of the final bonus if i transferred anyway?

Thanks,

Mark

Albermarle

Normally you still get the final bonus when transferring.

One point you have not raised is that in my experience and from a few comments on this forum, is that SW are not the best pension provider in terms of customer service, website functionality etc 
Whilst SL are generally OK .
Might be worth testing them out by asking a question and see what answer you get, if any.

dunstonh

Does anyone have a view on the best way i can evaluate If i should just leave the SL as it is (im guessing the final bonus is on my specified retirement date (65 - 12 years time), or move to SW. 

The final bonus accrues as you go along.  You can see it in the transfer value, which will be higher than the current value.

The original WP fund with its guaranteed minimum annual bonus could be valuable for the low risk side of your portfolio.  The Millennium version is variable.   

I don't particularly hold SW in high regard any more. They let their old pension products fester and gave their workplace pensions limited choice.  So, unless the employer has obtained very cheap terms on the workplace pension or there is a contractual benefit worth keeping on a legacy plan, you usually find that alternatives are better.   However, Lloyds Bank has recently splashed some cash, something they have rarely done for SW, and some new offerings are coming through that could see the widow return towards the top end again.  We will wait and see.

Kinclad

Thanks for all your replys, I'm thinking maybe I just leave the SL alone, I guess it allows for some diversity by not combining with the SW pension.

I work for a very large global company (the biggest in its sector), so I'm guessing they have cut a competitive deal with SW with regards to running costs. So I don't think anything will change with regards to that in the near future.

It's invested in the below (which means nothing to me! 😬) 

Albermarle

However, Lloyds Bank has recently splashed some cash, something they have rarely done for SW, and some new offerings are coming through that could see the widow return towards the top end again.  We will wait and see.

Although from a few comments on the forum, during the upgrade/changes, some people have been virtually locked out of any info/lost online access/ nobody answering the phone etc

OldMusicGuy

I transferred an SL with profits fund to my SIPP (aged 58 IIRC) and can state that you will get some or all of the final bonus when you transfer. The transfer value is currently an estimate of what you will get, in my case SL would not commit to paying this on transfer because they said there might be a market value adjustment when the transfer is actually processed. They suggested I put in the transfer request via my SIPP provider and if I didn't like the actual transfer value after any MVA I could cancel the request. However, I got paid the full transfer value with no MVA.

dunstonh

Although from a few comments on the forum, during the upgrade/changes, some people have been virtually locked out of any info/lost online access/ nobody answering the phone etc

Thats on the legacy life and pensions side.    They now bought a D2C platform and an intermediary platform.   They intend to rebrand the latter to SW (according to my SW rep who phoned me for the first time in nearly 15 years).  I don't know much else beyond that other than it is FNZ based and a rebrand of the old Zurich platform (which rebranded to Embark not too long back).

I transferred an SL with profits fund to my SIPP (aged 58 IIRC) and can state that you will get some or all of the final bonus when you transfer. The transfer value is currently an estimate of what you will get, in my case SL would not commit to paying this on transfer because they said there might be a market value adjustment when the transfer is actually processed. 

The transfer value should not be an estimate. It should be an accurate value of the transfer value if it was to transfer at that particular moment.  It will change daily and will include the final bonus accrued to date, minus any MVR or exit penalties.

They will never guarantee that value as it will change daily.

Albermarle

Thats on the legacy life and pensions side.    They now bought a D2C platform and an intermediary platform.   They intend to rebrand the latter to SW (according to my SW rep who phoned me for the first time in nearly 15 years).  I don't know much else beyond that other than it is FNZ based and a rebrand of the old Zurich platform (which rebranded to Embark not too long back

To complete the picture , the Zurich workplace pensions business that SW bought, still operates as some kind of  separate entity under the SW banner, and clearly still uses the same old software, with no obvious recent updates .