To transfer or not to transfer , IFA’s differ in opinion.

Albermarle

GoldenOldy said:

Thanks all. Roger , I will try and get her to set up an account and post on here herself as you say.
Albermarle,when you say online, can she do that herself?
Dunstonh , thanks for the pointers. She may appear really defensive , tbh, because of her background I think..sometimes hard to get over these things, if ever.

Yes it is very easy to set up a new pension online yourself. The important point to know though is there is the pension provider ( basically an administrator) and there are the investments within the pension where your money actually is.
Picking the right investments for your situation is more important than which pension provider you choose.

Providers will try to ease this process by offering general guidance on investing, by having some ready made funds to fit most situations for example. However they will not offer any personal advice or recommendations. So you have to choose yourself or pay an advisor. There is a lot of info online ( and on this forum ) if you want to learn more about the basics of investing.
Two caveats to this.
Some pension providers offer an advice service as a sort of sideline. Normally a bit more restricted than you would expect from an IFA, but a bit cheaper usually.
There are 'robo providers' They will ask a few questions and make a recommendation. So a very basic form of advice reflected in their normal charges being a bit higher.

Albermarle

However, nearly every IFA I know is damned busy at the moment and barely have to time to breathe

Interesting, is there any specific reason that the business is so busy?

Maybe on the forum we should stop recommending IFA's and direct people to tied advisors? In some cases would probably be better than getting no advice at all?

xylophone

Have you checked on your state pension forecast?

https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension

OldiesNiece

This is very interesting thankyou. Xylophone- yes I have now checked thanks, it’s all ok. Albermarle…thankyou so much. Wondered ,what do you think about my uncles question about whether it’s worth moving for the sake of 5 years? Having said that, I feel sick when I open the statement each year. I really don’t like it. I don’t like that I can’t check the value online so as to move it at the optimal point. I was in the middle of a family crises when I took it out, and didn’t think to ask these things. It’s very difficult to know who to trust these days to, in the world of IFA’s. Terrifying, even the chartered ones.

dunstonh

Interesting, is there any specific reason that the business is so busy?

Tax year changeover period is the busiest time of the year for most.   March to May is usually very busy and you spend June catching up with everything else but this year there are bunch of new FCA rules coming in next month and firms are having to do a load more documentation to carry on doing the same thing (cynical me!!!)

Pat38493

OldiesNiece said:

This is very interesting thankyou. Xylophone- yes I have now checked thanks, it’s all ok. Albermarle…thankyou so much. Wondered ,what do you think about my uncles question about whether it’s worth moving for the sake of 5 years? Having said that, I feel sick when I open the statement each year. I really don’t like it. I don’t like that I can’t check the value online so as to move it at the optimal point. I was in the middle of a family crises when I took it out, and didn’t think to ask these things. It’s very difficult to know who to trust these days to, in the world of IFA’s. Terrifying, even the chartered ones.

If you use a properly accredited Independent Financial adviser, they are quite highly regulated and they are expected to give you suitable advice that is in your interests.  Do you know anyone else who uses an IFA that maybe you could get a recommendation from, as I think it's important for you to be able to have a level of trust in the person you are paying?

DunstonH is an IFA and is highly respected on this forum for example.  He mentioned that this is a horrible product in an earlier post, but that doesn't necessarily mean you should make a hasty decision to exit from the product - all of these kind of investments are long term things and it's often not a good idea to panic and change your investments in a hasty manner - you may end up selling at or near the bottom of the value of that product which means you locked in your recent losses.  You need to choose what you are going to move it to carefully (or get an IFA to help) before taking any action.

Also be careful about thinking that you can choose an optimal time to move funds based on an online balance - the reality is that unless you are a world class investor like Warren Buffet or suchlike, you won't know whether you moved at the best time except with hindsight later on.  

The more important thing is to have a view on when and how you will want to access the money and make your investment plan on that basis.

That said, there are lots of DIY pension providers these days who have online products where you could transfer your fund into those products, and you would indeed be able to monitor your balance and funds and control it all yourself.  However just to stress again - for most DIY pension investors, we choose a fund mix and then we pretty much leave it alone for long periods - trying to change funds based on short term gains or losses is probably just going to end up losing a lot of money.

xylophone

You could try

https://adviserbook.co.uk/

For an IFA, you would tick "confirmed independent" when the menu comes up and  then any other requirements you may have.

You/your nephew could then ring round to check on service levels/fees etc.

QrizB

OldiesNiece said:

Thankyou for all your help. I have read through your replies, no am not currently paying into a pension

I know this isn't really the question you're asking, but is there a reason why you are not currently paying into a pension?

GoldenOldy

Good morning all. Golden here. Niece gone to work, will be back this afternoon. Shes not paying into a pension as wouldnt want to pay into the metlife one, and doesnt think itll be worth setting up new one if only at work for a short while longer. Looked at workplace pension scheme and because of low pay n hours it wasnt worth the bother to her.

Malthusian

I'm unclear on why one picture shows a "Pension Pot Value" of £163,558.59, and the next one shows "Your Pension Pot £119,187.39". The "Secure Income Base" is the same in both pictures which indicates this is the same pension fund. The first one is dated 19 June 2023 so it can't have plummeted by £43k in a couple of weeks.

I would be giving serious thought to whether to bite the bullet now and buy an annuity. Conventional wisdom would be to wait until she actually retires, as annuity rates generally rise as you age and it's tax-inefficient to have unnecessary annuity income on top of working income. But if she waits five years, she has to either:

• Leave the plan as it is or get an IFA to change the investments or do it herself; but it sounds like she really isn't suited to fluctuations in value at the best of times, and as the investment timeframe is five years or less, any form of investment could lose money.
• Switch the plan into cash and "hold what she has" - will lose value in real terms and if gilt yields fall between now and whenever she buys an annuity, she could easily end up considerably worse off.
• Buy a five-year fixed term annuity with nil income and a guaranteed maturity value, or switch it into a five-year fixed term deposit, to give her a guaranteed return that pays more than a pension cash account - I don't really like this idea because it stops her from taking the pension earlier than five years if her plans change.

GoldenOldy said:

Good morning all. Golden here. Niece gone to work, will be back this afternoon. Shes not paying into a pension as wouldnt want to pay into the metlife one, and doesnt think itll be worth setting up new one if only at work for a short while longer. Looked at workplace pension scheme and because of low pay n hours it wasnt worth the bother to her.

If she is low paid that means she can less afford to throw away free money from her employer. If her pay is less than £120 per week she may not be eligible anyway. (More than £120pw / £6,240pa and they are required to enrol her in a pension and pay contributions. Some employers go above and beyond the legal minimums.)

Emmia said:

"Secure income base" sounds like a defined benefit pension - if that's the case then she'll probably struggle to move it. 

Just for clarity - this is not a defined benefit pension, and the "secure income option" is not safeguarded rights. It should not be hard to find an IFA willing to advise on it.

Albermarle said:

Maybe on the forum we should stop recommending IFA's and direct people to tied advisors? In some cases would probably be better than getting no advice at all?

Maybe, but tied advice slightly earlier is worse than independent advice slightly later. Tied advisers also have to deal with the timescales of pension providers, get advice signed off by their compliance people, etc etc. If anything involving pensions has to be done in a hurry then it is probably not a good idea (the only exception being deathbed planning).