Selecting a good financial pension advisors

jmarquis

Hi All,

A newbie to the forum..

Looking for some advice and suggestions for a good financial advisor to manage my personal pension.

Would like to see if anyone has a good experience with St James Place ?

Any other organisation similar to St James Place that are available ?

Cheers

John

JoeCrystal

Look for an IFA rather than tied sales force like SJP who only use their own funds and tied you up with large exit fees!

handful

If you search this forum for SJP you will find nothing good said about them. They are currently being hounded for compensation claims for their charging and advice that wasn't given. As above, look for a local and recommended IFA.

FWIW I was with them and was glad to get away.

dunstonh

Would like to see if anyone has a good experience with St James Place ?

Depends on whether you get one of their brainwashed clients or one that is objective.

Any other organisation similar to St James Place that are available ?

In general, your choice should be between an IFA or DIY.    Avoid salesforces like SJP or FAs.

tacpot12

The best way to select an IFA is by word of mouth; a personal recommendation from someone who has used the IFA for some time and been happy with the results. 

Albermarle

jmarquis said:

Hi All,

A newbie to the forum..

Looking for some advice and suggestions for a good financial advisor to manage my personal pension.

Would like to see if anyone has a good experience with St James Place ?

Any other organisation similar to St James Place that are available ?

Cheers

John

There are so many negative comment on this forum about SJP , some may be suspicious that your post is a wind up, but will give you the benefit of the doubt 

Have a read of this.

‘St James’s Place charged me £10k over seven years – but I never saw an adviser’ (msn.com)

xylophone

Look for an independent financial adviser.  If you don't know anybody who has ever used one, then you will need to do your own research. Even if you do, you'd need to be satisfied that your friend's adviser's services and fees suited you.

Below could be a starting point.

https://adviserbook.co.uk/

Tick "confirmed independent" and other options required when the menu comes up.

Moonwolf

tacpot12 said:

The best way to select an IFA is by word of mouth; a personal recommendation from someone who has used the IFA for some time and been happy with the results. 

I always wonder about this.  I know people who have moved their DC pot are happy with their IFA but they don't really seem to know much about what is happening or how the performance compares with leaving it in their old pension.  A lot of the pensioners who lost out in the British Steel debacle were recruited by word of mouth.

What I'd really like is a recommendation from someone who has been invested with the same IFA for 40 years and been taking pension for another 20, then I'd know how well the IFA had been doing :-).

ColdIron

jmarquis said:

Would like to see if anyone has a good experience with St James Place ?

Rarer than rocking horse poo on this site

Objectively they are expensive with an limited range of, at best, average products

Albermarle

Moonwolf said:

tacpot12 said:

The best way to select an IFA is by word of mouth; a personal recommendation from someone who has used the IFA for some time and been happy with the results. 

I always wonder about this.  I know people who have moved their DC pot are happy with their IFA but they don't really seem to know much about what is happening or how the performance compares with leaving it in their old pension.  A lot of the pensioners who lost out in the British Steel debacle were recruited by word of mouth.

What I'd really like is a recommendation from someone who has been invested with the same IFA for 40 years and been taking pension for another 20, then I'd know how well the IFA had been doing :-).

To repeat what is said many times on this forum.
You can not/should not measure an IFA by their investment performance, as that at least partly depends on what objectives you agree with your IFA. For example someone retired who was cautious, may have capital preservation as a priority, rather than growth.
Also IFA's offer many services rather than just the basic investing part. eg Tax, inheritance planning etc so you would need to measure how good they were in these respects as well. In fact these services are probably more value to most people than the investing side which to some extent is the easy bit.
Basically it is quite difficult to measure an IFA's performance .....

JohnWinder

Looking for an advisor to manage your pension investments? Plenty to suggest you're entering tiger territory. Go armed with some understanding of personal investing from a book like Tim Hale's Smarter Investing. Actually, use that exact one which you can read some of free on google books.