Combine 5 pension pots into 1 but which pension company should I choose?

Royoftherovers2024

Hi,

I am 47 years old and have 5 very small pension pots that I would ideally like to combine into one pot to make my life simpler when I eventually retire, planning on retiring at 67 as things stand.

I am a civil servant and in the Alpha pension and intend to contribute until I retire.

I'm aware I can transfer the 5 very small private pension pots into my Civil Service pension but I'd prefer to have one private pension totally separate.

My private pensions are with

Nest
Standard Life
The Peoples Pension
Legal and General 
True Potential 

Does anyone know the best one of the 5 pension companies to choose as my one private pension to combine the other 4 into?

Thanks in advance for any advice,pointers, negative or posting.

dunstonh

Does anyone know the best one of the 5 pension companies to choose as my one private pension to combine the other 4 into?

Without you providing details, we cannot say.  However, my money would be on option 6 - a new plan.

Royoftherovers2024

dunstonh said:

Does anyone know the best one of the 5 pension companies to choose as my one private pension to combine the other 4 into?

Without you providing details, we cannot say.  However, my money would be on option 6 - a new plan.

What details are you requesting exactly? So you think to open with a new pension provider, what company other than the 5 I have them in already would you suggest? 

MX5huggy

You can only transfer into Alpha within the first 12 months of service if that still applies you should consider this offer and get quotes for the value of each pension as a transfer. You can then build up new DC pension separate to Alpha if you wish. 

The transfer in values are normally good value. And you won’t be able to buy such good  value index linked pension ever again unless you swap to a different public sector pension employers 

MallyGirl

Royoftherovers2024 said:

dunstonh said:

Does anyone know the best one of the 5 pension companies to choose as my one private pension to combine the other 4 into?

Without you providing details, we cannot say.  However, my money would be on option 6 - a new plan.

What details are you requesting exactly? So you think to open with a new pension provider, what company other than the 5 I have them in already would you suggest? 

Depending on the values, the way you might want to take a pension income and your knowledge of investing there are various options. It might be that a simple stakeholder pension fits the bill or, if you are interested in managing your own investments then one of the SIPPs - one which bases fees on a percentage of value like HL is a reasonable choice for low value

squirrelpie

Pensions over the years have had different rules, and even pensions at the same time can have different rules. Such rules might involve various types of guarantees, for example, or exclude various types of withdrawals. Hence the request for details, I suppose.

Another option would be to transfer all the pensions (or some) into a SIPP. There are various well-known platforms that offer good access etc.

Marcon

Royoftherovers2024 said:

dunstonh said:

Does anyone know the best one of the 5 pension companies to choose as my one private pension to combine the other 4 into?

Without you providing details, we cannot say.  However, my money would be on option 6 - a new plan.

What details are you requesting exactly? So you think to open with a new pension provider, what company other than the 5 I have them in already would you suggest? 

Depends what you're looking for - and the answer isn't always 'surely that's obvious?'. 

For example, do you want to actively manage your own investment choices? Is full online functionality important? Are customer service and fund performance/choice equally important?

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/cheap-sipps/ might help if you want to be relatively 'hands on'.

Royoftherovers2024

MX5huggy said:

You can only transfer into Alpha within the first 12 months of service if that still applies you should consider this offer and get quotes for the value of each pension as a transfer. You can then build up new DC pension separate to Alpha if you wish. 

The transfer in values are normally good value. And you won’t be able to buy such good  value index linked pension ever again unless you swap to a different public sector pension employers 

Are you referring to the Civil Service Additional Voluntary Contribution Scheme (CSAVCS) when you mention build up new DC pension separate to Alpha above?

(If you're a member of the Civil Service pension scheme, you can boost your retirement income by making additional voluntary contributions) (AVCs).

MX5huggy

Royoftherovers2024 said:

MX5huggy said:

You can only transfer into Alpha within the first 12 months of service if that still applies you should consider this offer and get quotes for the value of each pension as a transfer. You can then build up new DC pension separate to Alpha if you wish. 

The transfer in values are normally good value. And you won’t be able to buy such good  value index linked pension ever again unless you swap to a different public sector pension employers 

Are you referring to the Civil Service Additional Voluntary Contribution Scheme (CSAVCS) when you mention build up new DC pension separate to Alpha above?

(If you're a member of the Civil Service pension scheme, you can boost your retirement income by making additional voluntary contributions) (AVCs).

Not especially, I don’t know anything about it. But you would need to compare its benefits and costs with pension products available to anyone. For example Vanguard, H&L, Fidelity etc.  

gm0

For whatever reason you don't want to buy accrual in Alpha and want to have a single DC pension separately. Many value the flexibility fine - others love the alpha buy in of indexed income. But moving on to the question

I am a consumer but I am with forum adviser helpful person @Dunstonh
I don't fancy most of the people on your list as a consolidation target.  But one of them may well do.  Can do better.  But better is relative to what you want

How I do it.

The criteria I use is first a screen to cut the numbers

Not wealth management firms as a category because expensive.  If I want advice IFA. But I don't want that either.
So all wealth managers are out on general principle.  Anything with FAs attached. Proxy for expensive for no reason that matters to me

A few exclusions. Ones I don't like based on reported behaviour around business ethics / service.  I won't get into it and libel anyone here.  Woodford scandal threw up a few examples.

Not people having an especially torrid time on feedback for service.  Everyone has angry customers with slow transfers.  But I don't want to choose so cheap that it's nasty before things go wrong.

Not people with offshore illiquid stuff I don't want to use anyway available that complicates matters if they fail as a business.  Cost to wind it up goes looking for a home.  So just pension platforms with listed funds and ETFs and  stocks and bonds individually

And then onto the actual selection criteria I use

Reputation/established business (which says something about stable terms and risk of failure but is no guarantee). Platform business size and financials. Forum. Reviews. Press.

Cost to me.  Is it good value i.e. fees net any transfer in incentives.  Competitive ?
For what I want to hold - funds, etfs, my pot size and my trading behaviour.  Best for me may not be best for you. As costs vary based on these. 

Investment range - what do I need to build the portfolio I want for the consolidated funds. Is the range adequate.

Digital - Apps. Modern. New entrant. PC web.  Mostly Phone supported by email/post.
You can stand anywhere on that spectrum and the providers will move best to worst

Complexity - some simplified stuff out there.  Some "know what you are doing before coming" options.

Nobody is best on all of it

You like what you like.  One of your existing may be "good enough" and familiar.

I use one of my old ones - L&G as it goes.  Cheap enough (varies a bit by scheme).  Fairly narrow investment range.
Truly terrible at digital.  Friendly people. A big old well established life firm.  No app.  That gets a shrug or even a plus from me. Others would not agree in 2024.  And a bit indecisive about whether they like doing retail pensions.

But I also use a retail DIY SIPP alongside. One of the big ones.  For a wider range of investments as I don't interact with it enough to care.   Reputable and then range and cost.  Led me to Fidelity. 
But it could have been AJBell or iWeb or some of the other DIY SIPPs.  I looked at options via transfer advice and that led me to a pretty credible looking offer from Aegon.  But I don't know what they are like to live with.

New entrants

I don't want or need "apps" or to do my pension on my phone thank you very much.  So I have no desire for InvestEngine or similar new entrant stuff. Which has that.  But the well established business criteria goes close to zero.  Simplified robo advice investing like PensionBee is also a thing. Digital up. Cost up. Range down. Complexity down etc.

Do you now see why people say what they do?  It depends


Steps:

Check range/cost/can consolidate into it and existing terms - for your list - one of them might have a good platform or fund management deal in it. Or they may all be meh or more expensive than market price now.  Most old things are poor value. But some are excellent cheaper than today - so you have to check. It cannot be skipped.

Compare that data with a fresh setup.  To do that you need a pov on what you are going to invest the DC pot in

Decide how much you care about digital.

Choose

Royoftherovers2024

Perhaps I should have mentioned, I know nothing about pensions, hence my reason for asking these question on this site.

I don't wish to personally control my pensions on a daily basis, have no desire for high risk, I just want to transfer the 5 into one pot and have simple online access once a year or so to see how they are doing.

Know very little about how I compare pension companies/products so don't know where to start.

I will certainly speak to my current pension provider within the civil service and ask if its worth me transferring the 5 pots into them, it seems they are index linked that way which sounds like it might be the safest/best option at the moment unless I hear of anything else that is likely to getter like for like.