Transferring pensions to PensionBee

ClaraSolis

I hold 2 old pensions from previous jobs, one with Royal London (balance less than £1,000) and one with Smart Pension (balance less than £10,000). As I became self-employed a few years ago, I set up an account with PensionBee, where I contribute to my own pension pot when I can.

I am now wondering if it is worth transferring both my old pensions into the PensionBee account, or if it would be best to keep them where they are? I have to be honest and say I don't know much about pensions and how they work, which one is better etc. I understand there might be fees involved when transferring as well. 

For ease of access and overview, I would prefer everything to be in one pot, but only if I don't lose out on value or massive fees. Is there a way to find out what would be best?

LHW99

You could start by finding out what the fees are on the old pensions (compared with PensionBee), and what the pensions are invested in (what funds, geographies etc).

If you put some more details up when you have found out, there will be people here that can comment.

MallyGirl

there shouldn't be fees to do the actual transfer

Marcon

ClaraSolis said:

I hold 2 old pensions from previous jobs, one with Royal London (balance less than £1,000) and one with Smart Pension (balance less than £10,000). As I became self-employed a few years ago, I set up an account with PensionBee, where I contribute to my own pension pot when I can.

I am now wondering if it is worth transferring both my old pensions into the PensionBee account, or if it would be best to keep them where they are? I have to be honest and say I don't know much about pensions and how they work, which one is better etc. I understand there might be fees involved when transferring as well. 

For ease of access and overview, I would prefer everything to be in one pot, but only if I don't lose out on value or massive fees. Is there a way to find out what would be best?

Yes: you need to do a comparison - or possibly get Aviva to do some of the legwork for you: https://www.aviva.co.uk/retirement/pensions/find-and-combine/

Albermarle

Maybe at a later stage when your pension pot is bigger, you could look for alternative pension providers as Pension Bee are not the cheapest.

Beddie

Fees are pretty negligible on small amounts such as these. So yes, transfer to Pension Bee to tidy things up. As Albermarle said, you can always transfer again to another provider in future if you like.

ClaraSolis

LHW99 said:

You could start by finding out what the fees are on the old pensions (compared with PensionBee), and what the pensions are invested in (what funds, geographies etc).

If you put some more details up when you have found out, there will be people here that can comment.

Thank you. To be honest, I am struggling to find information about most of these pension plans. Again, it probably doesn't help that I know nothing about it and therefore don't know where to look/what I'm looking for.  

Not sure if I need to list the pension values, but they aren't great anyway haha.
I have barely anything in Royal London, currently most in SmartPension, but my current one is PensionBee.

Royal London:
- There might be an early exit fee, but they "will let you know if there is".
- The plan is the RS Group PP Plan.
- Royal London charges: £3.73. This is equivalent to 0.49% of your plan value before transaction costs. Transaction costs: £0.93
- They have also added ProfitShare, which was £1.29 this year.
- The retirement savings are invested in the Balanced Lifestyle Strategy (Drawdown).

SmartPension:
- Supposedly no fee to transfer out.
- Investments are saved in the Smart Sustainable Growth Fund (Series 2).
- Unsure about the fees, I think it has a TER of 0.45%. 

PensionBee:
- Funds are invested in PensionBee’s Tailored Plan, managed by BlackRock. The majority of the investment location is in North America (61%). 
- The annual fee is 0.70%.

dunstonh

ClaraSolis said:

LHW99 said:

You could start by finding out what the fees are on the old pensions (compared with PensionBee), and what the pensions are invested in (what funds, geographies etc).

If you put some more details up when you have found out, there will be people here that can comment.

Thank you. To be honest, I am struggling to find information about most of these pension plans. Again, it probably doesn't help that I know nothing about it and therefore don't know where to look/what I'm looking for.  

Not sure if I need to list the pension values, but they aren't great anyway haha.
I have barely anything in Royal London, currently most in SmartPension, but my current one is PensionBee.

Royal London:
- There might be an early exit fee, but they "will let you know if there is".
- The plan is the RS Group PP Plan.
- Royal London charges: £3.73. This is equivalent to 0.49% of your plan value before transaction costs. Transaction costs: £0.93
- They have also added ProfitShare, which was £1.29 this year.
- The retirement savings are invested in the Balanced Lifestyle Strategy (Drawdown).

SmartPension:
- Supposedly no fee to transfer out.
- Investments are saved in the Smart Sustainable Growth Fund (Series 2).
- Unsure about the fees, I think it has a TER of 0.45%. 

PensionBee:
- Funds are invested in PensionBee’s Tailored Plan, managed by BlackRock. The majority of the investment location is in North America (61%). 
- The annual fee is 0.70%.

So, pensionbee is more expensive than the other plans by some way.    Indeed, 0.70% for a non-advised arrangement is actually quite expensive nowadays.

Royal London is the lowest cost here (profitshare hasn't fallen below 0.15%  so going by its lowest amount 0.49-0.15 = 0.34).  RL have also been transparent and disclosed their transaction costs figure.  Whilst most people ignore it as its not a real explicit charge, you do not mention it at all on the other two.