Pension pots

Squint

I have an old pension with Scottish Widows and a current one with ReAssure. My employer now only offers a Scottish Widows one, although they and I still contribute to ReAssure.  I am the only one that is still in the ReAssure one with my employer.

 ReAssure has been dreadful it doesn't deal with requests to increase my contributions for months, the last time took 4 months and doesn't add my contributions received from my employer promptly.   They seem to do it once a year.  

I don't want to pay an exit charge to move it.

Anyway I anticipate getting a pay rise soon and want to increase my contributions.  I cannot face dealing with Reassure again as my employer will get fed of trying to sort it out and end up doing it, but it takes too much time to keep chasing.

My employer would rather I switch to their Scottish Widows one.  I know I need to find out what charges are applied but is there anything else to think about.  I am time poor so want to keep this simple.

Mark_d

I assume these are all DC schemes?  Is there a life assurance aspect to it, in addition to a payout of your fund value?  I expect both schemes are similar so I would move to the new Scottish Widows scheme.  If there is a fee payable it should be small and might even be covered by your employer

Albermarle

Exit fees are relatively rare nowadays, but I think Reassure might be one that still have them.

If you have problems with a pension provider during the accumulation phase ( when building the pot up) it does not bode well for when you want to set up a withdrawal strategy with them . Probably best to bite the bullet and transfer out.
A word of warning is that SW seem not be the most easy to deal with provider either, and have been beset by IT upgrade issues.

LHW99

Or you could just funnel new contributions to the employer's new scheme, and look to merge the pensions when you finally want to take benefits.

Worth comparing what charges you pay on each one, as well as considering any exit fees. Make sure you check for your particular schemes - charges can be different from what the fact sheets say, if the employer has negotiated a discount.