Active workplace pension transfer

Altior

Rightly or wrongly I'm pretty active in adjusting my holdings. The whipsawing of fund prices when trying to manage the portfolio in the peak of lockdown mania was excruciating. Working with RL is akin to being on dial up when fibre broadband is available via another supplier. Searching funds is also turgid, and the fund names in the search results don't always carry across to actually selecting the funds on the site. It can literally be a guess up and hope you've landed on the right one via a process of elimination. Plus of course, more competitive fees elsewhere. There's nothing compelling about RL. 

I will give them an uptick for support, as when a member of staff screwed up a fund transfer request, I was able to get it rectified and backdated without too much hassle. 

Rich1976

Altior said:

Rightly or wrongly I'm pretty active in adjusting my holdings. The whipsawing of fund prices when trying to manage the portfolio in the peak of lockdown mania was excruciating. Working with RL is akin to being on dial up when fibre broadband is available via another supplier. Searching funds is also turgid, and the fund names in the search results don't always carry across to actually selecting the funds on the site. It can literally be a guess up and hope you've landed on the right one via a process of elimination. Plus of course, more competitive fees elsewhere. There's nothing compelling about RL. 

I will give them an uptick for support, as when a member of staff screwed up a fund transfer request, I was able to get it rectified and backdated without too much hassle. 

My other half’s work place pension is with RL and I agree, their online experience is like going back to the early 2000’s . The app is better than the online but very basic.

online it is all clunky, slow and difficult to navigate.

Fortunately we only use the default fund but even that is difficult to find information on about its performance or even whereabouts in the world it is invested in. The fact sheet just provides a list of other funds it is invested in.

we make ad hoc top ups every so often of about £100 a time and even that is old fashioned. You have to complete a form online and then send the payment by bank transfer. No option for debit card payments as allowed by my workplace provider.

i think I read for partial transfers out you need to leave about £100 in the account to stop it from closing but could be totally wrong on that. Plus not all providers accept partial transfers in.

Bostonerimus1

Altior said:

Rightly or wrongly I'm pretty active in adjusting my holdings. The whipsawing of fund prices when trying to manage the portfolio in the peak of lockdown mania was excruciating. Working with RL is akin to being on dial up when fibre broadband is available via another supplier. Searching funds is also turgid, and the fund names in the search results don't always carry across to actually selecting the funds on the site. It can literally be a guess up and hope you've landed on the right one via a process of elimination. Plus of course, more competitive fees elsewhere. There's nothing compelling about RL. 

I will give them an uptick for support, as when a member of staff screwed up a fund transfer request, I was able to get it rectified and backdated without too much hassle. 

To me the failings of the RL online experience sound like a brake on your desire to tinker, which might be a good thing.

SamDude

I called RL today to check exactly this - could I partially move my workplace pension funds to my SIPP without affecting my ongoing employer contributions.

I was told - as long as there is a minimum of £200 in the pension, nothing will change with the existing arrangements. The workplace pension will remain active and future contributions will continue to be invested. 

I was also told that they couldn't transfer any funds in-specie as other platforms don't have the same funds (e.g. RLP Property, RLP Bonds etc). So when the transfer request is processed, RL will automatically sell the investments and transfer out as cash.

On this, I have requested (via my ii SIPP) to transfer £10k from RL. This is not the full amount I want to transfer but I'd like to see how easy it is and how long it takes before moving the rest (leaving £200+)

dunstonh

Bostonerimus1 said:

Altior said:

Rightly or wrongly I'm pretty active in adjusting my holdings. The whipsawing of fund prices when trying to manage the portfolio in the peak of lockdown mania was excruciating. Working with RL is akin to being on dial up when fibre broadband is available via another supplier. Searching funds is also turgid, and the fund names in the search results don't always carry across to actually selecting the funds on the site. It can literally be a guess up and hope you've landed on the right one via a process of elimination. Plus of course, more competitive fees elsewhere. There's nothing compelling about RL. 

I will give them an uptick for support, as when a member of staff screwed up a fund transfer request, I was able to get it rectified and backdated without too much hassle. 

To me the failings of the RL online experience sound like a brake on your desire to tinker, which might be a good thing.

You are correct. RL is designed to be a fully functional pension (if it offers full functionality in terms of contribution options and drawdown options), but it uses the insured personal pension method (so 100% FSCS protection with no upper limit) and a half-decent fund range for a personal pension. It has global trackers, governed portfolios (that work like VLS), and different life styling options to suit different methods.   Its investment options are geared toward the invest-and-forget style investor.  Not the tinkerer.

And its low cost.  Not the absolute cheapest but at the better end.   Plus, as it is a mutual, the mutual bonus you get each year (historically ranged between 0.15% and 0.18%) effectively offsets the charges.

The starting cost is 1.00% but it is tiered lower based on fund value:


So, if you have £90k, the 1% is discounted to 0.45%  Deduct the mutual bonus at 0.15% and you have a decent pension costing 0.30% for provider and funds. 

 

Altior

For better or worse I pulled the trigger on this partial transfer.

The process was surprisingly smooth, I did the partial transfer request online via Vanguard, it went through with no further intervention from me at all, and no comms apart from updates in Vanguard. It states the transfer is still in progress, but the funds are there in the selected fund. 

A slightly surprising element perhaps is that it was backdated, so my RL account was reporting losses and gains with the daily price movements right up until the start of this week. I lost access to the account completely (assuming this was the transfer action), and when the account fired back up, the disposals were dated 30th Dec.