Company pension vs SJP

MM2002

Hi All, some years ago I was advised by a work colleague to transfer my company pension to SJP as they would give better returns. I did this and although enjoy the fact my personal SLP advisor visits me yearly to discuss my finances, he wants me again to transfer my (now built up)remaining company pension into SJP.
The SJP small print states SJP needs to be 4.5% better return than my company to be worthwhile. When questioning this with my advisor on how much better its been on previous years, he said he didnt have those figures to hand.
Seems a bit fishy eh!  Also I can transfer out of SJP with no cost until some time early next year when they are bringing in a one off charge.

Would you guys and gals suggest returning to my company/leaving with SJP, transfer all to a different company?

MM

penners324

Who's your company provider?

There are a few horror stories about SJP on the forum

Hoenir

MM2002 said:

When questioning this with my advisor on how much better its been on previous years, he said he didnt have those figures to hand.
Seems a bit fishy eh!  

I'm no fan of SJP. In this particular instance there's no benefit to making investing decisions with the benefit of hindsight. Equity markets broadly having been driven by a concentration of stocks. Risk has been rewarded you could say. 

dunstonh

The SJP small print states SJP needs to be 4.5% better return than my company to be worthwhile.

SJP are well know for being expensive.  Both initial and ongoing.

Would you guys and gals suggest returning to my company/leaving with SJP, transfer all to a different company?

A general rule of thumb is to either DIY or use an IFA.  Not to use sales reps of tied providers.    You can easily do better elsewhere.  Adding the pension transfer now will just tie you in more.

You can also end ongoing servicing with the SJP rep and save yourself a bit more in the meantime.

MM2002

penners324 said:

Who's your company provider?

There are a few horror stories about SJP on the forum

Aegon is my company provider

wjr4

I don’t see why you’d want to use SJP when there’s high fees, terrible funds and tie in periods. 

gm0

SJP have major compliance issues with presenting "critical yield" calculation and showing that it is a good idea to transfer to their very expensive product from a much cheaper one.  e.g. an occupational pension scheme with a very low platform fee. And market price global equities funds - simple stuff.

Even worse now.  Before they would sell you their too clever for its own good managed pension product.  With layers of obfuscation - logical portfolio sections being mapped down to appointed/deappointed fund managers.  Round and round the money goes - where it stops - nobody knows (Actually we all know - SJP).

Now they flog Polaris multi-assets to the pauper scum networth demographic. Which is just a very expensive advice route to buy multi-asset funds. Which are available everywhere.

Don't fall for this nonsense

When you need to do something with the occupational - then you may - only may - need to do something with it to move to a platform which supports a partiuclar drawdown method that you at that point want to use.

And the cost benchmark for doing that - is "free" transfer to a SIPP provider. 

And if the fund is large - several years platform fee worth of cashback will be on offer.  So it really will be a comparator of same price global funds at around 0.12%.  And "free".  No initial.  No advice.  Which kicks the SJP advised offer into a tricorn pirate hat where it belongs.   If you must have advice - choose your investment preference poison and find an IFA at benchmark prices. 0.5% (capped).

SJP do indeed need to outperform by a lot to catch up net fees.  And guess what - they don't.

Any graphs they do show you may well use the "typical retail fund" trick.  Slugged with a 0.5% charge.  If you can't move your line up - move the comparator down.  They actually did this to me (some years ago now).  So this is not libellous.  Assumptions are everything.  The graph was correct - based on its assumptions.  Very misleading.  But correct in its own terms.  Very naughty.