Scottish Widow Pension

20122013

I have a Scottish Widows (SW) work place pension which myself and my previous employer had made two years contribution. I have started making a £2880 'non-earning contribution' since April 2024. 

I plan to change and reduce the number of funds, and considering transferring out but SW needs me to sell down as cash before the transfer, in addition, SW has 0.1%  life style funds. 

Does it make financial sense to still go ahead and transfer out? 

Albermarle

Good reasons for transferring are ( not in any order)
1) Cheaper charges 
2) Better choice of investments ( if that is of interest)
3) Better website/customer service etc
4) More flexible withdrawal options.

So you need to think whether the provider you are thinking of changing to, meets all/some of these criteria.

20122013

Has anyone bought and / switch funds on the Scottish Widows (CS8) funds?  As I cannot see how many units I hold, and I do not know what date it was purchased on / the unit price. is this to be expected?

DRS1

Well I did a switch on my old Scottish Widows pension (not CS8 - Series One) in March and got a written confirmation of the Units sold and the Units bought, the date it was done and the prices used per unit.

You may also see the numbers of Units you now hold in your next annual statement.

There is a website and an app but I am not sure if either of those show units held or if it shows just a total value for the policy - all I see is the total value not the breakdown of funds but I don't use the app only the web version.

Shimrod

20122013 said:

Has anyone bought and / switch funds on the Scottish Widows (CS8) funds?  As I cannot see how many units I hold, and I do not know what date it was purchased on / the unit price. is this to be expected?

I switched out of a Scottish Widows pension to ii earlier this year. I thought the SW information available was very poor - no transaction details, no unit price, simply a value of how much each fund holding was. I did receive one annual summary statement that gave me units and price bought but did not get one the following year. You could try asking SW to provide one.

The choice of funds was also very limited but passable and I was able to save on fund and platform costs by transferring.

20122013

Shimrod. Did you have to sell your funds into cash before transferring out?  I had asked SW and had received inconsistent information.

Shimrod

20122013 said:

@Shimrod. Did you have to sell your funds into cash before transferring out?  I had asked SW and had received inconsistent information.

I requested the transfer from ii who then handled the communication with SW. SW will automatically sell the funds to cash as part of the transfer - no need for you to request that. 

The SW transfer was the quickest of the three different pensions transferred - taking just on a week from start to finish (L&G by comparison were just short of the two month mark).

cloud_dog

20122013 said:

Has anyone bought and / switch funds on the Scottish Widows (CS8) funds?  As I cannot see how many units I hold, and I do not know what date it was purchased on / the unit price. is this to be expected?

Their revised portal is a POS, and (as suggested to them) does not even meet a minimum viable product.

It was one of the reasons I used to partially transfer out periodically to my SIPP.  In this aspect SW were one on the clearer and more easily understood providers for partial transfers.

With my scheme I was allowed to actually partially transfer 100% of the value as long as further contributions would be received within 3 months, or if not and I wanted the scheme to remain open, leave at least £2 in there.

20122013

Shimrod said:

'The SW transfer was the quickest of the three different pensions transferred - taking just on a week from start to finish (L&G by comparison were just short of the two month mark).'

I am glad you had a better experience than me. I will check out what benefits eg guaranteed retirement age etc before I transfer for some reason my AMC is 0.35%.