Pension transfer transparency

michael1234

Firstly, please don't reply if you have a post count greater than 10,000 (dunstonh excepted of course!) or within the first hour of this being posted.

So, I transferred my pension out of Aptia. I was a bit unlucky as the funds were sold at the recent big dip in world markets due to Trump's "beautiful" tarrifs.

Prior to the transfer I could log in to my account and see the 2 funds I owned, how many units I owned of them and what they were worth. I could sell them too if I wished.

As soon as the transfer was complete, I couldn't log in to my account any more and I didn't know what day they were sold nor for what price. I did know the total that was transferred of course. It took a month and a complaint and now I have those details but its hard to check as the funds have my ex company name in them so I can't see them in Trustnet/MorningStar etc.

I'm probably just a bit sore but I would like to be able to verify that the numbers add up as its such a large sum and I just can't. I also worry a bit that the number of units sold (i.e. all of them) were something like 156,455.434 . I don't understand why there would be a fraction of a unit.

So how can I check that the amount transferred was correct and there were no additional charges/fees applied that I'm not aware of?

IvanOpinion

That one's easy, but it's too early to reply!

p00hsticks

IvanOpinion said:

That one's easy, but it's too early to reply!

and you have a post count greater than 10,000 so you're disqualified from answering !

IvanOpinion

p00hsticks said:

IvanOpinion said:

That one's easy, but it's too early to reply!

and you have a post count greater than 10,000 so you're disqualified from answering !

I'm a rebel

njkmr

I have less than 10000 post count and it's over 4 hours but unfortunately I have not got a clue.
Sorry.

DRS1

I can say that when I did a fund switch with Scottish Widows I got a statement showing the units sold and the price they were sold at and the units bought and the price.  However when I did a transfer out from Aviva all I got was a letter saying how much money had been transferred - so no units sold at what price.  And yes once the money had been paid away the Aviva website no longer showed that pension.

Does Aptia have a fund centre which maybe shows the values of the funds they have available?  Scottish Widows have one but you can only see the current value on that so it won't tell you what the price was 5 weeks ago.

As for fractions of units that is quite common.  If a unit is priced at £2 and you contribute £5 then you would want them crediting you with 2.5 units instead of rounding it down to 2 units.

gm0

>I'm probably just a bit sore but I would like to be able to verify that the numbers add up as its such a large sum >and I just can't. I also worry a bit that the number of units sold (i.e. all of them) were something like 156,455.434 >I don't understand why there would be a fraction of a unit.

Fractional units come up with allocation of contributions split across funds.  And occasionally where fees are applied from small sales spread across all funds.  Dividends just get reinvested inside the unit price (usually) but with pensions there are always exceptions - funds spitting cash could cause reinvestment of small amounts - another source.  But completely normal.

>So how can I check that the amount transferred was correct and there were no additional charges/fees applied >that I'm not aware of? 

If you know the unit counts apriori (from records you kept from the pre-transfer old funds).  You now have the price(s) on the day of execution.  A x B by fund. Add them up.

From that calculation 

Sum of (unit counts x fund daily prices) for relevant day and you have the "proceeds" £.    Which should track pretty much with the cash transfer amount arriving elsewhere.  Penny rounding and calculation accuracy (decimal places) issues aside.  

If there is a missing £10 or £100 for a fee or more - a larger "market value adjustment" (which applies on some older with profits/assurance type complex products but not typically to modern DC pension funds in simple setups.  The amount matching should reassure nothing is going on

Scheme/products do have admin fees, CHAPs payment fees (if fast transfer offered and requested).  

So the delta between the cash that arrived and the proceeds expected should reassure on that.

But from the post you seem to want to 2nd source the fund data somehow to check what you have been told from independent data.    That the daily price was "right".

That is unlikely with "not on the data feeds pension special funds not available to buy outside the scheme/product" fund choices.  

To get to grips with that - you really need access to daily fund price series for your specific funds.  And market data for what the general market was doing for those countries and relevant asset classes.  The market data provides an envelope in which you would expect the fund to have reacted.   Exact contents - stocks and bond durations vs yield curve changes will of course determine where it sits.  Which may be good or bad.  

But that is a 2nd source of "envelope" and can reassure that the funds behaved "more or less as expected".  

For stuff not on the feeds becuase it's not for sale retail.   There isn't anywhere else to look at your specific fund unit prices.  

Best you can do is ask other people with old scheme access - if the web site offers daily price info and to check that the unit price they now see as the official record of that day - is the same as the one you were told.   

Web site glitches occur with price data upload.  Some old schemes don't provide download daily series. But if they provide graphs sometimes you can get one that way.

Hoenir

OEICS can take 4-6 weeks to be reregistered upon transfer. Far slowly process than listed shares, Government bonds or ETF's.