Aviva 98 Series Personal and Group Personal Pension

thingswerentthisbadinmyday

Albermarle said:

thingswerentthisbadinmyday said:

LHW99 said:

If only I could get to talk to Aviva on his behalf (which I know I can’t), I think I could be of some real help in explaining the procedure he needs to follow and in what order.

Could you get him to phone while you are with him, and he asks Aviva if they will talk to you on his behalf? I used to do that for various things with my late mum.

Thanks.
Although I didn’t make mention of this in my last message, I’ve been thinking along the same lines.
The more I look at the information about this specific plan, the more questions I seem to have.

If you do then be aware though that not all pension call centre staff are that clued up .

Thank you for the heads up.
I’m willing to do all I can to help here, but there are limits to what I know or what I can find out.
I will keep suggesting that he contacts an IFA for a full review. This seems the best way forward to me.

Marcon

thingswerentthisbadinmyday said:

Albermarle said:

thingswerentthisbadinmyday said:

LHW99 said:

If only I could get to talk to Aviva on his behalf (which I know I can’t), I think I could be of some real help in explaining the procedure he needs to follow and in what order.

Could you get him to phone while you are with him, and he asks Aviva if they will talk to you on his behalf? I used to do that for various things with my late mum.

Thanks.
Although I didn’t make mention of this in my last message, I’ve been thinking along the same lines.
The more I look at the information about this specific plan, the more questions I seem to have.

If you do then be aware though that not all pension call centre staff are that clued up .

Thank you for the heads up.
I’m willing to do all I can to help here, but there are limits to what I know or what I can find out.
I will keep suggesting that he contacts an IFA for a full review. This seems the best way forward to me.

Nothing you've said suggests he needs a full review, but simply an explanation he can understand of how to proceed. You've referred to '...the more questions [you] have....' but maybe he doesn't want or need to go into the same depth?

Aviva has a Vulnerable Customer procedure. There is nothing to stop you ringing Aviva and asking how to contact that team/what confirmation they would need to have from the policyholder before they can talk to you (with the policyholder present during the call and the phone on speaker if that's what your friend would be happy with).

GunJack

Just for info, a lot of companies will let a password be put on an account to allow a family member or friend to phone on the account holders behalf...ask them if they do that. Me & Mrs.G-J tend to do this where possible to cover the bases.

DRS1

Your friend should check how his bit of Aviva deal with this.  Different bits of Aviva do things differently - it comes from taking over a variety of other insurers.

thingswerentthisbadinmyday

DRS1 said:

Your friend should check how his bit of Aviva deal with this.  Different bits of Aviva do things differently - it comes from taking over a variety of other insurers.

Thanks.
I’ve realised that this is likely to be one of the issues that we (i.e. he) needs to clarify & understand.
It’s clear he wants to take some tax free cash and de-risk the whole portfolio - the question is how we actually achieve this without making a mistake along the way. Or falling foul of ‘unintended consequences’.
Many of the previous comments have been helpful.

DRS1

thingswerentthisbadinmyday said:

DRS1 said:

Your friend should check how his bit of Aviva deal with this.  Different bits of Aviva do things differently - it comes from taking over a variety of other insurers.

Thanks.
I’ve realised that this is likely to be one of the issues that we (i.e. he) needs to clarify & understand.
It’s clear he wants to take some tax free cash and de-risk the whole portfolio - the question is how we actually achieve this without making a mistake along the way. Or falling foul of ‘unintended consequences’.
Many of the previous comments have been helpful.

Navigating the call(s) with Aviva may be tricky because they cannot and will not give advice.  You/he will need to phrase the questions as requests for information - eg this is what I want to do how do I do it.  Does my plan allow me to do this or do I need to transfer to a new plan.  What other investments are available under my plan.  How do I instruct you do switch?  Is there a bid/offer spread?  Is it enforced or do switches happen at a single price - eg the bid price on both the sale and the buy? That sort of thing.

cfw1994

LHW99 said:

If only I could get to talk to Aviva on his behalf (which I know I can’t), I think I could be of some real help in explaining the procedure he needs to follow and in what order.

Could you get him to phone while you are with him, and he asks Aviva if they will talk to you on his behalf? I used to do that for various things with my late mum.

We have done that on various “sole” accounts.  Should work - your friend will have “cleared” security by then.  

That said, we haven’t done it with a pension provider (yet!).

thingswerentthisbadinmyday

DRS1 said:

thingswerentthisbadinmyday said:

DRS1 said:

Your friend should check how his bit of Aviva deal with this.  Different bits of Aviva do things differently - it comes from taking over a variety of other insurers.

Thanks.
I’ve realised that this is likely to be one of the issues that we (i.e. he) needs to clarify & understand.
It’s clear he wants to take some tax free cash and de-risk the whole portfolio - the question is how we actually achieve this without making a mistake along the way. Or falling foul of ‘unintended consequences’.
Many of the previous comments have been helpful.

Navigating the call(s) with Aviva may be tricky because they cannot and will not give advice.  You/he will need to phrase the questions as requests for information - eg this is what I want to do how do I do it.  Does my plan allow me to do this or do I need to transfer to a new plan.  What other investments are available under my plan.  How do I instruct you do switch?  Is there a bid/offer spread?  Is it enforced or do switches happen at a single price - eg the bid price on both the sale and the buy? That sort of thing.

Thank you.
Exactly what I’ve done.
I came up with a list of about 8 or 9 questions which are the ones I’d have asked had it been my policy.
Aviva followed up with several e-mails - mostly helpful and relevant info.
Despite this, the question which they seemed not to have answered is how he actually goes about giving an instruction to withdraw tax free cash!  
Perhaps it wasn’t asked in the way it needed to be. I don’t know.

thingswerentthisbadinmyday

I spent a bit more time yesterday, trying to extract info about fund choices and present them in a way which hopefully makes it a bit easier to choose (flip chart sized paper).
Otherwise, it’s a case of printing out individual fund fact sheets, each of which comprises about 3 pages.
I thought I’d found a way of summarising all the info in a clear and concise way - no easy feat when there are about 30 fund choices - but then discovered that at least 2 of the funds appear to be mirror images of two of the other funds, albeit with different fund names!
This gets more confusing by the minute!!

DRS1

When I looked at switching funds in one of my (newer - so early 90s) Aviva policies I had a choice of 7 funds all with nice simple names like Aviva UK Equity, Aviva Overseas Equity, Aviva Fixed Interest and Aviva Index-Linked Gilt.

I suppose you could try running the mirror funds through something like Trustnet to see if that throws up any differences.  Sometimes insurers make available funds run by outside investment houses in case you might like eg Blackrock better than Aviva and of course funds with different managers can end up having very similar looking investments.  Maybe the difference will be in things like the charges or whether there is leverage.  Did you compare the past performance of the mirror funds?

Anyway if he is looking to de=risk the plan you can probably eliminate a few of the 30 funds quite easily.