What to do with old pensions

Trooper999

Hi everyone,

I’m sure this would have been asked a thousand times before so I apologise.

I’ve recently started a new job that has a workplace nest pension.

I have 2 older workplace pensions that are both with different providers.

There isn’t a great amount in them but the amount is large to me, question is what to do with the old ones now….

Any ideas?

QrizB

Assuming your old pensions are both defined contribution (DC) pensions, just a pot of money invested for your future, you've got three basic options. In order of complexity (not that any of these options is likely to be particularly complex):

• You could transfer them into Nest - keeps everything tidy.
• Or you could merge one of them into the other, so you'd have two pensions - your merged old ones and you new Nest.
• Or you could move both the old ones into one new pension.

If either of your old ones are defined benefit (the sort of thing you get with government jobs, civil service, police, army etc.) then it's a bit more complicated.

Trooper999

Thank you very much for your comments.

No, the pensions are just standard stakeholder ones…

My wife has said she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to put them together as if the company goes under I’ll loose the lot…. I would welcome your comments on that.
they both amount to around £110k

I did have the choice of a financial advisor to look after it but not sure that would be for me as effectively I won’t be paying into them…

DRS1

Is there any particular reason to do anything with the old schemes?

By the time I stopped work I had 6 separate pensions. And I will admit I hardly looked at them from the day I set them up to when I started getting stuff saying what are you going to do now you are close to retirement. Of course some people like to have everything in one place. Is that you?

You may want to check out the details of your 2 old schemes like how are they invested, what charges are you paying, do you get a break on those charges negotiated by your employer and does that break still apply now you don't work there any more. Also check if there are any special provisions (early retirement age of 55 perhaps) which might not survive if you transferred.

DRS1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82114834#Comment_82114834

I am not sure about the "company goes under you'll lose the lot" point. I don't know who the pensions are with or if they are insured but you may find they are wholly protected by the FSCS or they are held in a way which means they don't care very much about that protection because the assets are held by a custodian separate from the assets of whoever is providing the pension.

El_Torro

if your pension company goes bust you don't lose the pension. Another pension provider will be appointed to manage the investments and your pension gets transferred to them. This may mean that you can't access your pension over a period of months, but you won't actually lose anything.

You may want to have 2 (or more) pensions, so that if there is an IT glitch or if one of the pension companies goes bust you still have access to money. This only really matters once you have retired and have started drawing down from the pensions. No harm in starting it well before retirement though.

Trooper999

Hi everyone,

I’m still a bit away from retirement at 45.

I really don’t know anything at all about pensions or how they work or even the associated costs.

I didn’t know if there is a better way to try to grow what I have rather than it doing whatever it’s doing.

One is Aviva and the other the peoples pension.

bjorn_toby_wilde

The best advice I can give is to start to understand your pension better and take control of it. At 45 you have a long time until retirement and this is a great opportunity to get that money working for you.

There are lots of different resources out there to suit different learning styles (videos, books, etc) but Moneyhelper has some basic pages which explain Defined Contribution pensions to get you started.

Your pension’s performance depends on what funds it’s invested in (you can see past performance figures) and the charges (there’s usually an annual management charge and a fund charge). A good starting point would be to understand what these are for your pensions.

ali_bear

They should at least send you an annual statement that shows the current value, how the underlying investments have performed, and what charges you are paying.

Albermarle

If a company like Aviva goes bust then probably it will mean something mega catastrophic has happened and you would not be worrying about pensions……… Also Nest and Peoples Pension are well established and any risk is negligible.

As above sounds like time to start to understand pensions better. Most peoples mistake is to really underestimate how big a pot they will need to have a decent retirement, so they do not add enough each month.

This is a good non commercial website.

Pensions and retirement | Help with pensions and retirement | MoneyHelper

LHW99

If you maintained at least one of the old pensions separate (by merging or transferring both to a new provider) to the current work one you could use the result to accumulate future "old" pensions, when for example you move jobs again, and the new company uses yet another provider.

But as long as you make sure all your pensions are kept up to date with your contact details, you can always make a decision in a few years time, when you have found out more about what you have now.