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If you have not looked at your personal pension for some time you probably should!
This service will be of particular interest if you have any of the following -
- A Personal Pension
- A suspended or “frozen” Personal Pension
- A With Profits Personal Pension
- A Personal Pension with a company that has high charges
- A Personal Pension where the provider no longer offers pensions or is closed to new business
- A Personal Pension where the provider no longer offers advice
- A Personal Pension with poor investment performance
- Several plans with a number of companies and you would be interested to know If there are any advantages of bringing them all under one plan for simplicity’ sake
Pension Charges.
Over the past few years Pension charging structures have changed dramatically. Charges applied to new Stakeholder pension plans can be far lower than in the past. If you took out a pension plan some years ago you may now have a relatively expensive pension contract. It may be possible to transfer to a cheaper plan.
Pension companies are fond of using jargon to describe their charges. This is rarely helpful and difficult for the man or woman in the street to understand. The terminology includes - bid offer spread, initial charge, accumulations units, monthly plan fee, nil or reduced allocation period, annual management charge. This is the jargon applied to the charges to many pension contracts have - particularly those taken out before 2000. Some pension companies have changed their charging structure on older pension contracts but many have not. You could still be paying higher charges than you need to even if you are no longer paying into the pension.
Investment Performance
This is an important matter as at the end of the day the value of your income retirement will be heavily affected by how effectively your pension company makes your money grow. If you are unhappy with your pension company’s investment performance you need to review it.
Many clients have pensions investing into a "Balanced Managed" fund which may be achieving limited returns. You need to consider whether these funds still suit your attitude to risk. Old style pension contracts, even those with well known pension companies may only small number of funds to choose from. Modern pension contract cans offer a wide range of funds to choose from to help spread your investment.
With-Profits Pension Funds
With-Profits Pension Funds were very common in the eighties and the nineties. Many companies still have large amounts of funds invested in with-profits funds. However, pension plans invested in with-profits funds need careful consideration. Many with-profits funds are now heavily invested in low risk assets such as gilts and cash. As a result these funds offer low rates of return. It seems reasonable to assume that some are unlikely to grow significantly during the longer term. Whilst some have continued to perform well others have not and if you have a personal pension invested in a with profits fund it really does need a review.
We are a firm of highly qualified and experienced independent advisers. We will carry out a review of your current financial circumstance and your pension plan(s).
We are able to gather all the key details about your existing pension arrangements. We look at the charges and investment performance of your current pension company.
We then compare this to what is currently available from the current Independent Pension Market place. We compare the figures if all of the plans were transferred into the same policy with one charging structure. This could save you money or give you the prospect of gaining better investment performance. If this appears to be appropriate and suitable for you and your situation and you agree then we will proceed with the paperwork.
In a nutshell we
- Look at your present pension arrangements
- Take up to date information from your pension company
- Consider the pros and cons of moving your pension
- Sometimes it is not appropriate to move your plan. If we do not think you should move your pension we will tell you.
- If you wish to proceed we will deal with the paperwork
- Provide you with a written report detailing the reasons for your actions.
If you need to have your plan reviewed please do not hesitate to contact us on or fill in the online form.
NB. There are detailed rules about how and when you can take your benefits and the size of your fund. (You cannot obtain access to pensions until you reach 50 or 55 after 2010.) What you receive from your pension will depend on both the performance of your fund and interest rates which will affect the rate used to buy annuities. Pension funds can go down in value
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