Aegon Pension consolidation

[DJMK4]

Hi all,

Not that its anything to shout home about,

I have 2 x Aegon work place pension policies (Group Personal Pension Plan) (one current and one pretty new one set-up because of a company name adjustment which it will start going in to next month) however its with the same employer.

and a flexiable pension plan closed and paid up by a previous employer


I want to consolidate them in to one pot which will be a current pot, they say they can do this and advised there will be no charge but said I should get advice.

IMO before I run off to a financial advisor, I dont really see the issue with doing so? it keeps everything in a single pot and not split over three pots.

Opinions

 

[peterwalkley]

I did similar ages ago as I had a rag-bag of pension plans. Main reasons I did it were to have a single set of charges and only one place to have to administer. The downside is the all-your-eggs-in-one basket thing in that if the fund performs badly you lose out. However, picking a winner is an impossible task and anyone telling you they can is a liar. I just went with a big name and assumed it would be in the middle of the bell curve when comparing performance over 10-20 years.

 

[DJMK4]

Thanks, would be useful for some more feedback. Just to re-interate, these policies are with Aegon just seperate policies

 

[The_Abyss]

The same funds will likely be available in any of the pensions, if they offer a decent choice. There's no real harm in consolidating to your active one, although you might want to check on the fees etc.

My commiserations that your employer has chosen Aegon though. Terrible service and administration.

 

[Pho]

My commiserations that your employer has chosen Aegon though. Terrible service and administration.

Glad it's not just me who have problems with them. Their website is nice and flashy, though their ARC portal is pretty poor.

I can choose from a magnitude of thousands of funds, but I can't seem to find a basic option of "this is how risky I want to be, select/recommend the appropriate fund for me". Am I missing something really obvious?

 

[DJMK4]

The same funds will likely be available in any of the pensions, if they offer a decent choice. There's no real harm in consolidating to your active one, although you might want to check on the fees etc.

My commiserations that your employer has chosen Aegon though. Terrible service and administration.

Yeh not the best but its who the current and past employer have used.

I will probably run it past some sort of free financial advice to check. According to the guy I spoke to @ Aegon there is no fee if I was to consolidate, I may have to run it past them a few more times to check.

I also need to start trying to look elsewhere (outside of property) for my future - Maybe stocks and shares ISA?

 

[jamief]

The reason they tell you to seek advice is in case either of the pensions are DB / protected rights etc. Doesn't sound like they are so no issue with consolidating imo. You probably won't save any money as Aegon charge a % fee rather than flat fee afaik.

 

[Meridian]

I have a similar situation (also with Aegon - are they taking over everything??). My understanding is that if the pensions are all the same type then you can go ahead without financial advice. They may suggest it, but you are not required to get it. If any of the pensions are a different kind than the others though, then they are legally required to block the merger until you have received said advice, and the fiinancial adviser has to be the one to contact the pension company. However, I am not a lawyer etc.

 

[DJMK4]

Well the two are the same (personal group pension plan)

And one was a group but when finished was paid up and was changed to a flexible pension plan

No idea

The guy on the phone did say there was no fee or charge :/ but said I should get advice.

Confused

 

[Malevolence]

Came expecting dragons; left disappointed.

 

[The_Abyss]

I have a similar situation (also with Aegon - are they taking over everything??). My understanding is that if the pensions are all the same type then you can go ahead without financial advice. They may suggest it, but you are not required to get it. If any of the pensions are a different kind than the others though, then they are legally required to block the merger until you have received said advice, and the fiinancial adviser has to be the one to contact the pension company. However, I am not a lawyer etc.

There is no legal requirement. If there is a requirement it has been put in place by the pension scheme trustees. For example, you can transfer some defined benefit pensions without advice, but very few pension providers are willing to receive the funds unless a positive recommendation to transfer has been made by a financial adviser.

Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of shifting regulatory goal posts when a customer runs out of money in retirement and successfully complains that they didn’t realise that spending all their pension money would mean that they would run out of pension money.

 

[booyaka]

There is no legal requirement. If there is a requirement it has been put in place by the pension scheme trustees. For example, you can transfer some defined benefit pensions without advice, but very few pension providers are willing to receive the funds unless a positive recommendation to transfer has been made by a financial adviser.

Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of shifting regulatory goal posts when a customer runs out of money in retirement and successfully complains that they didn’t realise that spending all their pension money would mean that they would run out of pension money.

This^^

Life offices/Pension Providers are very cautious when it comes to "pension transfer" - internally or externally that comes direct from a client - They can NOT be seen to be tell you to do it, and conversely - can not be seen to be telling you NOT to do it. Either of these can be seen to constitute advice.

I'm presuming the values are fairly small ?? a few thousand pounds? If so, get the forms, fill them in, send off to Aegon, and that should be that. They are just covering their backside by telling you to "consider" advice.

Also if the value is very small £5/£10k etc - you'll not get any advisers to deal with it as it's simply not cost effective for them.

 

[NotAGolf]

One other thing to consider is the fees associated to each pension. As they're with the same company I imagine the fees are the same, but consider that pension 1 could have an Annual Management Charge (AMC) of 0.1%, but pension 2 could have an AMC of 0.6%. In that scenario you might want to keep pension #11 open rather than transfer it all into #2.

 

[da_mic_1530]

I just use pensionbee to consolidate the various pension's I've accumulated over the years - they only took 10 working days to transfer my AEGON pension.

Capita on the other hand - they can just die as pension holders!

 

[Meridian]

There is no legal requirement. If there is a requirement it has been put in place by the pension scheme trustees. For example, you can transfer some defined benefit pensions without advice, but very few pension providers are willing to receive the funds unless a positive recommendation to transfer has been made by a financial adviser.

Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of shifting regulatory goal posts when a customer runs out of money in retirement and successfully complains that they didn’t realise that spending all their pension money would mean that they would run out of pension money.

Fair enough - I did say I wasn't an expert. But I had noticed that trying to merge different types of pensions resulted in legalese letters, whereas trying to merge similar pensions resulted in a polite email.

 

[The_Abyss]

Fair enough - I did say I wasn't an expert. But I had noticed that trying to merge different types of pensions resulted in legalese letters, whereas trying to merge similar pensions resulted in a polite email.

Sure, no worries. But pensions are complex things and guesswork - even educated - can often lead to the wrong conclusion. Judging by the posting history on this topic there are very few people on this board who know much more than memorising some parts of MSE. @booyaka is one of the few.

 

[moon man]

Depends on a person's age ,I have some small pots but small pots under 10k can taken as cash at 100% under triviality rule at age 55 . rather than 25% then taxed on rest ,I'm hoping to extend my house with some of mine

 

[The_Abyss]

There are limits to what you suggest, and also unfortunately you're mistaken. Triviality now only applies to defined benefits schemes, and within the limits and restrictions that apply 75% of the amount will be taxable - it is effectively a UFPLS payment. This has been the case since 2015.

For money purchase, your benefits must be £30,000 or less, and no individual pension worth more than £10,000. You also have to cash them all in within 12 months. Again, 75% of the amount will be taxable. In theory there's no limit of three applied to workplace pensions if you have lots of those, but they're still taxable too. Small pots have been taxable for quite some time now - since around 2013 IIRC.

 

[Unicorn]

They always advise you get financial advice as they are not allowed to make any recommendations as a pension provider. We have just moved from Aegon to scottish widows and had all the same.

 

[moon man]

There are limits to what you suggest, and also unfortunately you're mistaken. Triviality now only applies to defined benefits schemes, and within the limits and restrictions that apply 75% of the amount will be taxable - it is effectively a UFPLS payment. This has been the case since 2015.

For money purchase, your benefits must be £30,000 or less, and no individual pension worth more than £10,000. You also have to cash them all in within 12 months. Again, 75% of the amount will be taxable. In theory there's no limit of three applied to workplace pensions if you have lots of those, but they're still taxable too. Small pots have been taxable for quite some time now - since around 2013 IIRC.

Ah ok ,I definitely need some proper advice ,been on the pension advisory website and can't get my head around it ,got so many small lumps floating around