Pension Investors are losing thousands of pounds in fees!

Pensions are one of those marmite investments (love them or hate them) with many investing a good deal of income towards a safe retirement. However as you would have read on this site before, pension charges are a real issue.

For many the providers in the market place (probably your pension provider) is charging you more than you could be paying simply by looking around at the alternative providers in the market place.

The key is that it's not that simple. Some of the highest charging pensions around are those recommended by Independent Financial Advisers, in particular Self Invested Pension schemes (SIPPS) and those placed inside a so called wrap, and many are not easy to compare.

Money Management (one of the Financial Services sector trade magazines) will be releasing research in February that outlines the effect of these Pension Charges and will show the differences between the best and the worst charges on all UK Pension Plans.

They use the terms 'skimmed off' in on of their press releases and that is probably about right. The difference between once Aviva plan and the AXA Elevate wrap is more than £30,000 less (based on a £200 per month contribution over 20 years).

The annual Pension Survey will show how you could expect to pay 20% of your pension fund in charges with a range of providers.

As always you should review and check your plans before it's too late. You can contact us using the usual route for further guidance. But guidance you will need.

What a year this has been, the recession has continued and we have managed to find ourselves getting to the end of  the year and things are not looking much better for the New Year. Well that's  got the negatives out of the way, the next thing  I will be doing will be to give some guidance as you need to be acting in 2012 and what the options are for then and beyond.

The audio file is below.


Personal Financial Planning Update

It now just needs me to wish you a great christmas and a even better 2012.

Richard Smith