Personal pension, low return

[Isabelle70]

My personal pension has had an ROI of 1.24% for the last 7 years. Going from £177k to £193k.
It is split into a Prudential sterling fund and a low and medium risk local funds, with an investment advisor.
I am seriously considering removing the investment advisor as they have contacted me twice over all the years and add no benefit. Each quarter I ask for the Prudential value as I do not receive that information via email.
I can also request 30% tax free now as a lump sum and I am thinking of taking that and investing it myself personally. My own personal equity investments have seen a much greater rate of return.
The investment advisor is not proactive and why should they receive a fee of approximately £3k a year for no work?
A terrible idea or worth looking into?
I am in the Channel Islands so slightly different here.

If your ROI is 1.24 on average over 7 years of Bull markets and your fee is around 1.5%? then my goodness it is time to move and asap i would say.

Why did you use an adviser for your pension if you manage your own investments? That return is abysmal, but presumably the investments were in line with your appetite for risk?

Definitely ditch the adviser, but can’t you switch your pension investments rather than take cash out?

At the time the pension was set up I wasn't given the option of undertaking the investments myself. Looking back I would say I was encouraged to select the investments I did, I had recently been made redundant, a new job and a change to the pension so I went for the easy option.
I could move the pension pot to a local investment broker, but then there are the quarterly safe custody fees.
My personal investments are with held HSBC UK and I only pay £8.75 a quarter for safe custody. I would add the 30% tax free amount there and invest. If I wanted to invest here, I would have to use a local broker too. HSBC CI does offer an investment account but you only have a choice of 119 funds!
The balance of the pension, I would look to place into tracker funds and I believe I can use the Zurich platform.

Generally I would say sack your adviser but giving him the benefit of the doubt first I would arrange a meeting pronto & ask for details of the funds you are in & if they still meet your attitude to risk. The Prudential fund sounds like a Bond fund and these have performed badly since 2021.

As you are not in the UK I wouldn't like to comment further.......but a moderate risk strategy should be weighted approx 65/35 between equities & bonds. This in the UK would have seen a return of around 10% over the past 12 months.....but very little in 2022.

Are you retiring now? Rather than taking your tax free lump sum now,can you change the funds the pension is invested in (either with an advisor or managing it yourself as you do with your other investments). What are the options in CI for managing your pension yourself?

If you withdraw the lump sum and invest it outside a pension it will be subject to CGT and dividend tax whereas it could grow tax free inside a pension (assuming the rules in the Channel Islands are similar to England that is).

It sounds like it has been invested in very cautious funds which will have low growth.... I guess the question is whether this was in keeping with what your risk appetite was when you invested.

@Hopelesslydevoted2Gu not retiring yet I am 53 and most likely will reduce my hours in the next 3/4 years and then retire from this role early 60's. I then plan on doing a few hours at Waitrose/M&S for an income and discounts :)
I can change the investments and self manage the pension but would then have to use a local broker and there charges are high for trading and safe custody. That's why I am thinking of using my 30% with HSBC.
We don't have CGT or IHT or any similar UK taxes.
I do also have 2 work pensions, one closed and one current and I can move the balance of my personal pension into the current one and then use the Zurich platform.

@Biggaybear the pension is predominantly in the PruFund Growth (Sterling) Fund, the performance to March 24 was 1% and the year before 3.1%. The rest is in a low risk and a medium risk local fund.

If you look at the factsheet (where I think you've got those figures from) you'll see the equity content is just a little over 40%. You'll also notice the return for the year before those to was 13.1% (the upturn after the pandemic) and before that 12.6%. The last 5 years has given a cumulative return of 23.2%.

It would be a good idea to sit down with your adviser (or another one) and ascertain what your risk profile is & then structure a portfolio which is akin to it. I would say that your current funds mirror a risk profile of a 3 or 4 out of ten.