Pensions!

[Ferritz]

Ive recently taken some advice about my 3 pensions from an independent financial advisor who was recommended to me by a friend. I checked them out everything looked good.
I agreed to pay them a set % fee on them giving advice and ultimately issuing a lengthy document advising me how to proceed with my 3 individual pensions.
when I received my report I was shocked to discover that subjects that had been discussed in detail over the past 4 months and I was happy to go along with were now being advised as a tax threat and were not recommended!
I am now in a situation were I really need some good advice I have been recommended by 2 different friends / colleagues to St James Place as they have both had good results - however reading on here the reviews are not brilliant.
I don't mind paying fees if the results more than cover expenditure -my previous bad guy was charging 5%! for initial advice with 1%/annum to oversee everything.
Anyone had good experiences with SJP ??

Where are you?

Hi I'm new to this Forum so hope i'm posting in the right place?
I'm located in North West

Ah, the small company I was going to recommend are in Kent, a bit of a trek for you!

What I did get from them was a initial 2 hour meeting, that was free. Once I agreed to proceed, the deal was they would come up with some recommendations & only if I decided to proceed would I pay a fee, which was fixed by the time spent (£2k in my case).

In short no, SJP are tied advisers, so they aren't independent, and can only recommend from a small selection of products and they are very expensive from what I have experienced.
I can recommend an excellent bunch of IFA's in Wales that I deal with, and we are not local to them,but they have sorted out and consolidated four pensions for us. SJP tried to and made a hash up! We are very happy with them, they are fair on price, knowledgeable and very nice. PM me if you want their details.

Thanks Yes it is a little far :)

Definitely stay away from SJP - they charge a crazy amount for a very poor service (5% is staggering in the market). I'd really recommend LIFT- Financial, they look after one of my family members' finances and he can't talk highly enough of them. They are a Chartered Financial Planning firm based in Altrincham that operate a fee-based approach. They've won lots of awards and offer excellent value for money. The contact that he has is Edward, whose email address I have just got for you  [email protected].

They are incredibly professional and would be miles better than SJP - hope that helps!

I know SJP and can recommend one of their practices (they are all separate businesses within a group)

Don't go near SJP!!

OP, some interesting stuff here about IFAs www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/choosing-a-financial-adviser

I'm a pensions adviser in the north-west. Happy to have a chat with you if you want to PM me, so I can understand what you're looking to do.

I am not an SJP representative!!

Not SJP, I know no-one with a good word to say about them.

What do you need advice on? Tax on pensions hasn't changed drastically in the past four months. What age are you?

Anyone but SJP. Every single person I know who's been with them has regretted it.

I've had great service from my SJP chap, his total ongoing is 1.79% - an IFA was quoting me 2.4% including platform costs, his 0.75% ongoing and fund charges.

Dont believe all the negative hype! Ive had 38% return in 3 years net of charges!