Nest pension scheme - how safe is it?

[iem0128]

Son is put on a Nest pension scheme. Read in newspapers that some government backed pension schemes have disappeared with people's pension. Is there any way for a self-employed to get in a straight forward government pension scheme at all please?

Share your experiences please.

What schemes are they?
You can not get more basic and straightforward than NEST?
What do you mean a governent pension scheme?
If you are looking for a low cost scheme then try youinvest, or vanguard

My bosses use the Nest scheme. I like it so far, as I have been able to get all my pensions put into it without any hassle at all. Of course, if it goes tits up, I have nothing, but I won't have much anyway. I found the big pensions scheme that I have previously been enrolled in pretentious and unhelpful. One company refused to accept my divorce papers when I changed back to my maiden name because they were Scottish and not what they had expected. Nest sorted it out in less than 3 days, and I thankfully no longer have to deal with the twattery. So from my experience, I like Nest.

Very very very very safe.

Of course investments might go down as well as up, but Nest is generally risk adverse in its investments (not always a good thing, but sounds like you might be keen on this), and you won't find anything remotely dodgy going on.

I'm not sure which schemes you've read about (possibly linked to the Pension Protection Fund?) but they won't be anything to do with Nest.

It feels like there are so many pension missellings that I am not sure about the one you are thinking of. Are you thinking of employer schemes like the BHS one where the employer goes bust and the scheme is in deficit? Luckily that has been resolved now. There are also lots of scams like encouraging companies or individuals to invest their holdings in dodgy schemes or encouraging people to ‘draw down’ their pensions.

I am not in NEST but it does seem a good scheme for people not in a specific company pension. I think the only disadvantage is that the employer contributions are not as high as in a good public sector scheme but as a self employed person your son would not have that option anyway.

The Financial Conduct Authority have published a guide to avoiding pension scams. Hope this helps:

www.fca.org.uk/scamsmart/how-avoid-pension-scams

I think I meant government approved schemes. Thank you so much for all your help. Nice to know a bit more. I thought you could just get a government basic pension scheme.

Thank you to all!

I think you’re probably talking about pension “liberation” scams.

Pension schemes have to be registered with HMRC. They are not BACKED. They are not APPROVED. They are merely registered.

There are lots of cases of bad investments in effectively scam schemes - investing in storage units is one that springs to mind.

My company uses Nest . I joined 5 years ago at 45 , I have never had a pension except the state one and last couple of years I gave started to contribute more myself as the returns are good . You get tax relief and at 55 you can take 25 % of what saved so far tax free . The ones your thinking of that been in press lately were ones not through an employer like nest and people put their trust into a so called hrmc backed personal pension but they lost all their money as they were not really hrmc backed. I trust nest and that's why I'm contributing more now.

The NHS use nest pension scheme for some staff