Pension review

[Toomanycats99]

Bit confused on something. I have 3 pensions.

Old stakeholder pension including contracted out element
Old workplace pension
Current workplace pension

I have around £50k-£60k pot value in each of the old pensions that are not currently getting contributions. I feel like I should review these old ones to see if it's best to leave them where they are or incorporate into current pension (or I guess go elsewhere)

But will an FA be willing to give advice as presumably there will be no commission if I transfer to an existing plan but presumably if I go to current pension provider I won't get independent advice?

Also am I better not to have all my eggs in one basket?

You can pay a fee to receive advice from a financial adviser. Commission payments have been banned on pension and investment products since 1st January 2013.

A pension provider will not give you advice; they may inform you of the options that you have available to you regarding the pension scheme but they are not allowed to give advice. They might, depending on the provider, offer you access to advice for which you will pay a fee.

Before doing anything check if your current provider will accept transfers in. Some workplace schemes have a time limit e.g. transfers in must happen within a year of joining. No point paying for advice only to find out a transfer isn’t possible.

Check whether you are paying fees on the two old pensions, that can be quite a bit. Remember that as you 'contracted-out', you were paying a lower NI rate, this will be reflected in your future state pension. You can go to the DWP site and see how much this will affect you.

Looks like I can do transfers into workplace scheme so that should be fine.

I had to get cetv's around 2 years ago for a divorce and looking at values now the workplace one has gone up quite alot as has the next oldest one. The stakeholder one which has been shifted to a couple of different company's and is very old has barely increased,

I wonder actually whether to just transfer that stakeholder one into workplace scheme (which seems to have quite low fees) and keep an eye on the other one to see how it performs over next year or so before paying for any advice.

On the plus side I have realised I am probably in a better place for retirement than I thought I was!

I have checked state pension on government gateway so have got that info as well.