Pension transfer - anyone used a financial advisor?

[YogaLite]

I want to transfer my old deferred defined benefit pension to a different government approved provider to have more flexibility to access it.

There is a (totally unnecessary in my view) obligatory requirement to obtain a financial advice which apparently is expensive.

I had sent some enquiries online and I am waiting to hear.

Has anyone done it? How expensive was it? I just need a one-off waffle from them confirmed by a letter to my pension provider.

Anyone has been through similar? How did u find the "advisor" and what was the cost?

I didnt mean waiver at the advisor, I meant a waiver to decline the advice. I feel it is totally wrong that I can't decide how to use my pension.

Actuarial advice apparently is based on people living up to age 96, I wonder how many actually do, especially in covid times.

So how far will that c£20k go in bridging your income gap/supplementing the c£200pm towards covering your future expenditure?

What's the actual transfer value?
How old are you?
Any life limiting conditions? Or, realistically, how many years do you think you have left?
What other pension provision have you got, apart from the state pension (which is about £778 a month).

IMHO, 20k plus £200 a month is not to be sniffed at.
Cashing in an index linked final salary pension is rarely a good idea, so how you arrived at this decision is highly relevant.

TV is £120k, we have savings for regular expenses. We also have a disabled adult DC that we want to spend quality time with while we can, we are both in 60s.

I also have another pension I started drawing flexibly.

Would happily sell the house if we had to.

How long have I got? Who knows..and that's exactly why I want to live now especially that last 2 covid years showed us no one really knows how long we have.

A CETV at that amount no adviser will touch that, their costs will be around £1,800 just to get the report and required calculations undertaken.

Unless there are more factors than you have mentioned here, there is an almost non existent chance an advisor will recommend the transfer. Personally I wouldn't spend c£5k for them to do the work needed to reach that conclusion.

(annoying though that may seem!)

You should definitely get some expert advice make sure it's an IFA. And not one attached to a brokership feel free to pm me

@YogaLite

TV is £120k, we have savings for regular expenses. We also have a disabled adult DC that we want to spend quality time with while we can, we are both in 60s.

I also have another pension I started drawing flexibly.

Would happily sell the house if we had to.

How long have I got? Who knows..and that's exactly why I want to live now especially that last 2 covid years showed us no one really knows how long we have.

What other provisions do you have? What is your investment experience? Do you both have full State Pension entitlement? If you sold your house where would you live? Are you happy to move a guaranteed income to an equity linked pension given the current economic and geo political uncertainty? If you had done this 6 months ago, your pension would have fallen by about £12 - £20k today.

As PP have said, I would be astonished if any adviser would advise this transfer.

OP you simply, and clearly, don't seem to know enough about pensions to figure out what is in your best financial interests here. You've not got a grasp of why transferrring a defined benefit pension pot into a NEST-type pension pot is a really bad idea in most situations, and paying an IFA £5k to do the actual number crunching will likely confirm it and just piss a lot of money away on advice you clearly don't value...

There is a reason the government stepped in to legislate against just letting people transfer away extremely good value/inflation busting pension pots into poorer vehicles, and no responsible IFA will do this lightly or without that number crunching occuring, no matter how much you'd like to sign a waiver to say it's all fine. Insurance wise, it isn't - they'd not have a leg to stand on in a few years when you realise how crap the returns / risks are in a non DB scheme then look for someone to blame.

Seriously, you need to stop looking at the actual pension monthly income and look at the benefits that type of lucrative pension offers. If you don't understand what I'm saying, you need to do some basic pensions research.

200 a month for 20 years guaranteed plus 20k lump sum is 68000 even without an index linked increases.

Are you expecting to die early?

@Yourdly, appreciate your comments but no one can tell me how long I am going to live and I effectively would like to have an option to cash it in in the next 5 years rather than wait 36 years which is how long it would take for its current value to get used up. I am not looking for returns, I am looking for flexible access.

It really is a very individual choice and it does depend on age.

[quote YogaLite]@Yourdly, appreciate your comments but no one can tell me how long I am going to live and I effectively would like to have an option to cash it in in the next 5 years rather than wait 36 years which is how long it would take for its current value to get used up. I am not looking for returns, I am looking for flexible access.

It really is a very individual choice and it does depend on age.[/quote]
No one is telling you how long you will live, what you would like and what are possible are two different things. It is not currently possible to transfer your pension.

What do you mean 'cash it in'?

Potentially useful information here:

moneytothemasses.com/saving-for-your-future/pensions/should-i-transfer-my-final-salary-pension

Includes a calculator.

@FlowerArranger

Potentially useful information here:

moneytothemasses.com/saving-for-your-future/pensions/should-i-transfer-my-final-salary-pension

Includes a calculator.

This is out of date, no advsier will transfer this pension. Full stop

@fromdownwest, please expand on your comment that no one would transfer it, why do u think that?

@fromdownwest, what i mean cash it in is draw it down in the next 5 years rather than 30odd which is how the transfer value Vs annual amount is working out.

If I don't transfer and was to die in the next 5 or 10 years, any remaining balance would be lost.

If it wasn't possible to transfer, then why would the schemes be even wasting their time quoting transfer values?

@WutheringHeights66
That's the thing, £68k over next 20 years or 120 (minus some fees, say 110k) in, say, next 5 or even 10.

Both are taxed after first 25% which is tax free. For me that's a no brainer.

None of us know how long we live but the older we are the less we have left.

You’re not giving any reasons that are ones which would make an advisor recommend the transfer.

Preferring to spend now rather than have the lifetime index linked benefit is not a reason that will get you a positive recommendation.

So if you proceed to seek the advice with this argument, it is highly likely you will spend c£5k to be told No.

It doesn’t matter how much you think it would be nicer, people on this thread are just trying to tell you that that is not going to make an advisor give you the positive recommendation you need.

state pension (which is about £778 a month).

The full basic State Pension is £137.60 per week.

[quote YogaLite]@fromdownwest, please expand on your comment that no one would transfer it, why do u think that?[/quote]

1. The pot value
2. Insufficient reasons to transfer
3. Lack of other assets
4. Stating you’ll spend it all in 5 years, no adviser will recommend on that timeframe

It isnt happening sorry

@fromdownwest, we both have ISAs, state pensions and pensions resulting from more recent employment. The pension I want to move is an old deferred pension from 20+ years ago.

At some point the house will be sold and then we will move into a retirement home cost of which will be topped by proceeds from the house sale.

You still show a total lack of understanding about the different pension types if you cannot understand why reputable advisers would not want to take on the work or your liabilities.

You say you want to "cash it in" - by which you presumably mean take more than 25% of it out early etc with the justification that you might not live long enough to use up "your" pot of cash. But that isn't how DB schemes work - the reason they're so good is that individuals don't carry the investment risk, you pay in and it's the scheme which ensures it can pay pensions to the agreed levels despite what the market returns. Unlike a DC scheme where you shoulder the risk. Layer on the index linking to keep up with the cost of living and payment to loved ones after you die, again, most people gain hugely from these advantages which you simply don't get with wla defined contribution scheme.

What you're saying is you'll exchange the zero risk, index linked advantage of a DB scheme to spend it all early (when you're still of working age) and assume all of the investment risk yourself while steadily depleting your non- working age income.

Madness in anything other than exceptional circumstances and absolutely not what the government or a responsible IFA would want to see happen.

@Yourdly, I am no longer of the working age..does that matter?

Why not use your isa and other pensions to ‘live your life’ for the next 5 years as you desire,
If you want to leave a legacy for your son, use the guaranteed income to purchase a whole of life policy.

It isn’t happening sorry.