Having recently retired I'm looking to consolidate a couple of pensions into one pot. Anyone have experience (good or bad) with the on-line platforms like pension bee, nutmeg ect, or any other providers? I'd like to keep an IFA out of the mix and concentrate on fees, returns and service level. Much appreciated.
I used PensionBee to do exactly as you say. I had some 6 or 7 plans, some sizeable, others with just squitters of what could have been ‘dead’ money when faced with the fag and admin charges of trying to draw anything from them. Converting them all into one pot was, in my experience, super painless, straightforward and very reasonable, with very helpful advice at every step. You’re assigned a personal ‘Bee Keeper’ who is available for any help with any stage of the process. The advice I received was always provided unstintingly and in layman’s terms, when I required it to be so. I have had no complaints about any aspect of my dealings with them. At the time I waded in, a couple of years ago, fees and returns were the best/most competitive I could find. I have seen though, that since PBee made a splash with their service, a range of pension providers now offer a similar service where they will amalgamate any of your alien plans into a single pot. It may therefore be worth seeing whether an independent Martin Lewis/Which? type of comparison has been done to help you with what has, no doubt, become a far more congested panorama. Good luck.
I put mine into Interactive Investor after I realised how much I was paying in fees to Standard Life. Fixed fee and you pick everything yourself. I used a low cost global tracker for the majority of the pot as it’s the fees that really eat into your final balance. Lots of sensible advice online and I’m buggered if I’m going to pay an IFA a fat fee to tell me the same things.
Once you take a proper look at those fees you can see who the fund is working for right now. Especially if you extrapolate them out over the potential whole life of the fund.
