Giant Group Pension from 2004 ish - new IFA 'managing pension' - feedback?

**DimPrawn** · 25 March 2017, 09:46

Do not cash in you public sector pension.

The guy sounds like a salesman.

**tomtomagain** · 25 March 2017, 10:01

Originally posted by Sean Key View Post

A financial adviser, claiming to be managing this legacy pot for Giant has been contacting me to move it to a SIPP they manage, to get better returns. SW fee 5% ish new fee around 1.7%

He seems quite pleasant. Tried googling the firm but could find no online reviews.

He's claiming up to 12% returns and suggesting I cash in my public sector pensions as well and transfer to the SIPPs he recommends as 'the transfer value of these has gone up massively over the past few years'.
*My approach to transferring my defined benefit pension is wary open-mindedness*

Has anyone else been through this already and what did you think?

Couple of things spring to mind.

First off. Someone contacts you asking you to move your money to them. I think scam at worst or dubious commission based salesman at best. He's not doing it to make you richer but to make himself richer.

Second you mention a "SIPP That they manage". Well a SIPP is a Self-Invested-Pension-Plan. The whole point of SIPPS is that YOU manage it.

Next claiming 12% returns. Well there's no way he can substantiate that without cherry-picking data and/or investing in extremely high risk assets. You might not have noticed but interest rates have been at zero for nearly a decade and the stockmarkets are already at all-time highs.

If you have a Defined Benefit scheme you can transfer it into another pension. Because we are in a low-interest rate world the transfer value, which is a standard calculation, is currently at 30 - 40 times your pension worth. So if you have a pension worth 10k a year, you could get a transfer value of between 300-400k.

Friend of mine got 275k for his 8k pension at the start of the year. So depending on your situation it can be worth doing.

However I would strongly recommend talking to a different financial advisor if this is the route you want to take.

**DimPrawn** · 25 March 2017, 10:04

Originally posted by tomtomagain View Post

However I would strongly recommend talking to a different financial advisor if this is the route you want to take.

^ If you only take one piece of advice from here, take this one.

**SueEllen** · 25 March 2017, 11:14

General rule of thumb - DO NOT cash a public sector pension in.

I had friends' working to put people back into pensions years ago due to pension mis-selling scandals, and one of the things they noted was that healthy people never get a better deal than a public sector pension.

Oh and I've worked with pensions quite recently in both the public and private sectors. One thing we noted is that people are being phoned up and conned out of their pensions.

Unfortunately the only thing that can be done is what posters have already advised here - that is don't respond to cold calls and do your own research.

**Waldorf** · 25 March 2017, 11:28

Originally posted by DimPrawn View Post

Do not cash in you public sector pension.

The guy sounds like a salesman.

Agreed but where does he say that it's a public sector pension. It sounds like a pension pot from when he was with the Giant umbrella company.

**DimPrawn** · 25 March 2017, 11:43

Originally posted by Waldorf View Post

Agreed but where does he say that it's a public sector pension. It sounds like a pension pot from when he was with the Giant umbrella company.

He's claiming up to 12% returns and suggesting I cash in my public sector pensions as well

Right there.

Giant Group Pension from 2004 ish - new IFA 'managing pension' - feedback?