Pensions and IFAs - who needs one?

[IR35 Avoider]

No, you cannot, certainly with Scottish Widows, which I mentioned in my first post.
Can you really hold stuff like Blackrock Absolute Alpha, ML Gold and General, Allianz BRIC Stars, energy funds, commodity ETFs etc. in your stakeholder pension?
These are not disguised index tracker funds, or worse, like most of the crummy funds available in stakeholder pensions. SW don't even have a general emerging markets fund available in their stakeholder range.
I don't have a problem in paying a tiny management fee for superior performance.
I agree actively managed funds don't always beat trackers, but if you research and choose carefully you can beat them by quite some margin with a specialist fund, especially with market conditions like they are now.

Dude69, I will be mainly investing in OEICs and the odd ETF, not going to be trading very frequently, and unlikely to be doing much with individual stocks.
Nice to have the choice to though.

I agree that you cannot get the type of funds you are interested in a stakeholder pension. What I tried to say (perhaps not clearly enough) is that the type of funds that charge 0.5% or less are, in my opinion, the only ones worth investing in, and you mostly can get those in a stakeholder. As far as I'm concerned a pension only has to offer about four different funds to give access to everything I need. But clearly I'm coming at things from a different angle to you.

if you research and choose carefully you can beat them by quite some margin with a specialist fund

An extremely controversial statement that contradicts economic theory as well as the advice of every investment book I've ever read. (Having said that, I diverge from orthodoxy by believing in valuation-based timing, so each to his own religion.)

I don't have a problem in paying a tiny management fee for superior performance.

It's impossible to know, even with hindsight, if you've had superior performance due to expertise. (No, the actual returns achieved don't prove anything.) I just mention this to put into context the challenge you're setting for yourself, if you want to locate superior performance before it happens.

[moorfield]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai...5/cmpen125.xml

[Fred Bloggs]

Mostly negative sentiment here about HL. I'll counter that by saying I'm very happy with HL. All 4 family members of our household have SIPPs and ISA's with them. We hold only UT's and OEIC's though. Their admin and customer service is very, very good and just about everything you need to do to run your accounts is at their website. Pension transfers into HL have been completely painless and as quick as possible. The only slight complaint I have is that we get all mail outs from them 4 times over.

[Hex]

I'm not usually a fan of HL (Hargreaves Lansdown) as they obviously make a lot of money on commissions for very little effort.

But I believe that their SIPP offering is probably the cheapest option if you want to invest in OEICs. I'm not recommending that you invest in OEICs and I'm not suggesting OEIC charges are reasonable as all of these judgements are subjective.

I personally don't use HL, I use SIPPDeal and I don't buy OEICs. But if you want to buy OEICs in the main then I think HL may work out cheaper for you than SIPPDeal. Please DYOR before deciding.

[GreenerGrass]

You can get access to equivalent funds more cheaply via a stakeholder pension.

No, you cannot, certainly with Scottish Widows, which I mentioned in my first post.
Can you really hold stuff like Blackrock Absolute Alpha, ML Gold and General, Allianz BRIC Stars, energy funds, commodity ETFs etc. in your stakeholder pension?
These are not disguised index tracker funds, or worse, like most of the crummy funds available in stakeholder pensions. SW don't even have a general emerging markets fund available in their stakeholder range.
I don't have a problem in paying a tiny management fee for superior performance.
I agree actively managed funds don't always beat trackers, but if you research and choose carefully you can beat them by quite some margin with a specialist fund, especially with market conditions like they are now.

Dude69, I will be mainly investing in OEICs and the odd ETF, not going to be trading very frequently, and unlikely to be doing much with individual stocks.
Nice to have the choice to though.

[IR35 Avoider]

So sippdeal is potentially £235/year cheaper.

This is true for stocks and shares. If you're buying OEICs and the like HL work out cheaper as SIPPDeal charge you for OEIC purchase whereas HL don't. And HL don't charge their annual charge if the OEIC pays trail commission which most of them do now I think.

So, to sum up, HL are only cheaper if you invest in expensive things, i.e. funds that pay commission.

Any fund that charges more than 0% initial and 0.5% annual counts as expensive and is to be avoided, as far as I'm concerned. That rules out almost all activly managed OEICS or UTs. You can get access to equivalent funds more cheaply via a stakeholder pension.

[dude69]

So sippdeal is potentially £235/year cheaper.

This is true for stocks and shares. If you're buying OEICs and the like HL work out cheaper as SIPPDeal charge you for OEIC purchase whereas HL don't. And HL don't charge their annual charge if the OEIC pays trail commission which most of them do now I think.

The OP was talking about ETFs. Hence my comparison.

I don't think HL's OEIC charges are particularly reasonable.

They receive 0.5% per year commission, which they keep. They also I think get platform commission.

Not sure if there's anything cheaper though.

[Hex]

So sippdeal is potentially £235/year cheaper.

This is true for stocks and shares. If you're buying OEICs and the like HL work out cheaper as SIPPDeal charge you for OEIC purchase whereas HL don't. And HL don't charge their annual charge if the OEIC pays trail commission which most of them do now I think.

[dude69]

hrm, IFAs are mostly not especially competent, otherwise they would not be IFAs but something more lucrative. They are also mostly out to line their pockets with bonds that pay up to 7% commission.

HL's charges for its SIPP are perhaps not the lowest.

0.5875% charge per annum, up to £235/annum - that's £40k.

They also charge per trade by value:

£0-£499 £9.95
£500-£1,999 £14.95
£2,000-£3,999 £19.95
£4,000-£19,999 £24.95
£20,000+ £29.95

Compared with sippdeal:

NO ANNUAL CHARGE

Deal Size Less than £500 £9.95
£500 - £2,000 £14.95
More than £2,000 0.75% (max £30)

So sippdeal is potentially £235/year cheaper.

[BrilloPad]

Easier way to deal with the issue of what to do with money is to get divorced.

[GreenerGrass]

In order to transfer an old permie pension I had to open a stakeholder.
The choice of funds is woeful but the process to move to a personal pension with the same provider seemed so tedious - their own advisor said they had to meet and spend time filling out forms just to tell me I'd be better off leaving it in the stakeholder due to fees. This ignores the poor returns offered by the limited funds on offer (how can some of their global equity funds barely beat cash in a bull market year like 2006 for example?)
Not only that, but not a single fund other than their cash one would hold up well in a inflationary bear market (no commodity-rich, emerging market, or absolute return funds).

A few minutes googling of SIPPs and Hargreaves Lansdown and their Vantage SIPP seems a no brainer. No need to speak to any IFAs with a hidden agenda.
The annual management fees seem no more than a stakeholder. What a joke the pensions industry is.
Now I can lose all my money trading commodity ETFs.

(anyone else read Hot Commodities by Jim Rogers?)