Financial Advisor setting up pension

[Sausage Surprise]

In my experience don't use a financial advisor. I had a mate who did all of my remortgaging, life insurance etc for years and he picked up his little earner from the companies concerned for each piece of work. Then.....I asked about a pension...

He set one up for me no problem but failed to mention that he would plunder £3500 from my first years contributions as his "fee" - TWAT! It was only when I got my first year statement that I realised what he had done. When I asked him about it he reckoned it was common practice and had actually done me a favour as he could have taken a percentage for the life of the whole fecking pension..... robbing bastard.

Always wondered where he got the cash from for that foreign holiday he had that year.

Just do the research yourself mate.

[IR35 Avoider]

Do it yourself. I recommend Sippdeal for shares or suggest Alliance Trust Savings for funds. (Haven't used the latter, but believe they are the cheapest. They are the only provider that rebates all initial and trail commission that funds usually pay to intermediaries.)

If you really want to use an insurance company (their admin is usually a lot worse, fund range more limited, and usually they cost more) then in the distant past I've found that Legal & General can be cheap, if you open a stakeholder using someone like "Cavendish Online" as your "IFA." In fact they do nothing but forward the forms (for a tiny administrative fee) but because they don't claim any commission you have much lower charges than if you went direct or via a real IFA. (If you go direct the insurance company charges its standard fee out of which they would normally pay advisors, but keeps the money itself.) All this info. may be obsolete soon (if it isn't already) as I think paying commission is going to banned in the near future.

[kellycell]

Hello all,

I have a Financial Advisor that a friend is using who set up his pension for him.
He also provided me with a pension recommendation, I understand he gets a small fee from that, do other people use FAs to set their pensions up or do you go ahead by yourselves?