Reply to: umbrellas and private pension providers

[russt]

Several messages on here tell of difficulties paying into SIPPs via Salary Sacrifice with Umbrella Companies.... when I had my own company I just sent up a direct debit and all done for next 5 years :-)

My last Umbrella company sent me a cheque, I completed the form signed and sent them off . It was a pain . Problem was iWeb although cheap need to join the digital world.

Although assured before signing up with Paystream I was assured they dealt with them .... they don't appear too from some message here about form filling. Oddly a lot of the SIPP providers seem to trace back to similar companies e.g. iWeb is managed by AJ Bell as are others.

Its incredibly difficult to find the information that is requested for Salary Sacrifice on the Paystream website ie:
Details
Scheme Type: (Are there different ones? I assume you just put SIPP)
HMRC Registration Number: (No idea how you find this)
Scheme Reference: (Luckily some companies tell you this for transfer purposes :-)
Scheme Administrator: (This is readily available :-)
Email: (Which one - they all seem to have several)
Payment details of the provider
Account Number:
Sort Code:
Payment Reference: (Won't know until I choose one)

If you don't complete all the fields then error messages appear telling you you haven't.

Not too bad - just get another SIPP but which of providers in list below provide the above information? Its not available when you look on their websites. For instance I cannot find HMRC Registration Number for any SIPP provider online never mind on the list. Really impractical to have to contact all of them for information which Paystream must mostly already have if they pay them.

Catch 22 with HMRC is you have to be a member to contact them and ask questions. I haven't checked Discord yet ;-) For ISA providers there is a list on HMRC site.

Why isn't the form a drop down of suppliers, you select yours and enter your unique reference and presto the boxes are completed.

Luckily Smoggy has posted here saying ii is used :-) So that gives some confidence there are some that work and more easily than form filling now.

Without the Salary Sacrifice why go umbrella? (Expensive way to claim expenses)

Cheers

PayStream will do salary sacrifice into a SIPP and work with the providers below. They do charge a small, cheeky admin fee for each deduction.

Aegon
AJ Bell
Aviva
BestInvest
Fidelity
Hargreaves Lansdown
Interactive Investor
Legal & General
Old Mutual Wealth
Prudential
Royal London
Scottish Widows
Transact
Standard Life

I switched to PayStream in May and they've been pretty good so far. Customer service, particularly by phone, is good and they resolve problems and answer queries quickly.
I was previously with Parasol, and I would not recommend them due to the way they handled their cyber security incident earlier this year.

[TheCount]

My SIPP is with Standard Life.
I had the added complication of the pension being set up by a FA so changes have to go via them, and they need to be notified of each payment.

Does sound slightly complex, but glad it is working. Having had a further dig into this, it appears that a SIPP is generally more flexible than what is sold as a 'personal' pension, where I have enquired with a few listed providers now and seems with their managed schemes, they limit the methods of transferring in which seems a little odd to me. I guess as they have workplace pensions for transferring in from a workplace, they split the two.

[fulcon]

Is anyone using any of these currently with Paystream that I can look into further? Not looking for financial advice :-) just want to filter the list to those which will work

My SIPP is with Standard Life.
I had the added complication of the pension being set up by a FA so changes have to go via them, and they need to be notified of each payment. PayStream were happy to send an e-mail each month to the FA when a contribution is made and I got the impression it was pretty routine for them. I just had to jump through the usual GDPR and consent hoops to get all parties talking. PayStream did forget to send the first e-mail, but they sorted it quickly and it's been up and running for a few months now with no further problems.

[TheCount]

I'm with paystream and looking at salary sacrifice. Paystream have generally been pretty good but finding in difficult to find a pension that fits within their rules for salary sacrifice. My current personal pension only accepts payments from my account and not third parties for example. So seems like some on their list (kindly posted previously) are not actually possible to pay into. So will need to set up a new one. Does anyone have any advice for this? The rules set out are:

To ensure you do not have to pay tax on your contributions you need to make sure that your pension provider is registered for tax relief with HRMC and that the scheme will accept gross employer contributions as well as ad-hoc payments rather than mandated payments by direct debit. Therefore we have an extensive list of pension providers that we currently work with, please see this list below:

• Aegon
• AJ Bell
• Aviva
• BestInvest
• Fidelity
• Hargreaves Lansdown
• Interactive Investor
• Legal & General
• Old Mutual Wealth
• Prudential
• Royal London
• Scottish Widows
• Transact
• Standard Life

Is anyone using any of these currently with Paystream that I can look into further? Not looking for financial advice :-) just want to filter the list to those which will work

[youngguy]

They are not 10/10, but I would still recommend them,

EDIT; I use NASA to pay into a HL SIPP

I'm on my 3rd Umbrella, which is NASA.

My first made loads of mistakes, the second even more and they are now paying for positive Google reviews (and still can't get anywhere near 5 stars) NASA have not yet made a single mistake. They get my vote, not jus take the lack of.mistakes but I felt the onboarding process and payslips etc is the clearest I have seen.

They pay into my ii SIPP. My only minor annoyance is they administer this once a month and it happens to fall just a few days after my agency payday. Then ii only pay into funds once a month...so my £ takes quite a while to actually make it to where I want it to go. But that's not a NASA thing, it's more how all umbrella's pay into SIPPs and TBH it's one of the adjustments you have to accept inside IR35.

[fulcon]

You can be a member of both and PayStream will, according to their FAQ, still enrol you in the NEST pension even if you decide to do salary sacrifice into a SIPP.

It doesn't look like they make their help documents and guides public, they're only available when you log in to the portal so it's probably worth contacting them and asking for copies of their Salary Sacrifice and Workplace Pension FAQs as they'll probably answer any questions you may have.

They'll also be able to give you personal illustrations of take home pay based on various pension percentages.

[PCTNN]

Follow up and possibly dumb question: umbrella companies are required to auto enrol you in their selected workplace pension scheme. For paystream I think it's Nest.

Can you stay enrolled in the Nest workplace pension and still make additional contributions via salary sacrifice to one of the providers supported by paystream mentioned here? Or do you have to choose one or the other?

[PCTNN]

PayStream will do salary sacrifice into a SIPP and work with the providers below. They do charge a small, cheeky admin fee for each deduction.

Aegon
AJ Bell
Aviva
BestInvest
Fidelity
Hargreaves Lansdown
Interactive Investor
Legal & General
Old Mutual Wealth
Prudential
Royal London
Scottish Widows
Transact
Standard Life

I switched to PayStream in May and they've been pretty good so far. Customer service, particularly by phone, is good and they resolve problems and answer queries quickly.
I was previously with Parasol, and I would not recommend them due to the way they handled their cyber security incident earlier this year.

Fantastic, that's what I was looking for

[northernladuk]

They are not 10/10, but I would still recommend them, they have made a couple of minor errors but have always fixed things quite quickly when I raise them, which I rate more than a service I've had no problems with so no epxectations of what might happen if something major happens

EDIT; I use NASA to pay into a HL SIPP

I'm the same. Anyone can run a company if it goes right. It is when it doesn't that the quality starts to show. A lesson that anyone saying SJD's service is OK will learn at some point.

[SimonMac]

NASA has decent reviews on here and people use them.

They are not 10/10, but I would still recommend them, they have made a couple of minor errors but have always fixed things quite quickly when I raise them, which I rate more than a service I've had no problems with so no epxectations of what might happen if something major happens

EDIT; I use NASA to pay into a HL SIPP

[eek]

PayStream will do salary sacrifice into a SIPP and work with the providers below. They do charge a small, cheeky admin fee for each deduction.

Nothing wrong in charging an additional fee for work that you don't do for all workers.

And paying into a SIPP is extra work (even if it's only sanity checking that it's been done correctly)..

[fulcon]

PayStream will do salary sacrifice into a SIPP and work with the providers below. They do charge a small, cheeky admin fee for each deduction.

Aegon
AJ Bell
Aviva
BestInvest
Fidelity
Hargreaves Lansdown
Interactive Investor
Legal & General
Old Mutual Wealth
Prudential
Royal London
Scottish Widows
Transact
Standard Life

I switched to PayStream in May and they've been pretty good so far. Customer service, particularly by phone, is good and they resolve problems and answer queries quickly.
I was previously with Parasol, and I would not recommend them due to the way they handled their cyber security incident earlier this year.

[northernladuk]

Obivously not the first post about which umbrellas do what pension stuff so try pumping umbrella and pension in to the google search and see what pops out?

I believe PC has explained what NASA's policy for a start

[PCTNN]

Again the point is that unless we know your SIPP provider (which you haven't told us)

aegon
aviva
l&g
royal london
standard life
scottish widows
vanguard

either one would work

[eek]

Thanks.

So yeah, that's my question: do any of you know if one of the 5 umbrella I have listed allow you to pay into any SIPP with any pension provider?

From parasol website: "Parasol can make employer’s contributions to any existing private pension provider." Any of those 5 umbrella offer the same? I can't see it on their websites which makes me think they don't.

I used Nasa almost 10 years ago and more recently (4 years ago) I used paystream. Both great, only paystream back then didn't allow me to pay into any SIPP with any pension provider but I HAD to pick theirs. Just wondering if the situation has changed in these last 4 years.

Again the point is that unless we know your SIPP provider (which you haven't told us) and we are lucky enough to havew someone on here who reads this thread and uses that SIPP provider via one of those umbrellas you just won't know.

So pick up the phone and ring them....

from there you will have a shorter shortlist that we can discuss the merits of..