"The best performing pension could produce more than three times more pension income than the worst performing one. The really bad news is that your pension fund is more likely to be amongst the bad than the good" The Observer
The desire to consolidate a number of smaller pension funds held with different insurance companies and/or previous employers’ schemes motivates many people to transfer to a single pension arrangement.
At The Pensions Office we are frequently asked to advise clients with, say, three or four money purchase pension arrangements of different values with one or more transfer values from previous employers’ schemes. These cases are frequently complex, especially where (as usually happens) the client states that he wants to transfer all his benefits into just one policy in the interests of consolidation.
Often, indeed, we are told that any thoughts of a ‘stay put’ recommendation for any one or more of these separate existing arrangements would be ignored; consolidation being the over-riding factor for transferring everything.
So long as the client understands the potential downsides in any transfer but the client then over-rides our recommendation (thus becoming an ‘insistent client’, to use regulatory terminology) we are happy to proceed.