The initial pension we looked into had been taken out over 18 years ago but Jo didn’t know how it was performing. This was because of the long paperwork that came in the post, like many of us she didn’t have the time to sit down and make sense of the documents sent to her. We all know this can be long and complicated to understand.
Once we had looked into Jo’s pension we found that she was paying higher fees than she had to and her pension provider wouldn’t let her access her tax-free cash flexibly at 55. Jo was paying a total annual charge of 2.16% - nearly £1000 a year. At Profile Pensions we consider this to be a very expensive annual charge. Jo didn’t know what her annual charge was before we looked into it and this is isn’t unusual, 62% of people don’t know they pay annual charges on their pension*.
“Profile Pensions moved all my pensions into one place and saved me a fortune in fees and made my pension grow dramatically in a very short space of time. It makes it easier because i know where everything is and it’s being looked after”, says Jo.
After reviewing Jo's needs and circumstances we compared her current pension to the whole of the market and we suggested that she switched to a different fund where the fees would be 70% lower and she’d have more flexibility allowing her 25% tax free cash at 55. Jo is receiving ongoing advice included in the switch which means less of the long documents to make sense of and an annual call with one of our advisers to make sure her pension is working hard for her.
Since Jo switched her pensions her fund has increased by 37% in just 3 years giving her an extra £15,000. The pension is invested in much higher performing funds and we’ve taken into account her retirement plans. Jo now knows much more about her retirement options and how important her pension is.
“I even transferred another pension a year or so later - continues Jo - to the plan they recommended, which was really easy. The initial advice fee I paid was recouped really quickly through my pension growth probably because I wasn’t being ripped off anymore by expensive fees!”
Jo has felt so much more relaxed about her pensions she has been recommending us to her friends.
