Our services
Profile Pensions will provide advice on how to invest your pensions. We will give you an impartial recommendation choosing funds from over 40,000 available in the market. We offer focussed independent investment advice.
We offer an Ongoing Investment Advice service with an optional extra service where we will Find, Check & Transfer your pension.
Process
If you decide to go ahead, we will:
Gather and analyse personal information about you, your aims and objectives;
Recommend where you should invest your pension;
Take your instruction to set up a regular contribution, make a lump sum payment or transfer your pension on a non-advised basis to our chosen platform provider; (If you choose to transfer a pension with our additional Find, Check & Transfer Service, we can track down any lost pensions if you ask us to and we will check to ensure that there are no exit penalties or guarantees over £50*. If there are we will tell you);
With your agreement, invest the pension in line with our recommendation, and;
Provide you with an Ongoing Investment Advice Service.
You should be aware that investment funds held within pensions carry varying degrees of risk and as their underlying value can fall as well as rise, you may not get back the full amount invested.
For pensions transferred using our Investment Advice Service, which is a transfer only service, we will not check for any penalties or guarantees, and it is your responsibility to ensure that you fully understand any guarantees or benefits that may be lost upon transfer or any penalties that may be paid. Further information on this can be found in our Things to consider when transferring and consolidating your existing pensions document.
Charges
In this section, we set out the charges you’ll pay if you decide to switch your pension(s) and accept our investment advice.
Ongoing Investment Advice Service
We’ll contact you on a regular basis as part of our ongoing service. We monitor funds for quality and suitability and we’re here to answer any queries and help with any issues with pension providers, assistance on accessing tax-free cash from age 55 (rising to 57 from 2028) and if needed, changes to pension regulations, at retirement support and much more.
For providing this service, the ongoing fee will be 0.6% of the value of your pension. The charge will be deducted each month using 1/12th of 0.6% of the value of your pension.
For example, if your total pension value is £50,000 our yearly fees would be £300. The amount you pay will fluctuate with the value of your pension.
Should you choose to receive the ongoing service, but then decide that you no longer want this service, you can cancel it at any time by contacting us by phone or email. By doing so you’ll stop any future payments for our ongoing service.
Profile Pensions reserves the right to change its ongoing charge. Before we do though we’ll write to you to let you know.
Product and platform charges
All product providers apply annual charges, and these are usually calculated as a percentage of the value of your pension. There is a fee for the platform, powered by Aegon, of 0.12% per annum of the value of the pension held on their platform. The Platform Fee is charged on balances up to £250,000. You will pay no further platform charges if your pension exceeds this value. The charge will be deducted each month using 1/12th of 0.12% of the value of your investment.
For example, if your total pension value is £50,000 the annual platform charge would be £60. The amount you pay will fluctuate with the value of your pension and investments.
Investment and fund charges
The amount of the charge depends on which fund(s) have been recommended to you, and the charges are usually calculated daily as a percentage of your investments. They’re taken directly from your investments which means they’ve already been taken into account when you view the performance of your investments.
Charges summary
To help you to understand the total charges that may be applied, the following tables set out all of the standard charges for our Ongoing Investment Advice Service, for a typical customer holding a pension with a value of £10,000 or contributing £100 per month (£1,200 per annum) into their pension plan.
Ongoing Investment Advice Service
| Charge | Fee payable % | Fee payable GBP |
|---|---|---|
| Ongoing adviser charge (£10,000 policy) |
0.6% | £60.00 |
| Platform fee | 0.12% | £12.00 |
| Typical fund charge | 0.11% | £11.00 |
| Total | 0.83% | £83.00 |
| Charge | Fee payable % | Monthly fee payable GBP | Annual fee payable GBP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ongoing adviser charge (£100 p.m./£1,200 p.a.) |
0.6% | £0.60 | £7.20 |
| Platform fee | 0.12% | £0.12 | £1.44 |
| Typical fund charge | 0.11% | £0.11 | £1.32 |
| Total | 0.83% | £0.83 | £9.96 |
The product and fund charges used in this table are an example of those that we’d recommend. These may differ depending on our recommendation. The monetary amounts in the tables assume no growth, so the same net pension value throughout.
If you take our ongoing service, we’ll contact you regularly to update you on the performance of your pension and whether it remains suitable for your needs.
Pension Transfers
With our Ongoing Investment Advice Service, we will not find pensions or check details of the policy(ies) for penalties or guarantees. This is a transfer only service and if you feel that this may not be the right option for you, you should consider our additional Find, Check and Transfer Service.
For further details please also refer to our Things to consider when transferring and consolidating your existing pensions document.
Find, Check & Transfer Service
If you would like us to track down any lost pensions and check to ensure that there are no exit penalties or guarantees over £50* we offer an additional Find, Check & Transfer Service. For this additional service we charge a one-off arrangement fee of 1% of the value of any pension you choose to transfer. This arrangement fee will be deducted directly from your pension. No arrangement fees will be charged for any additional lump sums and/or regular contributions and there is no arrangement fee payable when you transfer a pension under our standard Ongoing Investment Advice Service.
In the event that you do not instruct us to transfer your pension and do not accept our investment recommendation, you won’t be charged.
Example:
| Pension Transfer Value | Arrangement Fee (&percnt); | Arrangement Fee (GBP) |
|---|---|---|
| £5,000 | 1% | £50.00 |
| £10,000 | 1% | £100.00 |
| £25,000 | 1% | £250.00 |
| £50,000 | 1% | £500.00 |
Year 1
| Charge | Fee payable % | Fee payable GBP |
|---|---|---|
| Arrangement fee (£10,000 policy) |
1.00% | £100.00 |
| Ongoing adviser charge | 0.6% | £60.00 |
| Platform fee | 0.12% | £12.00 |
| Typical fund charge | 0.11% | £11.00 |
| Total | 1.83% | £183.00 |
| Charge | Fee payable % | Fee payable GBP |
|---|---|---|
| Arrangement fee (£10,000 policy) |
n/a | n/a |
| Ongoing adviser charge | 0.6% | £60.00 |
| Platform fee | 0.12% | £12.00 |
| Typical fund charge | 0.11% | £11.00 |
| Total | 0.83% | £83.00 |
Before we submit the instruction to transfer your pension we will check if your old pension(s) have any exit fees or guarantees exceeding £50. If they do, we will contact you to explain them. If not we will proceed with the transfer. We cannot guarantee to find all exit fees and guarantees, and we do not check certain pensions we consider unlikely to carry such features.
Your aims and objectives
We’ll be treating you as a “retail customer”. This means that you’re afforded the highest level of protection under the regulatory system and should have the right to take any complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Any advice or recommendation will only be given after we’ve considered your needs, financial objectives and attitude to risk.
We’ll confirm to you in writing the basis of our investment recommendations along with details of any risks associated.
Full details of our services including, for example, information on your right to cancel or whether no right to cancel exists will be covered before the conclusion of any contract.
Our ethical policy
We want you to get the highest standard of pension advice and service possible. That’s why we’ve designed our systems and procedures to place you at the heart of our business. We’ll ensure we will:
Be open, honest and transparent in the way we deal with you;
Not place our interests above yours;
Communicate clearly, promptly and without jargon;
Seek your views of our service to ensure it meets your expectations or to identify any improvements required.
We’ll take into account your knowledge and experience of pensions and investments, and your attitude towards investment risk. This will allow us to:
Recommend an appropriate range of investment funds that matches your attitude to risk and, if you have our ongoing advice service, the subsequent assessment and suitability of your holdings; and
Prepare an investment recommendation for you
Policy arrangement and implementation
Should you instruct us to transfer your existing pension(s) and proceed with any of our investment recommendations we’ll act for you in the following ways:
Process the instruction to transfer your existing pension(s);
Process your instruction to set up a regular contribution or make a lump sum contribution;
Handle all fund and policy administration on your behalf;
Ensure all your documents are issued in line with your expectations; and
Provide confirmation of all actions taken on your behalf in writing
VAT
Under current legislation our services aren’t subject to VAT but should this change in the future, we’ll let you know before doing any further work.
Customer money
Profile Pensions aren’t permitted to handle customers’ money and we can’t accept a cheque made out to us (unless it’s in respect of an item for which we’ve sent you an invoice) or handle cash.
Documentation
All policy documents will be forwarded to you as soon as practicable after we receive them. If there are a number of documents relating to a series of transactions, we may hold each document until the series is complete and then forward them to you.
We will primarily use email and our online account to communicate with you and send you important documentation. If you would prefer us to use a different method of communication please let us know.
Material interest
We’ll act honestly, fairly and professionally known as conducting business in customer’s ‘best interest’ regulations. Occasionally situations may arise where we or one of our other customers have some form of interest in business transacted for you. If this happens or we become aware that our interests or those of one of our other customers conflict with your interest, we’ll write to you and obtain your consent before we carry out your instructions and detail the steps we’ll take to ensure fair treatment.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with any part of the service you receive you have the right to complain. This can be done in writing to: The Compliance Manager, Profile Pensions, Norwest Court, Guildhall Street, Preston, PR1 3NU, or by calling us on 01772 804 404. We will outline how we will manage your complaint by providing you with our complaints procedures. We aim to deal with your complaint as quickly as possible, but will do so within eight weeks. If you’re unhappy with our response you can refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk
Compensation scheme
We’re covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) if we cannot meet our obligations. This service is free to use and is typically used as a last resort against authorised financial services companies.
The protection available under FSCS for claims related to misleading advice, poor investment management or misrepresentation is 100% of the value of the claim with an upper limit of £85,000 per person.
Data protection
The information you have provided is protected under Data Protection Act 2018. You may be assured that we and any company associated with us will treat all personal data and sensitive personal data as confidential and will not process it other than for a legitimate purpose. Steps will be taken to ensure that the information is accurate, kept up to date and not kept for longer than is necessary. Measures will also be taken to safeguard against unauthorised or unlawful processing and accidental loss or destruction or damage to the data. Subject to certain exceptions, you’re entitled to have access to your personal and sensitive personal data held by us.
Protecting your personal information
Your personal information is important to us. We’ll endeavour to take all due care to protect this information. For more information and to understand how we use your personal information please refer to our Privacy Policy available at: www.profilepensions.co.uk/privacy-policy
Call recording
We may record our calls. This is to ensure we’re meeting regulatory standards and also so we can improve our own customer service levels.
Other benefits we may receive
We may receive certain non-monetary benefits from pension providers, which are used to enhance the quality of service we provide to you. Other benefits we may receive include access to technical services, information technology support or the supply of product literature. Further information regarding any of these arrangements is available on request.
Anti-money laundering
We’re obliged to put in place controls to prevent our business from being used for money laundering and other forms of financial crime. We’ll verify your identity before undertaking any business with you. To do this we may use electronic identity verification systems and we may conduct these checks from time to time throughout our relationship, not just at the beginning. The check may leave a ‘footprint’ on your credit file but it will not affect your credit rating.
* Although, we will endeavour to identify any exit fees or guarantees worth more than £50 with our find, Check & Transfer Service we cannot guarantee to find all exit fees and guarantees, and we do not check certain policies considered very low risk. Please see the ‘Summary of our services and what we check for’ table in the Things to consider when transferring and consolidating your existing pensions document to see what’s included in the checks.
Capital at risk. Profile Financial Solutions Ltd. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority No: 596398 Profile Pensions, Norwest Court, Guildhall Street, Preston, PR1 3NU 01772 804 404 | [email protected] | www.profilepensions.co.uk