Why did you move your pension?

You may have at some stage in the past, between 2006 and now, transferred your UK pension to either a qualified recognised overseas pension scheme, QROPS or an international Self-Invested Pension Plan, SIPP.

If you have, then this article is for you.

Question: Why did you move your pension in the first place?

You may have wished for better returns, it may have been to protect it more, or it may have been because you wished to have more control over the investments or the currency it was investing in

Perhaps it was explained to you that if you moved your pension from the type of pension it was previously housed in, then your loved ones would have been able to inherit the assets, should anything untoward happen.

All of these reasons and more are solid financial reasons for what is often a rather large financial decision.

At forensic finance, a huge part of the community we serve has already transferred their UK pensions, and look to us for assistance, due to a multitude of factors;

They’ve lost touch with the IFA who originally organised the transfer, or they have just not received the service they thought they were going to get.

In some cases, the pension simply hasn’t performed and they would like to gain an independent professional opinion as to why.

Analysing portfolios, exposing fees and laying out alternatives is a complicated business, one that we pride ourselves on, and when the portfolio happens to be in a sip or QROPS then that complexity is multiplied by several magnitudes.

You see, one of the most common misconceptions people have, regarding their previously transferred UK pension, is that when the pension has been transferred, then it’s completely free of the UK and Uk oversight, however, this is simply not the case, the trustees who administer the transferred pension, are regulated to some degree by the UK and there are very specific things, they can and can’t allow their members, that’s the holders of the pension, I.E you, to do.

Also, trustees are businesses like any other, and they sometimes don’t give a premium service, simply stop serving altogether, or perhaps have expensive fees. All of these elements are taken into account when we examine transferred pensions for people.

Let us help

If you have a pension you’ve previously transferred from a UK scheme, into either a QROPS or a SIPP, then let us shine a light on it, so you can gain some clarity about your possible next steps and multiple areas of improvement.