You donāt need to do anything right now. Itās fine to keep your workplace pensions separate when you switch jobs.
Consolidating can simplify things though and give you more control and visibility on performance and fees. Find a platform you like (e.g. Pensionbee, Fidelity, HL, AJ Bell, Freetrade soon etc.) based on fees and what funds/shares/ETFs you want in your pension and the element of control you want. Then you just give that new platform the details of your old pensions - name, account number if you know it, name of the employer - and they handle the rest. Then a few weeks later youāll have a pot of money to invest in your chosen option.
Your current employer may be willing to pay their contributions directly into your SIPP. More likely though theyāll only pay into their normal workplace pension that all staff are enrolled in. Itās easier that way.
So most of the time youāll have two pensions - a SIPP and a workplace pension with your current employer. Each time you leave a job you can consolidate the workplace one into the SIPP. My workplace pension is with Peopleās Pension who allow one transfer a year to a SIPP so I can invest that money more flexibly. But that still means I have two pension pots as my boss only pays into that one.
An important thing to keep in mind when doing this are the fees attached. Your old workplace pensions may have big exit fees. These are under review by the FCA, but for now you need to be aware. Some platforms will offer to pay them for you if you switch to them.
Finally, if youāve ever had a Defined Benefit pension (not many of these are left but if youāve ever had a public sector job or worked in a formerly nationalised business you might have one) you should be careful about transferring money from that - you may end up worse off.
@101 the simplest way would be to transfer all of your existing ones to one new pension, probably a SIPP in your name. Employer matches usually only work with workplace pensions - ie the one managed by you/your gfās employer. (Obviously maximise the employer match because itās free money for futureyou, but todayyou knew that already.)
But.
Your old pensions (whether theyāre defined benefit or not) may have āspecial featuresā, which might be bad like chunky exit costs or good like guarantee future annuity rates. So you need to find out about those before you decide whether to transfer or not - as @kenny and @john said it might be worth staying put to avoid losing certain benefits. Annoyingly, special features are not always detailed in your pension statement, so you have to ask your provider.
You could have a pension review with an IFA (if you have a defined benefit pension of over X - I forget how much, sorry - youāll have to do this before transferring). The last IFA quote I got to do this was Ā£900.
But I didnāt want to pay the Ā£900 so instead I asked my existing pension provider these questions:
Can I transfer my pension out of YourPensionCo? (There can be restrictions on which pensions you can transfer.)
What is the ātransfer valueā of my pension? (If itās the same as your pot value, itās unlikely youāll be charged a fee when you transfer.)
Are there any disadvantages for me if I transfer?
What fees would I have to pay if I transfer?
Will I lose any āspecial featuresā?, eg guaranteed annuity rate, protected tax-free cash, protected low pension age guarantees, waiver of contribution, life assurance benefits, accidental death benefit in addition to death payment, any self-investment option, etc.
Will I lose any rights related to protected tax-free lump sums?
The answers will help you work out whether transferring is a good idea or not. If it is, a co like PensionBee can help make it happen, but the forms are very doable for an ex-pensions advisor
I wonder what the pricing for SIPP going to be! I wonder if that has been considered yet, kind of like ISA pricing which has been pre announced before charging it.
I didnāt see an answer to the transfer question. Applies to me too. Last roadmap was August with 3 - 6 month timeframe. Wonder if thatās still the plan?
HL for a comparison are 0.45%. So if you take Ā£375 and divide it by 0.45 youād need a pension of Ā£83,333 to just break even. Given the legal protection is what 85k - they are being very clever as people open various pots with different organizationsā¦
Only if you have just a SIPP in vanguard. The fee is cheaper if you have more than one product as your now spreading it across them.
(HL have various fees up to Ā£2 million)
As for the FSCS protection, are people really splitting up their pensions into individual 85k pots everywhere? I donāt think they areā¦ so I donāt think this is a consideration at all.
That seems like it would get expensive, and complicated to manage to ensure your not over 85k per institution. I wonder if youād run out of platforms eventually?
Not to mention you would also be limited in what funds you can invest in to keep them covered under FSCS protection. (Most ETFs are out of the question for example)
So while it may be something you do, I still donāt think it was a consideration at all for vanguard.
Protection limits depend on when a firm fails. It went from 50k to 85k earlier this year for investments, but obv doesnāt cover investment performance.