You might be asking yourself, what’s the point of combining my pensions into one? Firstly, it could cut down on your administration. If that’s not good enough for you, how does paying less in pension charges sound?
Pension charges range from insignificantly low to extremely high. If you pay fees at the wrong end of the scale, your pension funds could diminish. Therefore, read on to discover how to combine your pensions.
Who is likely to have multiple pensions?
The short answer to this question is, anyone. If you have had more than one employer during your career, you could have as many workplace pensions. That’s because, in 2012, it became mandatory for employers to auto-enrol the workers into a pension scheme. The qualifying criteria are that you must be on a salary of £10,000 or more and aged over 22.
That means for every job you’ve had, there could be a pot of money waiting for you when you retire. However, your working life is long, and you may have misplaced or forgotten about some of these pensions.
How can you track misplaced or lost pensions?
You have two options for tracking misplaced or lost pensions, and these are:
Using the pension tracing service on the gov.uk website is straightforward, but you can only access limited amounts of information. Also, you may not have time to track down your old pensions.
Therefore, you might choose to use a specialist pension tracing company. They use the same tracking service to start the search for your pensions. Before agreeing to use a pension tracing company, you should understand what you are signing up for.
How can you reduce charges by combining your pensions?
Every pension scheme has charges. Some of these fees are straightforward and transparent, while others are less so. Also, costs vary between pension plans and providers, ranging from wonderfully low to outrageously high.
Even if you are paying 1% more than you could be on another pension plan, that could have a massive impact on your retirement funds. By finding a low-fee pension and combining your existing plans into that, you can boost your funds considerably.
How do you combine your pensions?
As with tracking your lost pensions, you can combine your pensions yourself or use a regulated company. If you use a company, you will need to provide them with the required information to conduct the combination.
Another option for combining your pensions is to use a regulated financial advisor; check out Portafina. You might want to consider this option as you will get advice about your options, rather than simply combining your pensions.
Why should you use a regulated financial advisor for combining your pensions?
A specialist pension combining company will do precisely that, combine your pensions. However, that is all they will do. Combining your pensions is their priority, not reducing your charges necessarily. Therefore, you may pay the same, or even more, charges once your pensions have been combined.
If you use a regulated financial advisor, they can assess your existing plans before advising whether you should combine them or not. They may recommend you leave your pensions as they are, as combining them might mean you lose out on certain benefits or features.
Of course, there is generally a fee involved with using a regulated financial advisor. However, you should not be overly concerned about this. A recent ILC-UK report Concluded that people who consulted with a regulated financial advisor, on average, boosted their retirement funds by £30,000 or more.
Can you combine your private or workplace pensions with the State Pension?
You cannot combine your private or workplace pensions with the State Pension. That’s because the State Pension is a benefit that you receive when you reach the qualifying age. You have to have made national insurance contributions for 35 years to receive the maximum State Pension.
Conclusion
If you have multiple pensions, combining them may be a good idea. Doing so could save you thousands of pounds in pension charges. Hopefully, this brief article will inform you whether it is a good idea for you to combine your pensions or not.