Personal pension survey: All about you

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      CPD
      Approx.60min
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      CPD
      Approx.60min
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      pfs-logo
      cisi-logo
      CPD
      Approx.60min

      Personal pensions are not in vogue. Usurped by the sexier Sipp and plagued by with-profits doom mongering, their drop in popularity has pushed them almost to the point of extinction in terms of new clients.

      But millions of pounds still sit in personal pensions, policyholders waiting with baited breath to see if their years of saving have proved worthwhile. Perhaps in 50 years’ time, when everybody has been coerced into an occupational scheme by auto-enrolment, there won’t be so many people needing a personal pension. For now, however, those who purchased a scheme many years ago will be interested to see the legacy of their squirrelling away. Will your clients be facing a fruitful retirement, or stretching a poor pension pot after pathetic returns?

      Missing in action

      There are many closed books in personal pensions, leaving providers with little incentive to provide performance data since they are not looking to attract new business. For these companies, the with-profits data shown is from Form 59 on their annual FSA returns.

      The majority of the companies that provided us with data last year have again this year, with two key exceptions.

      Friends Life declined to participate, initially saying that this was because it is not actively marketing personal pension products. When asked for an official statement, Friends Life said it was not participating as it was not given enough time to complete the survey – however, it was sent out a month in advance to all providers and an extension offered to those needing extra time. While the data for the with-profits section of the survey has been taken from the company’s FSA return, we have no data for the unit-linked results for Friends Life.

      Another company making a big hole with its absence is Skandia. As one of the largest in terms of fund choice, 63 funds are missing from the unit-linked results due to it not providing data. Skandia declined to participate due to a lack of resource, saying it could not pull anybody away from other work supporting advisers to complete the survey.

      Many advisers use the personal pensions survey to compare performance and assist their clients, so it is a shame that Skandia was unable to find the resource to assist advisers this way. We hope to see both Friends Life and Skandia back in the surveys next year.

      With (or without) profits

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