Does anyone know of a low cost fixed fee financial advisor for a pension transfer ?

That is from frozen Defined Benefit (DB) scheme to a SIPP. A colleague of mine is having problems finding one. Considering the same principles apply for most customers, charging 3% of the fund to provide variations on generic advice seems like another financial services racket.

I had experience of doing a similar transfer a couple of years ago.
My former employer offered an attractive transfer value.

Apparently the law requires that we get financial advice & since I have almost zero trust in financial advisors, I happily signed up for the free advisor paid for by my ex-employer.
The conflict of interest was irrelevant since I was going to make the decision based on my own analysis.

They nominated LEBC to do the advice. Anyway, after months of messing around, I threatened them with legal action if they did not provide the advice in time to meet my ex employers deadline. They submitted advice, recommending some dire fund, in a padded out 60 page document. Even though I specified the intention was to move the money to an existing SIPP.

I also regarded their advice as incomplete, since the analysis should do is compare risks & opportunities of:
Leaving the money in the DB scheme v Moving it to my SIPP.

They completely ignored any risk on the DB pension. For example annual inflation indexing capped at 2.5% means a loss of benefits if we have a 1970s style inflation episode during my lifetime. So their 60 page document only did half a job, looking at one side of the equation.   What kind of advice is that ?

I then signed disclaimer forms to state I had read their advice & was permitted to move the money to my SIPP. Life would be much simpler if we were allowed to sign such a form in the first place.

Incidentally, based on a 4% withdrawal rate & investing in a FTSE tracker, my pension would be 50% higher had I moved the money when leaving the DB scheme in the 1990s. And my SIPP has been outperforming the FTSE by some margin.

Edit: SIPP provider is AJ Bell.   They accepted my transfer,…

Unlock the rest of this article with a 14 day trial

Already have an account?
Login here