Avontyrell – rules changed from jan 2013 and commission is now banned, so it’s all transparent pricing now that you agree with your adviser what they will be paid. This is usually split between a fee for the initial advice and an OPTIONAL ongoing adviser fee (usually a small annual percentage of the fund value expect around 0.5%).
Qualifications wise – all advisers had to sit exams to get them to a minimum of Diploma in financial services (actually quite onerous for many). However next step up is Chartered Financial planners. You’ll pay more for their advice perhaps but feel free to negotiate with them. You can check a website called unbiased for local advisers around you.
Iffoverload – the trustees of the pension scheme have a legal duty to invest the funds for the benefit of the members/beneficiaries. There are different ways of looking at ethical investment – green funds tend to be higher risk due to the narrow nature of the underlying assets. However you can choose to go with funds which operate negative screening, e.g. They wouldn’t invest in arms companies for example. A good way to do this is normally to ask your adviser about multi asset funds as these are well diversified across different asset classes ( different asset classes are affected by different factors so don’t all go down or up at the same time; an asset class is things like shares, gilts, government bonds, property, etc). These types of funds often operate negative screening and will provide lots of info about what they do invest in.
