stopping pension and moving elsewhere question, 2 into 1?

Had a private personal pension since 1993 and another work one since 2005 with employer paying in, the former was with my bank but taken over by Aviva as is the latter one so both with same company. I’m leaving my job soon to do other stuff so the work one will have to stop for now but I’ll carry on with the private one. Is the simplest way to transfer the fund value of the work one into the original private pot, or just leave as it is for now? It’s all a bit confusing on what’s best to do. Have asked the question at this place:
http://www.pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk/
free advice service but not heard back yet. Will also call Aviva once I’ve got other opinions.
Anyone else done similar i.e stopped/suspended one pension payments and moved funds elsewhere into anothe pot? cheers

All my old pensions get moved into my SIPP – Interactive Investor.

I consolidated a few work pensions but they were small. Maybe about £1000 each. There may be advantages to keeping the old one. Worth looking at the charges, any benefits such as life assurance or just risk mitigation through using more than one provider.

Well you can do that, however it might be better to go the other way. I’m looking at consolidating my multiple pension funds and the charges at my current employer pension are way lower than anywhere else. Just because you are leaving the company it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stop contributing to the pension fund. Obviously your old employer won’t be contributing but so what? Get detIls from both your pension providers and perhaps an IFA if you can.

Oh and there is no benefit from spreading your funds across different companies. It’s not the same as a cash deposit.

Is the work pension defined contribution or final salary? If both your pensions are defined contribution, I’d merge them into a single SIPP to make it easy to manage.

I now have three different pension funds from two old jobs and my present one. I thought about consolidating them but couldn’t really see any benefits other ease of managment. Starting a new job soon for a company that sells pensions so hoping to be enlightened and maybe get a good deal into which I can combine them all.

review each pension fund performance vs market (and make sure you understand the charges/costs of each fund)

re moving – UNDERSTAND THE CHARGES/COMMISSION

SIPP – really good IF you are comfortable making investment calls and put in annual(at a minimum) effort to review/alter calls

consolidation – eggs/basket (google on Equitable life) but you can reduce commission/mgmt rates with a bigger single pot

I am in a similar situation.

I am 60 now and have decided to retire 🙂

I have three company pensions, and have sought IFA advice as I wouldn’t be able to handle / make decisions on the fund management myself ( too much money involved).

I’ll update when I have the advice , but its the individual fund management costs that are driving me to this. Three fund management costs vs one.

Wasn’t the equitable life only an issue for annuity holders (I.e. People receiving payment from them) rather than investors?

The work one is a defined contribution and will stop in April. Just thinking of whether it’s better to have all in one basket after that but need to look into charges/fees etc if I did. New work involves some self-employed stuff and part-time work elsewhere so although I can maintain a personal payment into a pot I don’t know when/if i will enter into an employee scheme again. Got a fair few years working before retirement in theory.

I had an Equitable Life pension fund – it was part of a final salary pension AVC fund. The final salary pension was from my employer who I worked for 25 years. Equitable Life was their recommended AVC provider.

Fortunately I didn’t have too much money in the AVC, it didn’t perform very well though.

Update, having spoken to others now and pension company, general consensus is do nothing for now; work one will stop anyway, can just leave it and perhaps one day add to it again if I join another company somewhere else, personal one can just carry on and decide how much to pay in whenever I want. Simplest and probably most obvious solution for now I guess.