What happens in a Pension Review?
A pension review starts with an initial meeting where we would get to know you and understand more about your circumstances, what pensions you have and get you to think about what your ideal retirement looks like and the income you think you may need.
Getting to know you and your finances
It's quite common not to be sure of your exact financial circumstances. We use a budget planner to find out what you are spending now and what you think your spending habits might be like throughout retirement.
We will also discuss the costs for us to complete a pension review and look at your risk appetite to see what level of risk you’d feel comfortable with. Given the fact that pensions are investments and the nature of investing does mean there's is likely to be fluctuation.
Moving forward to contact your pension provider
Once you’re happy for us to proceed, we would then get your permission to contact your pension provider. We would collate detailed information from your pension provider and once we had everything back from them, we would be in a position to analyse your pension in detail. We could look at the benefits within your pension and what charges you are paying.
Analysing your pensions
We would complete an analysis of what you’re invested in, to see how it’s performing and whether it suits your risk profile. One we’ve established your ideal income, we can investigate whether we are likely to achieve this with what you have invested. If not, we can look at what we need to do in order to ensure we improve the performance of your pension.
A Pension review can feel daunting
The Pension Review process can feel daunting, but we will do our upmost to explain everything in a clear and straight forward manner to make it easy for you to follow and understand.
What is the cost of a Pension Review?
Our initial consultation is completely free of charge, but for the research work needed for your pension plan there is a fee which will be agreed beforehand. the cost will depend on how many pension plans you have.
If you decide to move forward with our recommendations, we would then charge a percentage fee based on the amount of funds we were consolidating.
The danger of not reviewing your pension
Reviewing your pension is a personal decision. Each case is different too. You could review your pension and find you don’t need to make any changes, in which case you have the peace of mind knowing you are getting exactly what you need for your retirement. But you may be at risk from reaching retirement with less money that you could have had if you had taken the time to review your pension and made the necessary adjustments.
The value of investments and any income from them can fall as well as rise and you may not get back the original amount invested.