Independent pension advice for a company

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colin79ie

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Looking for someone who could offer advice on our company pension. The broker currently in use is not really engaging as such.

Pension was moved from one big provider to another during previous tenures and fresh management would like to see if what we are providing is the best for our employees.
Basically someone to look at what we have and see if we should stay as we are or change our approach.
Also, someone who could explain in simple terms to those employees what is best for them, or a little explanatory session.

It appears to be difficult to get independent advice without the hard sell.
 
Well, at it's most basic it's not really that complicated.
Low charges (0% on contributions and the lowest possible annual management charge - ideally as close to 0.5% as possible perhaps) and a decent range of investment options/funds is what you and employees want.
The more generous the employer matching/contribution the more attractive it is to employees as part of an overall remuneration package.
And, in most cases, especially for those with several years to retirement and even those who are older but expect longevity into retirement, they should probably be mostly or fully in equities.
Others will try to make it more complicated, but fundamentally it's not.
 
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GSheehy said:
With the management or the employees?

What do you think they should be doing, that they're not doing?
Click to expand...
We have a manual type of workforce. The average employee wouldn't know where to start with pensions, except for joining it and paying into it which is a good thing. However when it comes to funds or choices they don't go there. So we asked the brokers on numerous occasions if they could assist in getting some info sessions and review our pension provision overall. They haven't engaged at all.

All we want to do is get someone independent in to look at our pension provision and death in service etc and advise on whether it's ok or could be better value.
If they can give some basic info to the employees in terms of what they should be looking at or doing, all the better.
The management team are not pension experts so think it's best to get advice.
 
The pricing of the scheme looked okay to me - 100% allocation and 0.70% AMC , right?

I'm presuming it's not a very large scheme where greater numbers could drive that down.

The broker recently facilitated the move to a master trust scheme and employees were informed of what was going on and that no additional charges would apply.

I presume the move a few years back was to avail of better pricing from current provider?

I don't do occupational pension schemes (bar the one/two person ones) so maybe someone that does the larger stuff can post what the normal interaction between employee and broker would be like.

Gerard

www.prsa.ie
 
GSheehy said:
presume the move a few years back was to avail of better pricing from current provider
Click to expand...
It was transferred from Zurich to Aviva. The reasoning behind the change is not clear internally, but it appears it may have been on the advice of the broker, or may have been sold as a better pension. The facilitator who done the groundwork moved on shortly after.

I don't think it's a bad setup by any means. It's just proving difficult to get someone from the broker in to have a few presentations with staff to explain the pension in 'laymans' terms.
 
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