AVC's - questions to ask

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geriatric

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Hi all

I have a company pension made up of a ceased Defined Benefit and an active Defined Contribution.

As I turned 50 late last year I think it's about time to make AVC's. I am going to contact my pension providers re the AVC's but what questions should I be asking them re fees or anything else that is relevant?

I never used to click into this forum before but have been of recent weeks and am amazed (though confused) by the information shared here.

Thanks in advance
 
When you say a “company pension” is this your company or an Employer?
If you are going to invest additional contributions:
- will it be via a separate stand-alone AVC, or
- simply upping your personal contributions into the DC scheme?

It may be that the latter will offer a better route as the charges may be lower.
Typically the charges for a separate AVC scheme will be:
- the annual fund management charge
- the % allocation rate (ie how much of each contribution gets invested)
- whether any advisor will levy an up-front charge ( a flat fee, or an ongoing % of fund charge added to the fund management charge).
 
Thanks for your reply Conan.

It’s my employer and I’ll be upping the contributions on an ongoing basis. I’ll check out the 3 items you listed.

I gather from other threads that I don’t have to use the same pension company for my AVCs so is there a Best Buy recommendation or is that just too simple?
 
Yes you don’t have to use the same pension company for any AVCs. You can establish a separate Stand Alone PRSA AVC Plan. But that may involve higher costs (including set-up costs). I don’t think the diversification benefit would justify the additional costs.
By contributing extra contributions to your current scheme, it may be the case that you will only pay the underlying fund management charge (no set-up costs). You should be able to invest the additional contributions in a different fund(s) if you want to change the investment profile. The typical charges in a Group DC tend to be more competitive than establishing a separate AVC plan
So I would start with your existing scheme, find out what the costs will be if you simply up your contributions. In such a case I don’t think there should be any up-front costs, just the ongoing fund management charge.
 
Conano as you said there is no setup fees. I've since started avcs and will research more into its investment shortly.

On a separate matter, I'm working with my present employer for over 20years but previous to that I had 2 previous employments each for approximately 2 years duration. Would you know where I could find out if there was pension contributions made for these?

Thanks again
 
No problem for one of them but the other doesn’t exist anymore. Thought there might be a central register to contact?
 
If you know other people that worked there, ask around to see if any of them know the details of who the pension administrator was.
Failing that, the pensions authority have a register of company pension schemes, and you might be able to find details of administrator that way.
 
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