Royal London and people's experience dealing with them

Hi Clubman,
Another 2 weeks and still no online access to the payslips; at least they did send on the one from 3 weeks ago but no update on them resolving the issue or if they will send them on monthly as already agreed....
I note your comment about month to month performance. I'm not worried at that level but do like having the information; I have the ARF split in 5 and would like ability to do some rebalancing from time to time (maybe annually) and have a bit of control about which part the distributions come from but the lack of personalised information will make this difficult. After many years as a contributor and trustee, checking the fund performance is a hobby and not keeping me awake at night!

Another irritating feature is under "Your latest document" it shows my FIRST bit of correspondence! So, I need to open that panel and see if anything has been added. Overall between my pension on three online platforms during accumulation (at different times) and our ARFs now on 4 platforms (including RL), the RL portal is clearly the most amateur (of the 7 different platforms). On a positive note, all payments made on time so far...
 
kierane said:
Another 2 weeks and still no online access to the payslips;
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I have the same problem at the moment. Other documents in the General Communication section of the online account portal download fine but when I click on any payslip link it says "Please wait..." and seems to retry several times and then just fails with "Unable to view document online at this time". I've reported the problem to RLI and they said that they're looking into it. Their online portal seems very flakey to me as this is far from the first problem that I've had with it since moving to them last year.
 
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Hello all new to forum.
I am thinking of moving my PRSA from Zurich to Royal London Ireland. This thead is usefull as I dont know anybody personally using them.
From reading this its a mixed bag of experiences.
Hope more people post in here.
Regards,
 
Hi,

Can I ask why you are thinking of moving from Zurich?
I helped my wife set up an ARF with Zurich 5 years ago and it has performed well and their administration is superb.
However, for my own ARF with Royal London, I acted on my advisor's advice but as noted in earlier posts, the administration is terrible.
I'm told Royal London are relatively new to ARFs in Ireland and the administration and website may improve. If it doesn't quickly enough I will be moving my ARF to Zurich! (I don't fully accept this about new in market - you are either good enough or not).
 
I have my main pension with Zurich and moved an Irish Life Buy Out Bond to them a couple of years ago. Performance has been great and their admin is always excelllent so I’d have a similar perspective to kierane above.

g
 
Lafloresta1991 said:
I am thinking of moving my PRSA from Zurich to Royal London Ireland. This thead is usefull as I dont know anybody personally using them.
From reading this its a mixed bag of experiences.
Click to expand...
I'm happy with them on the most important issues - charges, fund selection (BlackRock MCSI Global World Index buy and forget about it in my case), customer service, ValueShare bonus, and splitting a smaller vested PRSA off my main plan to take a tax free lump sum and ongoing income from that while leaving my main PRSA invested/untouched.

Their online portal has had several problems since I joined them last year. But I'm rarely dependent on it so I'm not that bothered. You need to go via a broker as they don't deal directly with clients to set up policies etc. but they have dealt with me directly on various technical queries that I've had.
 
@kierane The fees with Zurich are to high : 1%AMC and allocation rate 98%. I have been with them 5 years, I was busy did not do much research and I thought it was a good deal. Now I am not that busy so started looking around and its seems that I am paying too much.
The portal might not be great alright but as @ClubMan says in the important aspects they are good and the AMC is almost half.
Still investigating other options though.
Regards,
 
Lafloresta1991 said:
The portal might not be great alright but as @ClubMan says in the important aspects they are good and the AMC is almost half.
Still investigating other options though.
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As far as I know, Standard Life may have something comparable to/competitive with RLI without any equivalent of the ValueShare discretionary bonus (0.13% added to the value of qualifying pension pots for the last few years). Maybe check this thread.

Probably the best (cheapest) PRSA in the world?

The launch of Royal London Ireland's new pension product in late November 2024 seems to have finally offered customers accessible, lost-cost PRSAs. Through an execution-only broker, it is relatively easy to access a passive fund AMC of 0.55% or significantly lower on larger transfers. Taking...
www.askaboutmoney.com
 
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Lafloresta1991 said:
@kierane The fees with Zurich are to high : 1%AMC and allocation rate 98%. I have been with them 5 years, I was busy did not do much research and I thought it was a good deal. Now I am not that busy so started looking around and its seems that I am paying too much.
The portal might not be great alright but as @ClubMan says in the important aspects they are good and the AMC is almost half.
Still investigating other options though.
Regards,
Click to expand...
Agree - fees too high. I'm finding that if you skip going through a broker and go direct, you can probably get 100% contribution. Even on an ARF, they will "absorb" the 1% levy. Ongoing fees of 1% is also high unless it is a small pot.

I mentioned my wife's ARF with Zurich. Well the pot wasn't huge (she has DB pension) and at setup, we split with 50% Zurich and 50% Standard Life.
Fees are about the same - although Standard Life split it into AMC and Fund based charges (incl. adviser cut). On returns, we picked similar type funds but the Norwich one performs quite a bit better; obviously returns are dependent on investment type so that's only a comment on my experience.
Admin wise, they are comparable and both hugely better than Royal London. But maybe you are not interested in reviewing on an ongoing basis.... I was a company scheme trustee for many years so I like to look in detail at fund progressions and can be quite dispassionate about a 10-20% drop feeling confident it will rebound. If you think this would bother you, then the poor admin of Royal London would not be an issue!

I am in negotiations with Zurich on another product and the fees at this stage are 60% of the fees on her current ARF. They are open to negotiation if pot is sizeable....

PS I also get the RL ValueShare bonus mentioned by ClubMan. 0.13% isn't huge but it is a positive.
 
My pot is subtantial so fees is a big issue now that I am looking at it closely.. I am 48 started it as a contrator 6 years ago. I need to move because as here say in 20-30 could a be a 6 digits figures if I leave it at 1%.
RLI is the cheapest I found with and without advice.
The company has a long history and they performe well? from my research. The admin/portal I will pressuem that it will improve.
Regards,
 
Lafloresta1991 said:
My pot is subtantial so fees is a big issue now that I am looking at it closely.. I am 48 started it as a contrator 6 years ago. I need to move because as here say in 20-30 could a be a 6 digits figures if I leave it at 1%.
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1% would be 6 digits? Think tax will be your issue rather than fees!
Best of luck!
 
ClubMan said:
What is that supposed to mean?
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I would guess that it's an estimate that a difference of, say 0.4% per year on a fund that's increasing every year might add up to a cumulative total difference in the six figure bracket after 20 or 30 years. But my interpretation could be wrong.
 
ClubMan said:
I have the same problem at the moment. Other documents in the General Communication section of the online account portal download fine but when I click on any payslip link it says "Please wait..." and seems to retry several times and then just fails with "Unable to view document online at this time". I've reported the problem to RLI and they said that they're looking into it. Their online portal seems very flakey to me as this is far from the first problem that I've had with it since moving to them last year.
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Problem seems to be resolved about visibility of payslips on website; still my oldest correspondence is still shown as "Your latest document".
At this stage, I'm not surprised that they did not send an email to tell me the issue was resolved....
 
Thanks @kierane, I wasn't aware that it was possible again to download/view payslips. Yes, my documents are also not sorted properly by date.
 
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