I want to review my pension plan(s)
Over their working lives, many people accrue a number of different pension plans and consolidation of these pension saving pots can make it easier to plan for retirement.
As the pension market constantly evolves, so do the products available to pension savers.
The benefit of a pension review is to assess your pensions to ensure each and every plan is suited to your needs and offers value for money.
Ultimately, a pension is intended to help fund your retirement and it is good practice to regularly review its performance to assess if it is on course to deliver the income you need.
A pension review should look at the performance of the funds held in the plan and how close you are to retirement.
It should consider how much risk you are prepared to accept with your investment in order to reach your goal.
Importantly, a review needs to consider the impact on your retirement if your pension savings were to reduce as a result of a market downturn. This becomes more important as retirement draws closer as your retirement savings might not have time to recover any losses.
There are also tax considerations. How much can you save into a pension to receive the benefit of tax relief?
A pension review should also assess if any of your current plans offer the security of a guaranteed income in retirement.
It is also important to consider what happens to your pension upon death.
Having assessed your needs and the suitability of your current plans, changes to or consolidation into an existing pension may be recommended.
A switch of plans to a new provider may also be considered. Transferring a pension is an important decision and Cogent Financial Service is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to provide advice in this area.