British Expats - Options for UK Pension (Defined Contribution)

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Originally Posted by vikingsail (Post 13168716)

An interesting and enlightening discussion. Thank you to all contributors. As I decide on options I would be interested to hear from anyone who has sucessfully navigated the conversion having to take the mandatory advice froma UK financial advisor as mentioned they seem to be hard to come by = advisors. And my 'pot' sits squarely just over the mandatory amount so finding a cost effective advisor is tough?

This is a very late response to your specific enquiry. My experience with getting mandatory UK advice as a US tax resident was as follows:
- I built up three pension accounts while working in the UK from 1986 to 1998. Let's call them PP1, PP2, PP3. I moved to the US in 1998 and have lived and worked here through early 2019, when I retired from employment.
- In mid-2018 PP1 wrote to me offering a transfer out deal including paying for the mandatory financial advice. I took the offer. The advice consisted mainly of me completing a questionnaire and the adviser running projections. The most useful part though, was the adviser identifying AJ Bell as a suitable home for the CETV proceeds. They provided a lot of cautionary notes about why not to take the cash value but in the end were happy enough to proceed. They put me into an adviser-driven SIPP offering that I am not sure AJ Bell continues to offer. However, it had an execution-only self-directed window to allow me to place trades.
- I contacted PP2 and received what I considered a good CETV offer for my PP2 entitlement. Both of PP1 and PP3 were way over the GBP30k limit. Since I was still in touch with PP1's appointed financial advisor, I got a quote from them for providing the mandatory opinion for the PP2 transfer. If I recall correctly they charged me a good deal more in total than the GBP2.5k that Glasgow Girl mentioned. They and I think most others would also charge a percentage for actually doing the transfer (1 - 1.5%). I think this second transfer took about five months to complete. After this completion, I was able to do a conversion to AJ Bell's main SIPP vehicle, then called YouInvest (now I think it's just AJBell).

- This then put me in position to transfer PP3 which was a defined contribution plan well below the 30k threshold. That transfer took a few weeks to complete, and cost about GBP200 (transfer fee charged by the original PP3 administrator)

The adviser firm that I worked with was Premier Wealth Planning with an address in Croydon. I believe they are part of a larger financial firm so they likely have other locations in the UK. .One thing to bear in mind is that a CETV quotation will be valid for three months and they typically only issue one every year so it's worthwhile having the adviser lined up just before requesting the quotation.