We are experts in providing advice to individuals who are in schemes which provide Safeguarded Benefits (these are also called Defined Benefit or Final Salary schemes) We provide advice on whether or not someone should stay in or transfer out of these type of pensions.
THE PENSIONHELP DIRECT WAY
Frequently Asked Questions
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How Much Does Your Advice Cost?
Our charges can be found in the document ‘Services and Fees’ This contains an overview of how much we charge for each service.
If you proceed to enter the advice process, we will assess your situation and send you a ‘Personalised Charges Document’ which will contain a personalised fee. Before you incur any costs, you will need to agree to this document. You will not incur any fees until after you agree to the terms contained in the Personalised Charges Document.
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What are the timescales for providing advice?
We cannot provide any advice until we have sufficient information from the schemes that we are reviewing and information relating to your circumstances. Once we have all the required information, it generally takes around 3 weeks for us to prepare and check our advice to you. As we depend upon third parties to provide us with most of the information we need, it is difficult to estimate how long the entire process will take.
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Once I have accepted the advice, how long does the next step take?
If we advise that you take benefits from your existing scheme, if you are intending to retire straight away, generally you can start receiving your scheme pension within 4 weeks. If we recommend that you transfer your benefits into a new plan then this generally takes around 8 weeks. Please note however that schemes are obliged to make certain checks that the transfer is legitimate and the transfer out process can take considerably longer.
It is worth noting that transfer values are only valid for a certain period. We do not guarantee to meet this date. Our goal is to provide suitable advice to clients and we can only do this once we have all of the information that is required to provide advice. If a new transfer value is required there is often a charge for this and it could be that the new transfer value is lower than the expired one. Pensionhelp Direct will only accept clients who confirm their understanding that we do not guarantee that we will meet transfer value expiry dates.