Firetop

One of the problems with today’s multi-employer career path is that it’s easy to acquire multiple pension funds and lose track of them, recently I’ve been looking into consolidating my own pension investments into a personal stakeholder pension scheme. Pensions are of course still getting a bad write-up after years of over-estimated benefits forecasting and the problem of an ever-aging population. However, with many employers still offering to match employee contributions, plus the associated tax benefits, I still believe it’s worth investing in a pension as part of an overall investment portfolio. Ethical investing is important to me; from a karmic perspective I don’t want to be funding animal testing, worker exploitation or weapons development. However, finding an ethical pension fund wasn’t so easy, it took a fair bit of time to identify a good performer with suitable online tools for my needs.

Having worked in pensions administration over a decade ago I made up my mind back then that Independent Financial Advisors (IFAs) weren’t really worth the bother unless you’re a) stupid or b) stinking rich. Since I am neither of these things I manage my own affairs and use my pension administration experience for my own gain. A lot has changed over ten years, you can contribute more into pensions, and stakeholder pensions have come along with some cost saving benefits on contributions. I came across a Money Management magazine supplement on Ethical Investment (March 2007) and found it to be very helpful both in terms of general editorial content and their Ethical Pension Fund Performance Table - showing that over the past four years, ethical funds have become a better choice for investment growth.

In Legal and General I found a decent online application service for a stakeholder pension, manual pension fund allocation, decent information on funds and associated risks, and since then very helpful customer service staff. I’ve managed to set up my new stakeholder pension fund with a 50% swing towards their ethical fund, I would go further as the potential gain is great, but it’s sensible to keep half the pension on a lower risk strategy. Clearly I cannot recommend a specific course of action to anybody, as L&G continually tell me ‘Appropriate Financial Advice Should Be Obtained’. However, if you are looking at Ethical Pension fund planning do have a good read of the Money Management supplement and see if L&G suits your needs too, this was the best source of decision making information I could find online. I’m now quite relaxed with the knowledge that my pension is more ethical, my house powered by renewable energy and Firetop supporting an African children’s charity.

Technorati Tags: pensions, ethical pensions, ethical investing, legal and general, ethical fund, ifa

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