Regardless of the promises made by all modern day institutions, form filling and information gathering is never easy, we have contacts with all pension providers to ensure that normal day-to-day administration of your pensions is not only simplified but presented in a way that is understandable.

We have yet to undertake an audit of a client’s pension affairs and not find something about which they had either forgotten or were unaware. It is vital that everyone is fully aware not only of the benefits they have but the benefits they might not have. Many older policies contain substantial guarantees of great value, which are not given the prominence they should. This is particularly true of guaranteed annuity rates and bonus rates. In addition higher tax-free cash limits as we now move through pension simplification all need to be fully explained. Our pension audits service is simple and straightforward. After initial contact, authorities are provided to enable us to contact all pension providers. We will then undertake an audit of all the schemes of which we are made aware outlining the advantages and disadvantages in clear understandable terms. We often find that the pension audit is an excellent way to start our relationship with clients and many times we have heard the expression ‘No one has ever explained it to me like that before.’

The pension audit service does not only look at identifying what benefits are held now but will also make suggestions as to alternative ways forward. This might be as simple as suggesting a free movement of investment funds to a more suitable fund or more extreme measures such as the bringing together of all the pensions into a modern stakeholder or self invested contract.

All too often it is thought that the only investments available for pension schemes are insurance company funds investment. There are many thousands of funds now available worldwide into which pension schemes can invest. In addition to this through self-invested personal pensions you have the ability to invest in all shares quoted on major stock markets throughout the world. Alternative investments such as commercial properties, home and abroad, loans, borrowing and shares in unquoted companies can all be considered.

At Richard Jacobs we provide advice to schemes whose value range from £100 to £100 million, all are treated with the same respect. What is most important is that the investments recommended and chosen suit the client’s risk profile and are not merely dumped with an insurance company without a thought. We have business relationships and connections with all leading investment houses, fund managers and stockbrokers throughout the world. Contact is made on a very regular basis with many of these to ensure that we are always at the forefront of investment advice. Creating an appropriate asset allocation and portfolio for a pension scheme can be a long procedure requiring several meetings taking into account attitudes to risk and other investments. Alternatively more straightforward portfolios can be constructed effectively after completion of a risk profile questionnaire.

A great deal of is made at the cost and charges of different pensions schemes, these charges become totally insignificant when the investment return of a good and bad pension scheme is compared. Yes charges are important but a fund that charges three times that available from a low charged fund can still provide significant advantages if the correct investment is chosen for the higher-charge scheme when compared with often poor-performing institutional based cheap funds.