I’ve just gone from freelance to employed, for my last three or four years working. Everything has been consolidated into my own SIPP, but now I have to join my new employer’s own scheme and go through the transfer process again once I retire. Sigh…
2 Likes
I got the invite today but not being able to get my employer contributions added means I have zero interest. I don’t want another pension, I want it all together and compounding.
3 Likes
I spoke to my employer about this very issue - my employer’s group pension plan was, upon investigation, crap. So I asked if I could receive the same amount of employer contribution (4% of pensionable salary) paid to me instead - and they cease paying into the GPP for me. I got the go ahead. So now I pay what I want, plus the 4% contribution into my own private pension plan (not Monzo).
Yes, I get taxed on that 4% contribution plus whatever I pay into the plan, but I can reclaim that contribution each tax year and simply put it back into the personal pension.
I wish I’d have realised this years ago. But hey ho - sorted now.
3 Likes
Is that 4% conditional or unconditional? For example, I am required to contribute 6% in order for my employer to contribute 10%. If I reduce, they reduce.
I can’t see many firms agreeing to pay their contribution as salary, unless it’s unconditional. You must have a very flexible employer either way.
Mine definitely wouldn’t agree to this.
2 Likes
It’s 4% regardless. So I now get an additional payment to my base salary which represents a 4% amount of the pensionable salary (pre-Tax). Note that this is instead of contributing to a long-standing, certain-employee-group-only, group pension plan - not a ‘workplace pension’ scheme.
I can choose to add to this 4% with any amount I want to. In fact, I could just take the 4% salary ‘boost’ payment and run (contributing nothing to my personal pension at all), but then I wouldn’t be able to claim back the tax paid on the 4% and whatever else I put into the pension. So this compound effect of tax-back on personal pension contributions, plus the fact that the plan I’m now in performs way, way, way better than the employer GPP means the performance is much better than if I had not gone through exhaustive, boring, deflating research into pensions. And then took a leap-of-faith presenting this research to my employer.
It was worth the hassle.
3 Likes
So the pension team have been in touch with me this morning, the same person who said they would keep me up to date with the progress of my transfer considering the issues I’ve been having… and then didn’t let me know it was rejected again.
All they’ve said is “sorry for your inconvenience”. No next steps or how to resolve it.
For context, Monzo keep submitting my double barrelled name as first name, middle name, rather than just first name, which is why it’s being rejected. However Monzo have confirmed that they have my name correct on my account so I don’t understand why it is being submitted wrong.
PensionBee have been really good and they keep sharing with me the rejection reasons. I might just stick with them even though they have higher fees.
2 Likes
I moved mine from PensionBee to Monzo, mainly for the lower fees, but have seen better returns from Monzo so far.
6 Likes
I now have an invite to open a Monzo Pension.
Two questions if anyone can answer please.
-
Current pension is with Pensionbee - is this better than Monzo, or is Monzo better than Pensionbee?
-
Can I open a new pension with Monzo as a seperate pension without having to consolidate (move) the Pensionbee one?
Thanks!
I got an invite too. Sadly don’t have any eligible funds.
No one can answer this! It depends what fees you’ll pay and what investment options you want.
The Monzo product is limited by:
- No choice of investment product (it’s a target date fund)
- Can’t pay more into it after transfer
But it does have low fees, and TDFs are the default funds for most pension providers.
I wouldn’t use it at this point and I wouldn’t move a substantial pot to a new fund without indipendent financial advice. But if you have a small pot that you just haven’t looked at for years or something it might be alright.
Hi - thanks for your reply. I did not know you could not add “new money” into the pension once it has completed the transfer - that seems daft as you cannot increase its value.
I think I will stay with PB as it has a lot of cash in it as it seems to be doing a good job.
Thanks.
5 Likes
That’s according to the posts above anyway. It’s a feature in development I understand, so one day you might be able to.
Whilst not available at the moment, there is a button called “Add money” that brings up this screen so hopefully it will come at some point
1 Like
So it’s three months since Monzo told us they were working on allowing customer to make payments to their pensions:
Unless Monzo can provide a timeline for this functionality, I’m going to have to close my account down.
If you’re going to build an MVP of pensions, it needs to include payments by default. It’s literally how everyone uses pensions and expects them to work.
3 Likes
You might as well close it now since they rarely provide timelines, as they are highly agile and frequently shift priorities
3 Likes
Three months? I only got my invite today. Get you!
Then you get to be the test case for how easy/quick it is to transfer away from a Monzo pension 
1 Like
I’m astounded that this is the experience people would have with a Monzo pension /s
It’s a very complex and outdated market. I think PensionBee only does at well as it does because it’s their one thing.
2 Likes
And yet I’m trying to transfer a pension out of PensionBee (to Virgin Money) and it’s taking months, presumably because they’re having to write letters to each other.
Pension transfers can take ages. Hargreaves took six months to transfer to AJ Bell a couple of years back.
1 Like