I was obliged to engage an IFA to release my main pensions into a SIPP. Actually the former employer paid for the IFA, who would have been pretty expensive as moving pensions out of final salary schemes requires specialist sign off which doesn't come cheap.
He did a long fact-find which delved into all aspects of my finances and my attitude to risk etc. The outcome was that I am prepared to take risks, which I knew before we started, but I needed it to come out that way to release the final salary pension so my answers were skewed n(by me) in that direction.
They also came up with suitable place to invest my fund-to-be, and I initially though I might need a fair bit of hand-holing but the place which did this ISTR came out at over 5% per year - which in 20 years would swallow the lot! But it really was gold plated - monthly meetings to review progress etc, probably over lunch with agreeable wine at my cost etc.
So along came an altogether cheaper option which is the one I took. I can manage my own swaps between funds so once the money had landed in the account I dispensed with the IFA.
I made a poor decision in the early days, switching to a low risk fund because my pot had dipped dramatically, only to find I'd done it at the bottom of the dip and IO left myself an unnecessary and panicked 5% down in about 3 months.
But fate works in funny ways and my pension has grown by over £900 a day since 1 March, by lucky timing of switches between funds. Had it been in the fund the adviser recommended, it would only be about 95% of it's initial value. Had I put it in the more cautious fund it would be about 3% up. As it is it is about 10% up, and that's having lost a few % early days!!
I would and could not have got to this position without an IFA, and it is a very useful exercise to go through everything with them. Whether you need ongoing support from them is another matter. I don't claim to know what I'm doing really, but I am watching how it's going much of the time even though the time to switch funds means an immediate reaction takes two of three days to reach the funds.
I do have an ex-IFA mate who retired about the same time as me who had a quite reasonably sized chunk in the Woodford funds, and I think he's lost a bob or two as a result.
Wrt finding one, I eventually got one from www.unbiased.co.uk/
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