Making the most of your income drawdown plan
By Nigel Callaghan | 25 Jul, 2008
Hargreaves Lansdown research has discovered that over 130,000 investors have purchased an income drawdown contract since the millennium with a combined worth of £17 billion. How many of these investors today are still getting value for money from what will typically be one of their largest assets?
In these challenging times, it is even more important to make your money work as hard as possible. You may well have made sure that you were getting value for money when you first set the arrangement up, but are you sure that is still the case?
Some income drawdown contracts have taken advantage of improvements in technology which has led to massive reductions in administrative costs and the subsequent charges investors pay. What represented good value 5 or 6 years ago can now seem expensive. That’s why it is so important to review existing holdings from time to time.
If you are happy to make your own investment decisions - together with access to detailed investment reports - it may be possible to cut out large investment and administration costs although in exchange for these savings, you would not receive advice on your investments that you may currently be receiving. Depending on the size of your pension this could represent thousands of pounds each year. As some investors may remain within a drawdown contract for 10 or more, the combined savings can amount to a huge sum.
If you have an existing drawdown plan, it can take only a phone call to see how much money could be saved by moving your pension money to a drawdown plan that offers great value for money on an execution only basis.
Please call 0117 980 9926 to discuss your own circumstances.
