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QROPS financial advisers

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 02:51
by scotswahae
I have had a QROPS since 2013 and have not been paying any fees to my financial adviser company. The adviser that signed me up left the company and I was assigned a new adviser. Now almost 2 years later the company and more specifically the adviser is asking for fees claiming that he is working for nothing for me. I have a Skandia bond wrapper and I believed that the trailing commission for ongoing advice was wrapped up in the deal bewteen Skandia and my advsier. So now I am confronted with a demand for 0.75% adviser fees on top of my Skandia fee of 1%.
Does anyone have any advice or a recommendation for a fair financial adviser.
I am not looking to change my QROPS or the Trustee company holding my portfolio.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Re: QROPS financial advisers

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 08:58
by chufinora
It seems you have a complex UK based financial product in your QROPS RRSP. (Is this a Skandia offshore bond wrapper?) You are likely between a rock and a hard place as it may be difficult to find another financial advisor who understands and wants to take on a portfolio with that product. When you initiated the QROPS transfer, and selected the financial advise to purchase the Skandia fund, was there an agreement signed, does it not specify the advisor fees?

I know you do not want to change, but bear in mind a "QROPS", once it is transferred into Canada is just a regular RRSP with some reporting requirements on any withdrawals (To the UK IR) for 10 years. There are several brokers and advisors who can take it over and manage a QROPS RRSP (I have mine in a Scotia i-trade self directed RRSP). Once the bond wrapper matures (Or sooner) it might be better to find a financial advisor who offers products better suited to a Canadian RRSP.

Re: QROPS financial advisers

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 13:20
by scotswahae
THanks for the reply.
I did not get anything relating to adviser fees when I signed the agreement with Skandia.
I would not want the complication of moving my fund as there are penalties for leaving Skandia I just want to find another adviser.
I shall just have to keep digging around

Re: QROPS financial advisers

Posted: 21 Sep 2015 14:46
by chufinora
Do you need a financial advisor? Are they giving you financial advice?

If you want to stay invested in this Skandia bond wrapper, you could transfer your QROPS RRSP to another broker and manage it yourself. As it is in an QROPS RRSP currently it must be a valid RRSP holding to so transferring it to another RRSP account should be relatively straight forward.

The list of qualified brokers for Canada can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... ons#canada if you scan through this list you can find a few well known brokers. I used Scotia because they offer self-directed non locked-in RRSP. Your current QROPS RSP should be on this list and may be locked in which will likely mean you will need to transfer it into another locked in RRSP

Re: QROPS financial advisers

Posted: 04 Oct 2015 14:57
by plaster
chufinora,
I'm trying to move my UK pension to Canada. I have other accounts at Itrade so that would be a good place for me to put it. Can you give some details about how you did it? Did you open an RSP before requesting a transfer? Do you need to indicate to ITrade that the account was being used as a QROPS? Does ITrade accept money in GBP or do you need to convert it to CAD before transferring?

Re: QROPS financial advisers

Posted: 17 Jul 2017 02:31
by plaster
I've happily resolve my UK pension problem and I thought I would write it down here in case it helps others. Fortunately for me, I didn't really need a QROPS because all QROPS plans in Canada were delisted earlier this year. My problem was that my pension provider did not provide drawdowns, you could only buy an annuity or transfer your entire balance to a domestic SIPP or a foreign QROPS. My first choice was actually to transfer to a domestic SIPP but I initially could not find one that would allow a non-UK resident to open an account. After much googling, I found that AJBell Youinvest did accept new accounts from non-UK residents. I was able to open an account, snail mail my transfer forms, and have the money transferred over all in one month.

I had talked to iTrade before the delisting and they would not open a QROPS for me because my low six figure balance was not enough. (They didn't actually say that but after asking me what amount I was transferring over, they said they could not help me and did not give a reason.)

According to articles I read, QROPS in Canada and a lot of other countries were delisted because HMRC believed that there is no mechanism to ensure the account holder is at least 55 years old before making withdraws. Also according to these articles, mass delisting have occurred before and HMRC eventually develops new rules that allow QROPS in the country again. But as of now there are no Canadian QROPS plans.