Managing Your Pension Funds
Most Self-Invested Personal Pensions (Sipps) are not actually self-invested i.e. invested by the individual but managed by a professional such as an adviser or investment manager. They were introduced initially in 1989 to provide a pension that could invest in a wider range of investments than the common personal pension offered by a traditional pension provider.
Today Sipps are the type of pension most used where individuals want to manage their own pension funds or buy commercial properties (often the property their business operates from) or land. One thing a Sipp can do that a traditional pension can’t, is borrow money. This is often used, in effect, to take out a mortgage to help buy a property. There is a limit though and you can only borrow up to 50% of the existing value of the Sipp.
They are popular also with advisers who have generally moved away from a pension provided by a single pension provider to using independent platforms which are administrators that can invest in a very wide range of investments.
So, a Sipp is not much different from the original personal pensions and are often not self-invested. A better description for them would have been Flexible Pensions or Open Pensions.
At Altor, Sipps are the most common pension amongst our clients. This is because we can access such a wide range of investment solutions using them.
Sipps are available to Altor clients in our Core, Discounted and Family Services.
Nothing on this website or its links constitutes a personal recommendation; the information contained is designed to be informative but not to be relied upon as individual circumstances could affect the relevance of this guidance.