The Expat Pension Review & Second Opinion Guide
A practical guide to reviewing your pensions, investments, fees and advice before making a transfer, consolidation or retirement decision.
A second opinion should not begin with a new product.
It should begin with a proper review of what you already have, what it costs, what benefits are worth protecting and whether the advice you have received genuinely improves your position.
- Review your existing pensions before making a change
- Understand fees, investments, guarantees and adviser recommendations
- Identify whether the best outcome is to change something or leave it alone
What's in the guide?
A pension review should test the recommendation, not justify it
A second opinion is most useful when it is independent of the outcome.
If the review begins with:
“Which pension should I transfer into?”
the conclusion has already been partially decided.
A better process starts with the existing arrangements.
What pensions do you hold?
What benefits do they provide?
What are the charges?
How are they invested?
Are there any guarantees or protected features?
How flexible are they at retirement?
Can the providers continue servicing you while you live abroad?
Only once the current position is understood should the proposed alternative be assessed.
What problem is the transfer or consolidation supposed to solve?
Will it reduce costs?
Improve investment options?
Make retirement income easier to manage?
Improve international access?
Or is the main benefit simply that everything will sit in one place?
Convenience can be valuable, but it should not be confused with financial improvement.
A proper second opinion should therefore be capable of producing three outcomes:
Change it.
Change some of it.
Leave it alone.
If only one outcome is ever presented as acceptable, it is not really a review.
Who is this guide for?
This guide is designed for expats who already hold pensions and want to understand whether the advice, structure or recommendation in front of them actually makes sense.
It may be particularly useful if you:
- have been recommended a pension transfer
- are considering consolidating several pensions
- have been recommended a SIPP or QROPS
- hold an existing offshore or international pension arrangement
- are unsure what you are paying in total
- want to understand whether your investments are appropriate
- have changed adviser and want an independent review of the existing structure
- are approaching retirement and want to simplify
- are concerned about giving up valuable pension benefits
- want a second opinion before making an irreversible decision
The purpose is not to prove that the existing advice is wrong.
It is to establish whether the recommendation is genuinely better than what you already have.
Review the pension, the investments, the advice and the future
A good pension second opinion should look at four layers.
1. The pension
What type of pension is it?
What benefits, guarantees, protections and retirement options does it provide?
2. The investments
How is the money invested?
Is the portfolio diversified, suitable and appropriately priced?
3. The advice
What has actually been recommended?
What problem is the recommendation trying to solve?
What are the costs and trade-offs?
4. The future
Where are you likely to live?
How will you eventually take retirement income?
Does the structure still work if you return to the UK or move country again?
Only after all four layers have been reviewed should the decision be made.
A good second opinion is not about finding a different product. It is about testing whether the proposed change genuinely improves the plan.
Frequently asked questions
When should I get a second opinion on my pension?
A second opinion can be useful before making a significant or irreversible change, especially where you are transferring a pension, consolidating several arrangements, giving up guarantees or moving into a new international structure.
What should a pension review include?
A proper review should look at the pension benefits, charges, investment structure, retirement options, guarantees, tax position, country of residence and the rationale behind any proposed change.
How do I know whether my pension fees are high?
You need to look at the full cost rather than one headline figure. That may include product charges, platform fees, underlying fund costs, discretionary management fees and adviser charges.
Should I consolidate several pensions into one?
It can make administration and investment management easier, but each pension should first be checked for valuable guarantees, protected benefits, low costs or useful plan features that could be lost.
Is a SIPP or QROPS automatically better for an expat?
No. Living abroad does not by itself create a reason to use either structure. The existing pension, tax position, future country, costs and retirement objectives all need to be considered first.
What happens if the second opinion says I should do nothing?
That can be a perfectly good outcome. If the existing pension is competitively priced, well invested and provides useful benefits, changing it simply for the sake of change may not improve the plan.
About Josh Clancey
Josh Clancey is a cross-border financial planner based in Dubai, working with British expats and internationally mobile professionals on pensions, retirement planning and investment strategy.
A significant part of his work involves reviewing existing pension arrangements and recommendations before clients make major changes.
The approach is deliberately simple: understand what the client already has, identify what is working well, test the proposed alternative and only recommend a change where it materially improves the wider retirement plan.