Can I transfer funds from a personal pension into a work pension if that is giving better growth?

Hello Sat,

That's a good question you have raised.

In theory you should be able to transfer your personal pension into a work one but you would need to check it can accept transfers in.

However, you need to make sure you are comparing like with like. Pension providers are simply administrators who apply instructions you make on how to invest the fund. The work pension may be invested differently and so would be expected to perform differently to another pension with a different allocation. For example, if one is more allocated to stockmarkets it would have done well over the past 10 or so years but underperformed relative to a lower risk pension portfolio since the start of 2022 with the inflation concerns followed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. A pension with a higher allocation to stock markets should be expected to have higher returns over the long term but the losses will be greater during market corrections.

You can read more here: https://neliganfinancial.co.uk/how-not-to-compare-your-pensions/

That being said, it might be that your workplace pension is lower cost and so, everything else being equal, will provide better returns with less being taken off in fees.

Before you go and transfer a pension you should make sure you are not giving up valuable benefits or paying high transfer charges. I've written about it here: https://neliganfinancial.co.uk/should-i-combine-my-pensions/

I hope this helps.

Andrew