Profile Pensions Reviews 

they are doing a great job looking after my pension and keeping me up dated if i need to change it

Profile Pensions made everything simple and easy for me and gave great advice and kept me well informed .
Would definitely recommend to friends and family

Very easy to arrange and good service. Thank you.

I class my experiences with profile pensions, reliable and professional. When I was first approached by profile pensions, i was a bit wary and unsure if i were doing the right thing. Now eight years on my pension has risen well.

Efficient and effective solution to manage your personal pension fund with out any fuss

I found setting up a pension with profile pensions very easy, I am always kept up to date and transferring an existing pension was done with ease.

Profile pensions sorted my pension out when I transferred it to them great service and easy to deal with

Hi,made the choice to transfer all pensions after recommendations from friends and quick phone call and the ball got rolling all came together very quickly!! Very professional at profile pensions kept up to date with emails along the way. Thankyou first class service and to many more much recommended.

Good service from start to finish very helpful and good advice

After speaking to Profile Pensions i felt confident enough to get things sorted out. Dealt with a few old pensions from previous jobs and felt like i was taking control. Thanks

Easy. Reassuring

Not enough information from you

Great, found my dormant pension and have a good platform along with paper communication to keep track. Definitely recommend 👌

The fast response easy to use i have even given my colleagues your email so they can use you

Good advice given. Pension transfer went ahead without any issues.

So far so good I'm still waiting for them to find the rest of my pensions

Giving them two stars for the period March ‘19 (my first telephone review) to May ‘21. Prior to that, the process of amalgamating my various pensions had taken over a year but, in fairness, there were quite a few to track down.

Like many, my pension devalued by a considerable amount during the period ‘22-’23 when interest rates were rising significantly.

I was 55, but facing the prospect of having to retire around three years later due to health issues. I also needed a significant portion of my funds to clear debts and buy a home by that time, which Profile was aware of. However, my concerns were met by a view that I should do nothing and wait for the markets to pick up again. My pension subsequently lost around 20% of its value in less than a year.

There seemed to be an industry view that this was a ‘once in a lifetime’ event and that nothing could have been done to mitigate against it, but I became increasingly uncomfortable accepting that.

I eventually complained to the Financial Ombudsman about what I felt was a lack of proactivity on the part of Profile over that period. The agreement I entered into was for annual, advisor-led reviews; reviews in May 2021 and November 2022 were both instigated by me and there were none in-between.

What the FO discovered (and unbeknown to me), was that sometime after 2019 Profile had switched to a ‘robo-advice’ service; typically, I would request a review, they would send me an online questionnaire and recommend a course of action based on my responses. Because my circumstances were different to those of most people my age, I always felt that it required personal advice tailored to my situation. What I didn’t know was that there wasn’t always human intervention in the new advice-giving process.

Whilst the use of this advice model is in itself acceptable under FCA regulations, the FO pointed out that, not only was this not the service I had signed-up for, Profile’s failure to disclose it to me meant that I did not have the opportunity to re-evaluate my relationship with them. The FO also stated that the robo-advice that I did receive should have been accompanied by a conversation with an adviser.

It is quite possible that moving to another advisor and the resulting guidance might have reduced my losses, but obviously the FO cannot make a ruling based on speculation. However, they did instruct a partial refund of my ongoing advice fees for the period 2022-2024 as, although I did benefit from some advice, I did not receive the annual, advisor-led telephone reviews that I had been told I would.

Furthermore, although Profile had told me that they could no longer represent me once I moved abroad in March 2024, they did not disclose and offer to refund the fees that they had already deducted for FY ‘24-25 in the previous financial year and which they continued to deduct until May 2024, two months after they stopped representing me. They also failed to tell me that, despite no longer being my advisors, having already deducted advice fees for FY ‘24-25, I was still entitled to a review in April 2024 (which I did not receive).

Profile appealed the FO’s provisional decision, believing they hadn’t done anything wrong, but that decision was upheld. Even then, with the FO having told Profile which fees needed to be refunded, the sum was initially calculated over the wrong time period, resulting in a refund value which was only around 63% of what it should have been. I referred it back to the FO, whose office contacted Profile again.

Finally, in all of the e-mail communication I had with Profile following the FO’s decision, not once was there an apology, or even an acknowledgement that they had done anything wrong. It’s possible that they didn’t want to admit liability, but that was irrelevant anyway, as in accepting the FO’s decision I no longer had any legal recourse.

Simple straight forward process and the transaction was processed in a week.