Moving country - alongside being a logistical headache and a general joy/stress rollercoaster - is a bit of a bitch when it comes to what you do with your money.
You want to be sure that it sits in the right place, that you take the right amount of risk and you only pay the tax you need to.
So this is what the last week has mostly been about.
Yeah, we got burned by this bunch, and now we’re running around to get the help we need way too late in the day.
It all started really well; nice web chats about our intentions and plans, a bit about our assets. All very friendly. It was explained that we sign up for a report they beaver away at producing, and that we’d pay for that. If we wanted to continue the relationship to check in and adapt things then that would be a separate fee.
We provided all the info, signed the contracts and sat back to wait. This was in January 2026.
We chased progress at the end of February. ‘Still waiting for the response from your pension providers’ we were told.
We did the same in March. ‘Oh we’ve just got the info, let’s have a meeting’ came the response. We had this meeting while location scouting in Strasbourg and what we heard as initial ideas from them felt really encouraging. Onwards and upwards!
We were asked to fill in Attitude to Risk forms (pretty standard stuff), which we did and submitted via Docusign. Then we got asked to do them again a month later. Not impressed.
Finally, in May, another meeting was set up to go through the report they now had ready. We received the report about 30 mins before the meeting (the explanation being that it would be better talking through it with us - I guess in case we couldn’t read?).
The sum total of the report can be summed up as follows:
“Move your two private pensions to Global SIPPs. These will cost you 4x as much in fees as you’re paying currently”
That was it. No financial plan, no tax advice (apparently ‘another part of the company does that’, which felt like a piss poor excuse and not my issue as a customer). Nothing about where to put our house sale funds or savings. None of the ideas expressed in March were there. What were we paying for?
We had the meeting, in which I was beyond frosty and expressed my unhappiness with the sum total of 4 months work and a chunk of cash.
Did I mention it had errors too? Leaving aside the dates of our move being wrong (that could have been us) I was told my pension didn’t allow flexible drawdown.
A quick (and really helpful) call to my pension provider clarified that they did offer flexible drawdown, just not an annuity (which we’d been told were bad investments and problematic for inheritance stuff anyway back in March). This info went back to them to make adjustments
We had a revised version of the report through a week later which said the same thing but with corrected dates. We paid our fee just to get them out of our lives, and didn’t sign the report. Not happy.
Having had my faith in financial advisers shaken I did some investigating for myself based on those initial ideas we’d heard in March. I put together an outline plan that I could test against other advisers rather than wait for ideas. A kind of financial straw man, if you like.
Taking the 25% tax-free elements of our pensions before moving makes real sense, as France doesn’t recognise this UK arrangement so would tax it all. And as there is practically no benefit (yet more cost) in switching to Global SIPPs another part of the plan is to leave the remainder of the pensions where they are to grow further. Unlike a UK savings account, France won’t tax any growth in the remaining funds, only a percentage when we withdraw from it (like any pension).
Our current providers are both happy for us to leave the pensions where they are and take any instructions from us as non-UK residents. I also found I can switch the fund that my pension invests in to one I want (with a full view of the fee structure - some have zero fees!)
We also found out that there is an ISA equivalent in France called Livret A which our French bank set up for us with a €100 deposit in each. If nothing else, this could be our easy-access accounts for those tax free pension sums with some modest growth.
We’d learned a while back that an Assurance Vie might be a good place for our life savings and house sale money to be stored in longer-term as it also offers some tax advantages. We can also get a Luxembourg-based account with additional protections and the ability to have the sum stored in Sterling, making it more portable. Drawing down money will still be taxed, but only the growth element
The only Assurance Vie we could set up ourselves directly would be one with our French bank, but as there are better options available via financial brokers we do need to dip our toes back in those muddy waters again. So I’ve lined up three firms to discuss with in the coming weeks to see which ones I trust the most (or which ones I don’t trust the least, perhaps).
The final contenders are:
Let’s see what the next week or so brings.