Hibernian - difference between a PRSA and their Horizon product

Hi,

First post, be gentle I am looking to start a personal persion with a max allowed one off contribtuion this year. My accountant is recommending Hibernian Horizon, on a nil-commission basis. As far as I can see, this is not a PRSA pension. A note from Hibernian seems to indicate a 100.5% allocation (?!) with no initial or ongoing commission. Management charge is below 1%. It does seem to have a 10k+ per annum requirement.

This all seems good to me - am I missing something? Is there something fundamental I might be missing out on by it not being a PRSA pension? Any advice would be gratefully received.

c

There's a once-off policy fee of €45 on the Horizon product but that's unlikely to sway your decision.

You can retire early with a PRSA from 50 onwards if you retire completely from employment. With a Personal Pension you can only retire before 60 in circumstances of extreme ill health.

Your post specifies that it is a 'one-off' payment that you want to make but the correspondence you received from Hibernian would appear to make reference to 'a 10k+ per annum requirement'. You need to clarify if you are going the annual payment route as opposed to the 'one-off'?

The allocation rate quoted would appear to be for a 'one-off' contribution of between €7,500 and €12,499. This 'extra' 0.5% allocation can be withdrawn if you decided to transfer to another pension provider within 3 years of of commencement.

I suppose the only other subtle differences would be that a Standard PRSA can't exceed the 1% AMC. With a personal pension, the product provider reserves the right to increase the AMC at a future date, but you can transfer out if that happened. Also, you cant transfer a Personal Pension to an occupational pension scheme.

Hope this helps.