Transferring a Royal London pension to Trading 212: count the ProfitShare

My Royal London statement came in April. It shows £38.63 in charges for the year and, a few lines away, £12.39 added to the pot as ProfitShare.

Royal London is a mutual. It has no shareholders, so when it makes a profit it pays part of it back to customers as a top-up to their pension. Since 2020 that has been 0.15% of the plan's value each year, and my £12.39 is exactly that.

So my pension costs less than the charge on the statement says, and anyone who sets Royal London's full charge against a cheap SIPP overstates what moving saves.

I am moving mine to the Trading 212 SIPP anyway, where my old Aviva pension already sits. On my pot the fee saving is about £12 a year, so that is not the reason. Royal London's charges vary a lot from plan to plan, though, and for plenty of its customers the gap is big enough to act on. On a £40,000 personal pension at Royal London's standard 0.75%, moving saves nearly £4,000 over twelve years, even after ProfitShare.

What my own Royal London statement shows

My Royal London pension is a workplace plan, and nothing was paid into it during the last statement year, 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. The statement shows:

The £12.39 is 0.15% of what the pot was worth at the start of the year, so ProfitShare paid what Royal London says it pays. Take it off the charges and Royal London cost me £26.24 for the year, about 0.29% of the pot.

At 0.42%, my old employer's deal is a good one: 87% of the arrangements in Royal London's 2025 workplace charges spreadsheet charge more on their default investment. Moving the same pot to Trading 212 and holding a global tracker such as Vanguard's FTSE All-World ETF (VWRP), which has an ongoing charge of 0.14%, saves me about £12 a year at today's value, or about £700 over the 21 years to my chosen retirement date in 2047, at 5% a year before charges. Four weeks out of the market costs about £37 on average on this pot, so on cost alone the transfer takes about three years to pay for itself.

Moving in November also means giving up the April 2027 ProfitShare award, which on this pot would be about £14.

The statement also says the lifestyle strategy will start moving my pot into lower-risk investments 15 years before that retirement date, which for me is 2032. A fund in the Trading 212 SIPP does nothing like that unless I do it myself.

Which Royal London pension you have

Royal London has grown by taking over other insurers, and it now looks after policies first sold under names including Scottish Life, Scottish Provident, Refuge Assurance, Royal Liver, United Assurance, United Friendly, Friends Provident and the Co-operative Insurance Society. If your paperwork carries one of those names, Royal London is who you deal with now.

The older the policy, the more likely it is to hit one of Trading 212's hard limits:

• Started before 6 April 2006. Trading 212 cannot accept a pension set up before that date, whatever is inside it
• Carries a guarantee. Trading 212 accepts no safeguarded benefits, which includes a Guaranteed Annuity Rate and a Guaranteed Minimum Pension. Some ex-Co-operative contracts carry a GMP, and Royal London's own fact sheet for one of them warns that transferring means losing "the valuable policy guarantees"
• Sits in a with-profits fund. Royal London can apply a market value reduction when you move money out of its With Profits or Crest Secure funds before your chosen pension date. Its Combined Individual Pension Plan key features set this out

A Royal London personal pension or workplace plan taken out in the last twenty years, invested in its Governed Portfolios or other unit-linked funds, usually clears all three.

Who gets ProfitShare

Royal London's ProfitShare page says you qualify "if you have taken out a pension plan with Royal London since 1 July 2001". For an occupational scheme, the date that counts is when the scheme began, not when you joined.

There are exclusions. ProfitShare is not paid on Crest Secure, on Retirement Account contracts, on self-invested savings, or on any plan set up with the Co-operative Insurance Society.

So if your pension is an ex-CIS plan, or anything from before mid-2001, there is no ProfitShare to give up, and you compare Royal London's charge with Trading 212's directly.

If you do qualify, the rate history has been steady: 0.18% a year from 2017 to 2019, then 0.15% every year from 2020 to 2026. The 2026 award shared £199 million with about 2.4 million customers. Royal London is clear it is not guaranteed, but ten years of awards is a reasonable basis for treating 0.15% as part of the price.

What Royal London charges

Royal London says it charges only an annual management charge. For a personal pension, the current structure is tiered by how much you hold, and its published table starts at 0.75% a year for up to £48,300, falling to 0.50% above that and 0.45% above £96,700. Funds run by outside managers can cost more.

Workplace plans are agreed employer by employer. Royal London publishes a spreadsheet of the charges that applied to its workplace schemes in 2025. In its main group personal pension sheet, which lists 30,613 scheme arrangements, the median charge on the default investment is 0.69% a year, and half of them sit between 0.52% and 0.75%. Transaction costs come on top. For comparison, the middle of L&G's range for its default funds is about 0.28%.

Your own figure is on your annual statement. Take it, subtract 0.15% if you get ProfitShare, and that is what staying costs.

On the Trading 212 side, the platform discloses one fee on the SIPP: 0.15% on currency conversion, which you avoid by buying investments priced in sterling. The funds still charge you. VWRP, the tracker I compared my own pot against, trades in sterling and charges 0.14% a year.

If you have read that the T212 SIPP carries an annual operator fee of around £90, that figure is wrong. We published it ourselves and have corrected it.

Timing a transfer around ProfitShare

ProfitShare is added on 1 April each year. To get it, your plan has to be in force on 31 December of the previous year and still in force on the award date.

Ask your new provider to start the transfer after 1 April and you keep that year's award. Start it in February and the money may well have left before April, and you give up one award for nothing. On a £40,000 pot that is about £60.

Awards already added stay with you. They are part of your plan's value, so they move across with everything else.

What else to check before you start

Royal London's transfer-out page lists the benefits it says you could lose: a Guaranteed Annuity Rate, loyalty bonuses and protected tax-free cash. Look for all three on your statement or ask Royal London directly.

Two more apply to the Trading 212 end. If your plan has a protected pension age, letting you take it before the normal minimum, Trading 212 says that protection "will be lost once the transfer is completed". The normal minimum rises from 55 to 57 in April 2028, so that can cost you two years of access. And Trading 212 cannot take employer contributions, so a workplace plan your employer is still paying into should stay open.

Whether you can move only part of a pot depends on the plan. Royal London's Combined Individual Pension Plan says "you must transfer all of the pension savings from your plan at the same time". I could not find Royal London wording on partial transfers out of its workplace plans, so ask before you assume either way. Trading 212 accepts partial transfers coming in.

Royal London does not charge to transfer out. If you are 55 or over, the FCA caps any early exit charge on an existing contract-based personal pension at 1%. Where guarantees are worth more than £30,000, the law requires you to take regulated advice before giving them up.

How long it takes

Royal London says "Pension transfers in the UK can take up to 12 weeks to complete, sometimes longer." Trading 212 quotes two to eight weeks for a cash transfer.

It will be a cash transfer. Royal London's Governed Portfolios and its other funds are its own, Trading 212 does not offer them, so Royal London sells your holdings and the proceeds land in your SIPP as cash. Nothing is invested until you buy something, and you are out of the market for however long the money is in transit.

After the transfer completes, Trading 212 gives you 30 days to ask for it to be reversed, though Royal London does not have to take the money back.

What moving is worth once ProfitShare is counted

Gareth and Hannah are 45. Each has £40,000 in a Royal London pension they no longer pay into, they plan to leave it until 57, and both qualify for ProfitShare.

Gareth's is a personal pension in a Governed Portfolio, so he pays 0.75% a year. Take off 0.15% of ProfitShare and staying costs him a net 0.60%. Hannah's is an old workplace plan where her employer negotiated 0.52%, near the cheaper end of Royal London's book, so her net cost is 0.37%. Either of them could move to the Trading 212 SIPP and hold VWRP at 0.14%.

At 5% a year before charges, here is what each option costs over twelve years, measured against the same pot with no charges.

Staying costs Gareth £5,005 over the twelve years, against £1,198 if he moves. The transfer is worth £3,807 to him. Without ProfitShare in the sum it would have looked like £5,007, so leaving it out overstates his saving by about £1,200.

Hannah saves £1,927 by moving. Her pot would be out of the market while it moves, and four weeks out of a market returning 5% a year costs about £154 on average on £40,000. That is more than her first year's saving of about £96, so she is behind for a year and ahead from the second.

Neither line accounts for what they would hold. A Governed Portfolio mixes shares, bonds and other assets, and Royal London's lifestyle options shift money into lower-risk portfolios as retirement gets closer. VWRP is all shares. Whether that is a reason to move depends on what else you own, which our Nest post covers at length.

So should you move it?

Find three things on your paperwork first: when the plan started, whether it carries any guarantee or with-profits money, and the annual charge.

Move it if the plan started after April 2006, carries no guarantees, and costs well above 0.14% even after you take off 0.15% for ProfitShare. On Royal London's published charges that describes most personal pensions under £48,300 and most of its workplace plans. Start the transfer after 1 April, and invest the money when it lands.

Leave it if you find a Guaranteed Annuity Rate or a Guaranteed Minimum Pension, because Trading 212 cannot take it and the guarantee is usually worth more than the fee gap. Leave a with-profits plan until its chosen pension date if a market value reduction would apply before then. And leave a workplace plan open while your employer is still paying in.

The wider checklist, including bundled life cover and what catches people out at the receiving end, is in our walkthrough of moving a workplace pension into the T212 SIPP.

Frequently asked questions

Can I transfer my Royal London pension to the Trading 212 SIPP?

Usually, if it is an uncrystallised defined contribution pension with no guarantees attached that started after 6 April 2006. Older policies Royal London took on from Scottish Life, Refuge, Royal Liver, United Assurance and the Co-operative Insurance Society are the ones most likely to fail, either on the start date or because they carry a guarantee Trading 212 cannot accept.

Does Royal London charge to transfer out?

No. Royal London says it does not apply any fees or charges if you transfer your pension to another provider, and Trading 212 does not charge to accept one. With-profits and Crest Secure money can have a market value reduction applied on transfer, which lowers what arrives.

Do I lose ProfitShare if I transfer out of Royal London?

You keep what has already been added to your pension, because it is part of the plan value that transfers. You lose future awards. ProfitShare is applied on 1 April each year to plans that were in force on 31 December and are still in force on the award date, so moving just after 1 April means you do not miss that year's award.

How much is Royal London ProfitShare worth?

It has been 0.15% of eligible plan values every year from 2020 to 2026, and 0.18% from 2017 to 2019. Royal London shared £199 million with about 2.4 million eligible customers in April 2026. It is not guaranteed. In practice it works like a 0.15% discount on the annual management charge.

How long does a Royal London to Trading 212 transfer take?

Royal London says UK pension transfers can take up to 12 weeks, sometimes longer. Trading 212 quotes two to eight weeks for a cash transfer. Royal London's own funds are not available on Trading 212, so the money is sold and moves as cash, and it is out of the market for part of that time.

Where can I get free guidance before I transfer?

UK savers aged 50 and over with a defined contribution pension can book a free Pension Wise appointment through MoneyHelper. gov.uk's pension transfer guidance is the official starting point for everyone else.

The takeaway

On most Royal London plans, moving to a cheap tracker in the Trading 212 SIPP saves money even after ProfitShare is counted.

Count it, though. Subtract 0.15% from the charge on your statement before you compare, check the plan's start date and guarantees, and time the move for just after 1 April so the last award lands before you go.

This is illustrative, not financial advice. Pension rules change, personal circumstances matter, investment returns are uncertain and past performance tells you nothing reliable about the future. The right answer for me may not be the right answer for you.