Types of Personal Pension

"Personal pension" is an umbrella term covering several distinct products, and knowing which one you (or an old pot you're trying to identify) actually have makes a real difference to how much control you get and what it costs. A stakeholder pension is the simplest: charges are capped by law, contributions can be small and irregular, and there's no penalty for stopping and starting. A self-invested personal pension (SIPP) sits at the other end of the spectrum, giving you a much wider range of investments — individual shares, investment trusts, exchange-traded funds, even commercial property — in exchange for more responsibility for your own decisions and usually higher charges. A group personal pension (GPP) is different again: it's a collection of individual personal pension contracts, but arranged and often part-funded by an employer, commonly as the vehicle for workplace auto-enrolment. All three are personal pensions in the legal sense — you own the contract, not a trust — but they suit very different people. The guides below walk through each one in detail, then put them side by side so you can see which matches how much time, confidence and investment knowledge you want to bring to managing your own retirement savings.