Selestia is a fund platform giving access to a wide range of investment funds.

geoffnye is right to say that the exit penalty is unavoidable, unless of course you leave the pension where it is. In reality this penalty may be a market value reduction which simply means that the fund hasn't performed as well as the current value shows. A MVR is applied to 'correct' the fund value where the performance has been less than the regular bonuses applied.

It is true to say that this fund does not look attractive over 10-years but you need to know the quality of the fund portfolio being put together on the Selestia platform, how often the adviser is going to review that and the adviser's qualifications and experience for recommending the range of funds in the first place.

Be aware that the with-profits fund holds a diverse range of asset classes including shares, cash, property and fixed interest. You should therefore check that the new funds recommended also give you a good spread of asset classes. Don't jump out of a low risk fund into a high risk one as you are likely to be shocked at some point over the next ten years.

The upfront cost is not unreasonable as it is commission and this could be as high as 3-3.5% which suggest the adviser has reduced his take to soften the effect of the exit penalty. However how about not paying commission at all and working with an adviser on a fee basis? The commission on this transfer is £5,325 which at an hourly fee rate of say £250 (probably generous) represents 21 hours of the adviser's time. Ask yourself if this is a fair reflection of the work involved. I would guess not. (See my blog post on commission vs fees).

geoffnye is probably right about a SIPP being appropriate for you but as with this option and the Selestia option also watch the annual charges compared with what you have at the moment. I would guess that a SIPP and Selestia would come in at 1.5% per annum plus. The existing funds are probably capped at 1% per annum and the with-profits fund may be a lot lower. Interestingly Standard Life do have a SIPP offering, although I don't know if you would have been made aware of that.

If you decide to go with the advice make sure that you are clear with the adviser how much annual servicing you can expect from him as the recurring commission is likely to be 0.5%, which is a further £1,065 per annum. It is more important to the performance of your pension which funds are changed each year as it is which funds are initially selected. For the costs you describe and the sum of money you have you could probably buy discretionary management in a SIPP which means daily monitoring and management of your pension funds.

10 years is a reasonable time horizon to make this investment change work for you but make sure of the quality of the advice you are receiving. 

As a last thought, perhaps we are looking at the wrong end of this problem. Perhpas it might be better to start by working out how much income you need in retirement and then working backwards to establish how much you need int he pension fund and therefore what contributions or growth you need. You may find that you are closer to your target than expected and therefore do not need to take ahigh investment risk to get there.

Matt Pitcher is a wealth adviser at Towry Law Group and a Moneywise Ask The Professionals columnist