Are you 'switched on' to self investment options?

Dear Editor, Steve Harvey's letter (Retirement Planner, May) made some very pertinent points about the "new" SIPP market and the potential for "mis-buying". There are two further points I would like to add. Firstly, the apparently huge growth in SIPP new business has been largely fuelled by the re-labelling by many life companies of their personal pension plans as SIPPs. In the past, these have generally been known as "deferred SIPPs" - in other words, personal pension plans which invest only in the life company's insured fund range but which can have the self investment option switched...