My experience switching iDeco plans

[Jansen]

I was on SBI's Original plan and switched to the newer Select plan using the below link.The procedure is straight forward, you click the button and they'll snail mail you a form where you check a box and mail it back. It doesn't even ask for identification.

https://site0.sbisec.co.jp/marble/multi ... lan_change

Now, despite the term 'switch(変更)', it doesn't really switch your account. What they do is create a new account, sell off whatever you're holding, transfer the funds over to the new account, then (presumably) delete the older account. All over a period of at least 3 months. You might want to backup all transactions performed as all that history is gone.

Also, due to the inopportune timing of the sale, I made losses of almost 60k yen mostly from EM funds that plummeted at the end of July. If you're going to make a switch, you are warned.

Here's the timeline.

- end June, I mailed in the form
- sometime in July, presumably, it got processed here
- early August, receive a letter with my new account id and password
- late August, some of my holdings got sold off
- early September, rest of my holdings got sold off, cash still sitting in old account

[Tony]

What is the difference between ideco original and ideco select? And was it worth the switch?

[Petronius]

Thanks for the feedback
I just mailed my form last week.
Still using snail mail in 2019...way to go SBI

Tony, the difference between the 2 plans are the funds available in each of them.
Only the newest select plan has the cheap emaxis funds.
Depending on what you want to buy one plan might be better than the other for you.

[Leafs_Raps]

My wife and I had pretty much the exact same experience except our funds from our old "original" accounts have not been transferred to our new "select" accounts and since our "original" accounts have been presumably closed (neither of us can no longer log in), we have no idea where this money is... We made the switch at the beginning of September and made our first investment using the select account on September 11. According to the website, the only money in our accounts is the money we invested in September... Time to call SBI on Tuesday, I guess, unless I am missing something or it just takes a little longer for them to transfer the funds...

[RetireJapan]

This is very helpful. I still haven't gotten round to doing this for my wife's account.

[adamu]

We made the switch at the beginning of September and made our first investment using the select account on September 11
...
Time to call SBI on Tuesday, I guess, unless I am missing something or it just takes a little longer for them to transfer the funds...

I think anything involving iDeCo takes months. I'd save your energy, and call them if it doesn't sort itself out by November.

[Leafs_Raps]

We made the switch at the beginning of September and made our first investment using the select account on September 11
...
Time to call SBI on Tuesday, I guess, unless I am missing something or it just takes a little longer for them to transfer the funds...

I think anything involving iDeCo takes months. I'd save your energy, and call them if it doesn't sort itself out by November.

My money from my "original" account was put in my new "select" account today, however, there is no record of my transactions in my previous account. Like Jansen mentioned earlier, if you are making the switch, you might want to take a few screen shots.

[Jansen]

Same here. The old money has just magically appeared in my new account with neither deposit nor transaction history. Also I can’t log in to the old account anymore.

[Petronius]

I am upping this thread for help:
On my original plan, the assets have been sold and the cash transferred on the new select plan.
I now have a pile of cash sitting in the select plan but I cannot find an option to buy funds with it.

Will it be automatically converted according to the monthly allocation I set?
Or am I missing something?

Thanks

[Jansen]

You can't buy any with the cash. Give it a few days and it'll assign it accordingly to your asset allocation. SBI does things very slowly.