STILL looking for a pension? The deadline for self employed and company directors to enjoy tax relief for this year is just a week away and brokers and pensions companies report strong business for these highly tax efficient retirement contracts.

Equitable Life, which only sells through its own salesforce (it does not pay commissions to intermediaries) has launched the first Internet pension web site for people interested in an equitable pension or savings plan. It not only gives you simple to follow information about these products but also supplies a pension calculator.

You key in your current pension position - i.e. how much you are contributing, what your pension income expectations are, and it shows you what value pension you can expect after the period indicated. It also illustrates the impact of any delay in saving, the future effect of inflation on your pension fund and the comparative costs and charges of the leading pension companies. You can visit the Equitable Life web site on http.//www.equitable.ie

Meanwhile, Friends Provident and New Ireland have decided to co operate rather than compete for new pension holders by signing an agreement allowing their policyholders to access each others managed fund. New pension holders can also create a new fund for themselves by investing in both managed funds but pay only one set of charges and commissions. Charges are paid to whichever company the policyholders first sets up a policy and that company is the sole administrator of the pension no matter where the contributions are allocated.

Last year Friends Provident went the unique route of offering a range of unit trust and unit fund managers to their pension customers and this panel, which also includes Ulster Bank Investment Managers, Gartmore and Schroder is also available to any new pension holder. Aside from the fact these are all steady performance managers, the other advantage of having such a wide domestic and international fund choice is that you can spread your investment risk without necessarily having to take out separate contracts. You should contact an independent financial adviser for more information about these policies.

Finally, our apologies to Guardian Life for failing to mention last week that it too is among the small group of providers of traditional with profit contracts. For the last three years Guardian's with profit policy has produced 10 year maturity values that have outperformed all others in the market but this needs to be seen in the context of how few such contracts are maturing.