Fidelity Accumulation Fund - a scam?

AHB2019 wrote: »

Well I have spent a lot of time looking at a lot of Fidelity documents and seen nothing; there is certainly nothing in my annual statement, In my case, it is in an ISA, so presumably they don't need to provide that information for HMRC purposes.

We found Fidelity extremely poor at communication, I think the problem is that the people you speak to on the telephone don't understand what is going on, but even worse, instead of saying something like 'I don't know, but I'll transfer you to someone that does' they tend to guess, and they often gave us incorrect information. They compensated my wife a couple of times, and really wound me up a few times. In the end we moved to HL, where we are much happier.

AHB2019 wrote: »

Thank you Masonic. I am not sure that putting something on page 237 of an annual report (presumably aimed at industry professionals) would count as clear communication with retail customers!

The information is provided in a clear format. There is only a large number of pages because there is a large number of funds. It's only 3 pages per fund and not really any more difficult to understand than the KIID.

Some retail customers might have difficulty understanding it, but those individuals would be referred to their financial adviser. If a customer doesn't have an adviser, then as a DIY investor the onus is on them to familiarise themselves with these standard industry reporting formats and gain a thorough understanding of any prospective investments before investing.

AHB2019 wrote: »

Thank you so much coyrls. This gives the following information:

Fidelity Index UK A
Dividend type Dividend amount Tax indicator Ex dividend date Payment date
Interim 2.563 p Dividend 01-Mar-2016 30-Apr-2016

But (please be patient with my questions!) how do I know that the dividend was entirely reinvested (as opposed to partially reinvested), and is there any way of finding out what effect the dividend reinvestment had on the unit price?

yes, compare it with its "sister" income fund

Another question: the chart shows the fund performance compared to the FTSE all-share index. Surely if it was an accumulation fund it should massively outperform the index, as it is reinvesting rather than providing an income.

Apologies if these questions are seemingly dumb.

The best an index fund can do is track the index with a small loss. It should never outperform the index (and certainly not massively) !! because its aim is to track it and the only way it could outperform it would by by holding shares in different proportions to the FTSE AS which it shouldn't do.

What it is compared with should be the FTSE AS with dividends reinvested otherwise its not a good comparison since there should be a 2-3% variance each year in favor of the acc fund.

When choosing an index tracker IMO the only metric that matters is, how low the management fee is (assuming it is tracking well). The management fee must detract from the tracking since there's nowhere else for it come from. This fund seems to have a very low fee (0.08%) so thats likely the best you'll get.

masonic wrote: »

I think the point being made above was that the difference in price performance would approximate to the dividend income retained by the accumulation fund. Though describing that as "massive" would be quite an overstatement.

Over say 10-20 years that could be significant, indeed, dare I say it .... massive