Standard Life Sterling Fund

Perfect_Choice

Yes it is the same fund, I used the Pension One fund myself before October last year and also have the same Sterling Fund in the stakeholder pension for my wife. They perform the same with the same proportionate drops/rises daily.

I find the previous pst of the automatic redirect of your funds into Sterling amazing. How can Standard Life justify this as a safe fund for retirement! This sounds the territory for complaint to the FSA, along with the fund profile change increasing the risk of the fund without reasonably informing investors it had changed?

artha

Perfect_Choice wrote: »

I find the previous pst of the automatic redirect of your funds into Sterling amazing. How can Standard Life justify this as a safe fund for retirement! This sounds the territory for complaint to the FSA, along with the fund profile change increasing the risk of the fund without reasonably informing investors it had changed?

I agree. My money is going into the fund via our company AVC scheme. We used to have quite a wide choice of options including a Woolwich BS fund. This was removed as an option a few years ago and I believe those that had funds there were switched to the SL Sterling One Fund as an equivalent.

ManAtHome

Just half-heard a trail for Money Box (Radio 4 in 20 mins) about Standard Life 'safe' pension funds dropping 5% - could be this.

Workandpay

I had all my pension fund invested in this fund so I'm interested in ways of pressuring Standard Life to reverse this decision. I guess lots of people are considering a complaint to the FSA but it may need much more than that. Many thanks for all the very helpful comments here, including the technical view from the financial adviser. I'm looking at getting together a place where people invested in the fund can register so we can take concerted action if necessary. I'll be back!

dlet

Like others, I relied on Standard Life info on this fund as a safe haven - no volatility, reduced returns ( by comparison with stock market etc). The fund info showed a graph indicating that its performance benchmark is the money market - a non volatile index. And the fund followed that index precisely. So in September I put in 25% of my existing pension - 2 years before retirement.

The fund details were altered a few days ago showing the SL fund completely decoupled from its benchmark. The money market performance line is very straight- no losses/ volatility - and the SL performance line shows a massive drop.

If a fund indicated that it was tracking the UK stock market, and then decoupled from that index by 10% over 3 months, then I would expect UK regulators to crawl all over it - clearly some explaining would be required - rogue trading??

There is a very serious issue here about disclosure and risk . Acting responsibly, on the index, and on the information provided by SL I thought I was accepting potentially reduced returns in return for a safe haven. No indication that the fund could drop 5% in one day (14th January).There's a strong deviation from the rest of the market, and like others I shall be asking Standard Life to make good my loss in full - keen to support / join others. I'll be going to the FSA on the basis that
1. there has been a misrepresentation as to the index that the fund was following
2. Based on that misrepresentation I have been duped into going into an extremely high risk fund 2 years before retirement.

Schnorbitz_2

I heard the Moneybox interview with the man from Standard Life (Man At Home managed to get the notice on to the board today - I would have done, had my internet been working then!). He provided virtually no indication as to why this happened - was it a change in reporting policy, or a particular issue of money market instruments that defaulted? He sounded more like a customer service man than an economist or dealer. The Moneybox audience is very well informed, and I reckon we would have all like to have known what specifically happened. It should be still available on iPlayer for another week.

Myrmidon_J

dunstonh wrote:

He did remark that the comments he had heard was that Std Life did have some marketing literature that may have misrepresented the risk level. I tend not to use providers own stuff as its unreliable, plus I dont use SL so i cant recall what the literature said. However, you may wish to dig a copy out if you still have it as you may have grounds for complaint under misrepresentation.

Standard Life changed the literature on their website (for the Sterling and Managed Cash funds) on a daily basis last week. I think they were trying to cover themselves...

The company was never very high in my estimation, but has now plummeted so far as to be positively subterranean. They have 'managed' the crisis so utterly abysmally and many people have suffered as a result.

On several of their products, no cash (real cash) fund is available: there is no 'low risk' option. Approaching retirement, especially in the current economic climate, I expect thousands of individuals switched out of equities and property - in to the Sterling fund.

It is near impossible to source reliable, up-to-date information on the fund (fact sheets are usually a full quarter behind and are poorly detailed); this makes it very difficult to accurately gauge the risk of the fund.

I actually think that the announcement made by Standard Life will lead to a run on the fund. (AIG, anyone?) And I think they'll be very lucky to achieve 90p in the £1 on some of these assets...

I also think that the so-called 'Managed Cash' fund - launched only recently by Standard Life - is the most cynical, snidey proposition imaginable. The timing indicates that Standard Life knew precisely what was going to happen, and the 1.00% AMC (on a cash fund!) is extortionate.

Crooks!

[/rant]

ManAtHome

Schnorbitz wrote: »

He provided virtually no indication as to why this happened - was it a change in reporting policy, or a particular issue of money market instruments that defaulted? He sounded more like a customer service man than an economist or dealer.

Sounded more like a politician they'd hired for the day - if they'd put it out as an advert, my guess is that nobody would bother doing business with SL ever again.

dunstonh

This may end up a bit like the AXA case from a few years back.

If people are intending to complain to the FSA that the literature was misleading, the FSA (once they get enough people to notice a trend and decide to look at it) will ask to see the old literature. The FSA will then decide if its was misleading or not.

The AXA case a few years back was in respect of complaints being upheld even no advice was given because there were errors in the literature. It doesnt happen often though.

It will take lots of you to complain to the FSA. Otherwise the FSA will just forward your complaints to Std Life to deal with in the normal way. They need to spot an issue that is widespread and concerns a lot of people. One or two complaints wont interest the FSA.

Jennifer_Jane

There was an article in today's Mail on Sunday.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/money/article-1120642/Low-risk-Standard-Life-pension-fund-loses-100m.html

Jen
Good luck with this.