A & L guaranteed capital plus

gozomark

who does the advisor work for ?

when is the earliest you might need the money ?
are you prepared to lose any of it ?

simon_templar_2

That type of investment is capital guaranteed so you dont lose any money. The question is how much extra you will make.

swiss69

I was wondering how long it would be before A & L started selling these type of products en masse. Santander have seen how succesful they are at Abbey - You would be amazed by the volume of these done by Abbey Advisors - I would imagine it makes up at least 75% of their investment business. The number of people who reinvest every 5 years is amazing even if they have only made the minimum return which at times has been pitiful.

You have to be careful with Structured products. They are only as "guaranteed" as the company providing the backing. Some structured products on offer last year were backed by Lehman Brothers....Needless to say the people who took those out are sitting on potential 100% losses.

If you are determined to look at this type of product, go and see an IFA - There are much better products than this on offer.

Some Funds are paying 4.3% a year in income yields at the moment so even if the market stayed the same you would expect a return of 26% over that term.

My view as always been... if you think the market will rise then put your money directly into the market, at your level of risk and in a fully diversified fund or range of funds.

dunstonh

Forget awards. Winning awards is easy and some really awful products win awards if you advertise with them enough or are in the "in crowd". Just look at how many awards the Virgin stakeholder pension won and that is just about the worst stakeholder pension you can get.

We are due for a new tranche on the Premier one any day now. The one just expired had an annual return of 12.25%.

You would be amazed by the volume of these done by Abbey Advisors - I would imagine it makes up at least 75% of their investment business. The number of people who reinvest every 5 years is amazing even if they have only made the minimum return which at times has been pitiful.

That really indicates the low level of skills and/or poor quality of product range they have.

Aegis

simon_templar wrote: »

This product has won the MoneyWise award for structured products recently. Most savings accounts or bonds are not offering anywhere like the potential returns. Descriptions such as rubbish and awful are a bit over the top.

Sorry, but it really is an awful product. There's a cash account set to come on to the market with a 5-year period and a 20% return. No link to the stockmarket, just a cash-based account that will give a guaranteed return. This should be available through IFAs soon, though I'm not exactly sure which provider is offering this.

To give an example of a similar product, Barclays are currently offering a 5 year product with a 55% return if the FTSE does anything other than drop by 50% or more. If it drops that much, it tracks the FTSE from there, but the 100% level of the FTSE corresponds to the 155% rather than just your initial deposit.

While the capital isn't as guaranteed as the A&L product, the return is massively more if the FTSE finishes anywhere above 2100 or so in 5 years time.

I'm not recommending this product or anything (and I personally wouldn't put my money in it for my own reasons), but I think for the majority of people it is much better than the A&L offer.

I believe that Premier Asset Management also tend to do guaranteed accounts that tend to have better terms than bank-based ones.

As always, anyone looking to advise should look around and see what they can get.

simon_templar_2

Is that why Barclays profits are down

Aegis

simon_templar wrote: »

Is that why Barclays profits are down

Well, no... Being only 14% down after all the bad news of 2008 is pretty impressive all in all, but this product is fairly new from them as I understand it, so it's almost certainly nothing to do with last year's profits

simon_templar_2

Abbey increased profits by 20%, so that is a 34% difference between the two banks. Now that is what i would call pretty impressive.

Aegis

simon_templar wrote: »

Abbey increased profits by 20%, so that is a 34% difference between the two banks. Now that is what i would call pretty impressive.

Well, when a business fails and gets bought out by a giant in that market, that's bound to have some impact on how well things are likely to go over the next year. It has no bearing whatsoever on the quality of their investment products, either for Abbey or A&L.

simon_templar_2

Which business failed?