What is my IFA doing for me

atush

Neverland wrote: »

Actually I have a pro-saver agenda having pretty successfully got free of the leeches in the pension advisory system and managed my family's personal pension funds very successfully by self investing and keeping the costs down

I want to encourage every-one else to do the same and not listen to propaganda from IFAs seeking to make excessive fees off the backs of ordinary people

If anyone here is a troll...look in a mirror :rotfl:

you are clearly a troll with an anti IFA bias. I am not one and even I find you offensive.

In any case I dont beleive your boasts about huge investment performance if this is any indication of your investment 'knowledge':

- consolidate the pensions into a low cost SIPP wrapper
- put the money in a low cost tracker fund or two

Anyone who advises others to put everything into one or two tracker funds is a complete idiot. Your a like a gold or silver bug- bonkers.

atush

Sazz,

Everyone who was invested in mainly or only equities lost money on last years pension. Only those heavily invested in things like bonds and gilts had a good year. So just put this down to a bad year, if you go back a statement or two have you not noticed a bumper year or 2????

But you do need a new IFA. First of all, he cold called you. Good IFAs never do this. Second, he is insisting on commission and good IFA will do it on a fee basis and a fair one.

Thirdly you can self invest DIY style, but do read up in the subject or you will end up as uninformed as NEvermind and put all your eggs in one basket. And maybe a rickety basket at that?

bigfreddiel

sazz1006 wrote: »

We're now a year on and he's made an appointment to 'review' my pension. I have also just had my forecast and the amount in the pot has dropped by 10,000 in value since last year.
....really need to knock 500.00 a year off the fund to pay for this advice?
Thank you

sounds like great value (not) - if only ifas stood by their advie and charged accordingly - ditch the ifa - go to the small claims court and sue him for negligence - he's probably got insurance to cover it. banks are paying up for the ppi selling fiasco so why shouldn't an ifa for selling bad advice.

just waiting now for the response that you can't sue - you took the advice that obviously has no guarantee so it was your decision and thus your fault

maybe the ifa didn't explain the risks and you could get him that way - but i doubt it

ditch the ifa - learn a bit - its not rocket science and do it yourself

happy days

fj

bigfreddiel

jamesd wrote: »

An 8% drop for last year isn't unreasonable.

thats odd - i've seen posts on this forum claiming that their investments make 8+% yer on year - some even claim 15-30%

strangely they never actuall say how the do it despite asking.

dunstonh

bigfreddiel wrote: »

thats odd - i've seen posts on this forum claiming that their investments make 8+% yer on year - some even claim 15-30%

strangely they never actuall say how the do it despite asking.

I have seen no posts claiming investments make 8% a year every year. Would you like to present an example to back this up or does that not fit with your agenda?

atush

Particularly Nevermind?

I said I lost on pensions last year that were in equities, but OH has one that is mostly in gilts and bonds and that did really well.

Swings and roundabouts really.

Aegis

bigfreddiel wrote: »

sounds like great value (not) - if only ifas stood by their advie and charged accordingly - ditch the ifa - go to the small claims court and sue him for negligence - he's probably got insurance to cover it.

This is really stupid advice and could feasibly get the OP listed as a vexatious litigator - unless there's actual demonstrable negligence you can't simply decide to sue someone for negligence. In any case, within financial services there's a very clear route to go down which costs the consumer nothing: complain to the organisation, then after 8 weeks (if they haven't given a satisfactory response), proceed to the Financial Ombudsman.

banks are paying up for the ppi selling fiasco so why shouldn't an ifa for selling bad advice.

How exactly have you determined that the advice was bad? Performance in hindsight isn't in any way conclusive.

just waiting now for the response that you can't sue - you took the advice that obviously has no guarantee so it was your decision and thus your fault

No, if (and it's a big if so far) the advice was poorly put together there is plenty of consumer protection in place. However, there's nothing so far indicating that the advice itself was bad, only the investment performance over one year.

maybe the ifa didn't explain the risks and you could get him that way - but i doubt it

So how should this poster "get" their IFA, since you seem so keen to have them sue/complain/fire them? On what grounds?

ditch the ifa - learn a bit - its not rocket science and do it yourself

Definitely something some people can do, not for everyone though.

Salster278

bigfreddiel wrote: »

sounds like great value (not) - if only ifas stood by their advie and charged accordingly - ditch the ifa - go to the small claims court and sue him for negligence - he's probably got insurance to cover it. banks are paying up for the ppi selling fiasco so why shouldn't an ifa for selling bad advice.

just waiting now for the response that you can't sue - you took the advice that obviously has no guarantee so it was your decision and thus your fault

maybe the ifa didn't explain the risks and you could get him that way - but i doubt it

ditch the ifa - learn a bit - its not rocket science and do it yourself

happy days

fj

Jeez -patronising or what! All I asked for was whether the fee was reasonable and fully admitted I was not savvy in these matters. I asked for help- isn't that what these forums are for? Why are you being so aggressive towards me? It was YOU that mentioned sueing.

lvader

bigfreddiel wrote: »

thats odd - i've seen posts on this forum claiming that their investments make 8+% yer on year - some even claim 15-30%

strangely they never actuall say how the do it despite asking.

On a good year 15-30% is normal, on average 8% a year is also possible, you could make a loss of 8% on a bad year and still be consistant with the above.

Neverland

atush wrote: »

In any case I dont beleive your boasts about huge investment performance if this is any indication of your investment 'knowledge':

...

Anyone who advises others to put everything into one or two tracker funds is a complete idiot. Your a like a gold or silver bug- bonkers.

Depends what you are tracking

There are a few funds that track the FTSE world large cap index (for equities) and the Barclays Global Bond Index (for fixed interest) very cheaply

These will by definition produce slightly below "average" returns because they track the benchmarks everyone measures

Since you are slagging off me again, I can honestly tell you I doubled my personal pension fund over 4 years through 3 very simple decisions I made:
- I was largely out of equities by mid-2008
- I went back in to equities in March 2009 in a big way
- I sold all my equities and bought index linked gilts by mid-2011, just because my fund had got so big and they limited the lifetime allowance

I'd like to say this was genius but actually it was just pure luck...

...just as its luck when any fund manager or IFA makes you those sorts of returns...

...the difference is they will call it skill and charge you the earth for it

You can call me a liar, but its actually true..