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mal48

As I say, I do my research with a clear head. Now the facts and tigures are known. To those who dispute them are you saying that SF are deliberately stating falsehoods about their charges? If so, put this on the record.

mal48

bow, a 1.5% charge appied to an invested amount plus the growth rounds up to 1.6%. I use the term ideal as meaning something used for the purposes of illustration, not to mean a perfect situation. You appear to be saying that SF are deliberately making false statements and this you need to put explicitly on the record. That is now the main issue.

mal48

SF run many policies using the same funds, but with different charges. bow's confusing them. Whatever the growth, the charge as a percentage stays the same. That's why as bow vaguely realises 5% is an ideal figure. But all this we've discussed. I now need to know if you are saying SF are lying about their charges.

mal48

I've not decided how I'll invest in the next financial year. There are features of SF that I like and I may well stick with them. I'm not claiming it's the best product on the market, though it produces better returns than many and I'm not trying to persuade anyone to buy it. The original poster asked about SF and was told it was very poor, with extortionate charges. My purpose in coming onto the thread was to counter this In the case of some of the My Choice funds.To move on, I now need to know if bow or others are prepared to explicitly put on the record that SF are lying about their charges.

mal48

Straight question: Are SF lying about their charges or not?

bigadaj

mal48 wrote: »

Straight question: Are SF lying about their charges or not?

They are not stating them in the industry standard manner, and not including some of the inherent costs in running the fund, so not transparent and not compliant with current standards, again we are talking about conventions acceptable to the mid nineties but nowhere near what you would expect for this decade.

It might be worthy of a complaint to the regulator as they are not clearly and easily supplying information to customers in a similar manner to that of their competitors.

I don't see why you are defending such a poor and outdated product unless you are sensitive about over paying for an outdated product with at best average performance for many years.

Interestingly why have you stayed with them rather than accessing your preferred svm product with lower fees, seems illogical over and above the issue of whether that product is itself worthwhile?

bowlhead99

Hello Mal. You seem to have asked the same thing five times in the space of 72 minutes without waiting for anyone to respond in between.

On most discussion forums, people take turns to talk. Otherwise, how can you hope for a discussion? If someone asks a question and hasn't had a response after at least a day, they might try bumping it, by rephrasing to put their point across in different way. You don't seem to have got the hang of this. I must conclude your social skills are no more well-formed than your investment ones.

mal48 wrote: »

As I say, I do my research with a clear head. Now the facts and tigures are known. To those who dispute them are you saying that SF are deliberately stating falsehoods about their charges? If so, put this on the record.

mal48 wrote: »

You appear to be saying that SF are deliberately making false statements and this you need to put explicitly on the record. That is now the main issue.

mal48 wrote: »

I now need to know if you are saying SF are lying about their charges.

mal48 wrote: »

To move on, I .now need to know if bow or others are prepared to explicitly put on the record that SF are lying about their charges.

mal48 wrote: »

Straight question: Are SF lying about their charges or not?

But hold on: Didn't you already ask this in post #96? Ah yes:

mal48 wrote: »

Now about these charges. You've read the Key Facts. You seen what the charges are and what they cover.You`ve seen the illustration of the reduction in growth from charges. Are you saying SF are making deliberately false statements? If so put it on the record.

I replied to you on that in post 101. Our discussions are public domain and a matter of record.

I believe you may misunderstand the charges as published by Scottish Friendly, and have tried to point you in the right direction.

Either way, it is clear that the products are expensive: better, cheaper, equivalent products are available elsewhere.

mal48 wrote: »

The original poster asked about SF and was told it was very poor, with extortionate charges. My purpose in coming on to the thread was to counter this In the case of some of the My Choice funds.

But as you then learned, the products were poor, and had extortionate charges. 1.5% AMC is a huge amount in this day and age, whether or not the OCF is greater than the AMC. Equivalent funds are available elsewhere for less, even accounting for platform charges.

masonic

mal48 wrote: »

Straight question: Are SF lying about their charges or not?

If they stated that 1.5% covered all of the charges taken from the fund then they would be lying. They don't state that. They do not provide a combined figure for charges.

A follow-on question is: Are SF presenting their charges in a misleading manner by presenting only the AMC, and leaving investors to work out for themselves what that does and does not include?
I think the answer to that question is yes.

mal48

Don't worry about my social skills, bow. SF claim in their Higher Fund Key Facts that their maximum charge is 1.5%. You're trying to demonstrate that it's much higher than this and this implies SF are making false claims and so are acting unlawfully. I've asked you to put this on the record because you keep evading the question, though interestingly you don't make a denial. Your argument is that SF charges are excessively high because they are much more than given in the literature and SF are making false claims. You're probably being crafty enough to avoid libel, but your arguments are specious.

dunstonh

SF claim in their Higher Fund Key Facts that their maximum charge is 1.5%.

The key facts say its the annual management charge. They do not disclose what the OCF is. The OCF is usually higher than the AMC with most funds and the OCF is the figure all funds should be compared by.

In FCA publication TR14/7 they said:
Using the AMC as the headline charge figure on marketing material does not provide investors
with a clear, combined figure for charges as it excludes additional charges and expenses that
are taken from funds. Additional ongoing charges can add significant amounts to the cost
of a fund and we saw some small funds with charges of up to 0.9% in addition to the AMC.
Using the AMC could therefore result in retail investors finding it difficult to accurately compare
charges and potentially underestimating the cost of some funds.