What a Loss

jamesd

Yes, definitely worth looking at the investments. They did a remarkably bad job for any risk level given that both equities and bonds have in general shown positive returns over the period, not negative.

What you'd be looking for with the investments is whether there's any sign that they took the risk tolerance and your capacity for loss guidelines they were given seriously. Based on the results I doubt that they did. The performance of the individual investments isn't the issue, rather the combined expected volatility (up and down movement level) is. A lack of a substantial percentage of bonds/gilts or bond/gilt funds would be a big red flag implying a high chance of a successful complaint.

jamesd

fugglestick wrote: »

I dont pay pensions contributions being age 67

Quite likely to be a missed income opportunity there. Have a read of this about some free money typically available that way.

EdGasket

Must be worse than losing money yourself to pay someone to do it for you.

bigfreddiel

EdGasket wrote: »

Must be worse than losing money yourself to pay someone to do it for you.

Well they were professional money people, so who's going to win this game? Let me see, I'll take a guess! Is it the professional? Yes, of course it is.

Now to get a bit serious now, they were following your instructions, so it's clearly you at fault. No need to try and do them for incompetence then.

Also they only offer you advice or options for you to choose, or take their defaults, so again your responsibility

A chimp with a pin could do just as well it seems in this case

Good luck in the future, cheers fj

EdGasket

fugglestick wrote: »

And so back to the draining of the swamp, are there any suggestions to areas where I can invest for modest returns, other than gold and metals investment.
The irony is, whilst I was paying them fees, the Sovereigns I bought years go myself have made a far better return than the above!!! So I am tempted to re invest in gold.

If you want to invest in gold, a gold ETF would be cheaper than coins; take a look at iShares SGLN gold ETF fund or SPGP if you prefer gold miners.
There's not a lot to invest in right now. Bonds pay next to nothing and their capital value will undoubtedly fall soon due to interest rate rises. There's a few housebuilders and property shares beaten down by Brexit that have not quite fully recovered e.g. SMP, UAI, BLND
Emerging market funds also still good value e.g, VFEM (Vanguard ETF)

AnotherJoe

bigfreddiel wrote: »

Well they were professional money people, so who's going to win this game? Let me see, I'll take a guess! Is it the professional? Yes, of course it is.

Now to get a bit serious now, they were following your instructions, so it's clearly you at fault. No need to try and do them for incompetence then.

Also they only offer you advice or options for you to choose, or take their defaults, so again your responsibility

A chimp with a pin could do just as well it seems in this case

Good luck in the future, cheers fj

Very harsh. From what the OP said, he asked them to make the investment decisions as he didn't feel competent to. A not uncommon attitude. Unfortunately it seems their bad choices and investment fees lost money. A difficult thing to do over the past 4 years.

Ray_Singh-Blue

A chimp with a pin could have done better, could have done worse.

Why not just buy a really simple tracker fund. Eliminate the chimp, your returns will mirror global equity and bond market trends. Sometimes I think that everyone should be required to invest in VLS 60 for 5 years, alongside a dummy portfolio of their choosing, before being given a licence to play with pins- Wish I had.

magpiecottage

It is possible that the portfolio was unsuitable for the OP, particularly given the timescale, so he could complain about this. However, the simple fact that it lost money would not be valid grounds for complaint.

sandsy

If you say what the SIPP was invested in, people here might be able to advise if it was appropriate for a low to medium risk profile. And if it wasn't, you may have a case for complaint.

dunstonh

From what I can see, BM have not reported a loss their portfolios in that period. So, something doesnt seem quite right.

In every one of their risk based portfolios, every year since 2012 (discrete annual performance) has returned a profit except a couple in 2012 which suffered very small losses but cumulatively have returned profits in the whole period.