AJ Bell Passive funds

bowlhead99

rpbrookes wrote: »

I'm curious, as I've just this week signed up to one of the "Moderately Cautious Passive Funds", how is this going for you? I'm also toying with investing a little in the adventurous fund.

I'm totally amateur with all of this, which is why I went for the fund as I want my money to work for me, but I've always made bad investment decisions. So if anyone has an update on how their passive fund with AJ Bell is performing, please let me know!

If you go to a fund data website like Trustnet or Morningstar (or even Youinvest's own fund screener which is powered by Morningstar) you can look up the fund you're interested in and see a little performance graph. From that, you can use your imagination to see what your return would have been if you had put money in on any of the dates since launch.

http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/funds/snapshot/snapshot.aspx?id=F00000YOW3

https://www.youinvest.co.uk/market-research/FUND:BYW8VG2
https://www.youinvest.co.uk/market-research/FUND:BYW8VJ5
https://www.youinvest.co.uk/market-research/FUND:BYW8RV9

You can see that the more adventurous ones go up and down to a greater extent (are more volatile) than the cautious ones. Of course, as the funds haven't been going a year yet there is not much interesting to go on if you are trying to compare their performance to cash or their rivals through the ups and downs of world market events across the economic cycle.

ValiantSon

They are way overpriced, in my view. This seems like AJ Bell just trying to cash in on a growing sector of the market and increasing the potential for customer retention because the funds are only available on their platform, so if you want to move platforms you have to sell the funds.

When the platform fee kicks in (January 2019, so now only an 11th month saving) costs will rise to 0.75%. Compare this to some of the other passive options (but with a degree of active management in asset allocation) and you can see how expensive this is, e.g. Blackrock Consensus on Hargreaves Lansdown at 0.46%, or HSBC Global Strategy on Cavendish at 0.47% (slight variation of hundredths of a per cent depending on specific fund), neither of which have transaction charges.

I'm not clear from the information on AJ Bell's site whether there are future transaction charges to buy additional units in the fund. In fact the information given is pretty poor all over.

I'd agree that paying a fee to hold cash is pretty appalling, and I'm sure that most investors could manage their own cash holdings for free, and make a little on them too!

Limited performance data available as the funds haven't been operating for a year, but what there is doesn't encourage me.

Audaxer

rpbrookes wrote: »

I'm curious, as I've just this week signed up to one of the "Moderately Cautious Passive Funds", how is this going for you? I'm also toying with investing a little in the adventurous fund.

I'm totally amateur with all of this, which is why I went for the fund as I want my money to work for me, but I've always made bad investment decisions. So if anyone has an update on how their passive fund with AJ Bell is performing, please let me know!

Cheers,
Ryan

If you look on the performance page of the Moderately Cautious fund on the AJ Bell site, it shows that in the last 6 months it has gone up 1.52%. These funds were only launched in April last year, so not much data to go on.

I think its better to pick one of the funds at your preferred risk level and stick with it rather than investing a little bit in one of the other funds.

Glen_Clark

I hold Large Cap ETFs with sub 0.1% fees and no platform charges on X-O, so it all looks expensive to me.

AusUkdude

Hi Folks, I have a SIPP with AJB, and it would be easy to invest in one of their passive funds. But I see the comments about it being a more expensive option, especially in a few months. I live in Australia, this is my former UK industry pension from when I worked there before coming here. The question is, is it posible to invest in (eg) a Vanguard fund that seems to come with less fees, from within that SIPP? Thanks

DairyQueen

AusUkdude wrote: »

Hi Folks, I have a SIPP with AJB, and it would be easy to invest in one of their passive funds. But I see the comments about it being a more expensive option, especially in a few months. I live in Australia, this is my former UK industry pension from when I worked there before coming here. The question is, is it posible to invest in (eg) a Vanguard fund that seems to come with less fees, from within that SIPP? Thanks

Yes, AJB provides access to all the 'usuals': Vanguard, Blackrock, L&G, etc.

Cookiejc1

Hi, I wanted to resurrect this thread to see what people’s views are now that the AJ Bell passive finds have been running for a while. The charges have been reduced to 0.35% for all funds but there is the holding fee in place now which I believe is 0.25% but there is a cap for each investment vehicle. I already have a SIPP with AJ Bell and am interested in changing the funds I hold from active to passive, this seems an easy way to do that with the benefit of having it balanced for me, with the fees cheaper than say paying an advisor to manage a portfolio. I’d love the insight on this from more experienced investors. Using these funds would you simply hold one at your desired risk level for the equity portion of a portfolio or several at differing levels even tho the underlying funds may overlap?

Alexland

At 0.35% these are a lot cheaper than the HL cash cow funds however there are still lower cost mixed asset funds such as HSBC Global Strategy, Vanguard LifeStrategy, etc which are also available on the YouInvest platform.

If you can find one that suits your desired asset allocation and risk appetite then that's all you need to hold.

Alex