Transfer out of GSIPP to fund manager

milton1970

Thanks in advance for any help here … looking for guidance


I am contemplating transferring my SIPP from its current pension manager (largely passive with low fees) to an alternative manager (active with marginally higher fees).


Understand the pros v cons but was looking for some guidance on the relative merits / performance of other fund managers. One suggestion was Close Brothers but looking at options still.


Is there any data on relative performance / cost available ? (historic I know)


TIA

dunstonh

Understand the pros v cons but was looking for some guidance on the relative merits / performance of other fund managers. One suggestion was Close Brothers but looking at options still.

There are merits in using some managed funds. However, there is no one fund house that has viable options in all sectors. So, you wouldnt want one fund house doing the lot.

Typically, the best option is a mix and match of active and passive. Using passives in areas where there is no obvious managed fund available and using a managed fund where there is. So, a SIPP would be the best wrapper option to achieve that. i.e. what you already have.

bowlhead99

Is your plan to give Close (or some other alternative manager) free reign to allocate your assets however they like on a discretionary basis (discretionary managed funds / managed portfolio)? Or to select your assets yourself (the 'self invested' part of S.I.PP) and just use Close as the provider of the investment platform / trustee / custodian of the assets?

If the former, it's difficult to get relative performance comparisons on discretionary managers /wealth managers against their rivals. And even if you get a comparison of what they delivered vs what someone else delivered for allegedly the same level of risk, it can be difficult to extrapolate that to a future period which is facing different economic conditions, if the point of their service is for them to use their discretion to do whatever they think is best for their customers under those circumstances.

The starting point for discretionary management, if you're not using an independent adviser, is probably to make your shortlist of providers and then enquire how they benchmark themselves to the competition and what their USPs and investment processes are, as well as fee levels. Then you have the challenge of discerning how much of that is substance rather than meaningless slick marketing.

Beyond that, I can't help much as I don't go in for discretionary management - preferring to just use a pretty standard SIPP and select my own allocations from the universe of funds / ETF, investment trust and direct individual company shares or bonds that I want.

In my case, it's just important that the cost for buying and holding the assets is competitive, all the types of assets I want are available ( e.g. I don't think I would use Close as they don't offer shares traded on overseas markets to be directly held in their SIPP, which I want to do from time to time) and the customer service not completely terrible. For me, there's no 'relative performance' issue when comparing SIPP providers as I would be holding roughly the same assets and get the same gross returns no matter who I used to hold the assets.

Whereas, if you are planning to use a managed portfolio service to access a bespoke fund - which isn't available in the wider market, only from one asset manager - you would have to assess how well that fund is likely to perform compared to the equivalent bespoke fund from the provider down the road.

milton1970

Thanks Bowlhead & Dunstonh


In early stages of looking at options - was thinking of the Discretionary Management approach & a colleague suggested Close.


Is there an easy way to establish the options on providers here ?

dunstonh

In early stages of looking at options - was thinking of the Discretionary Management approach & a colleague suggested Close.

Do you need discretionary? I view the majority of DFMs as an extra layer of charges with no real benefit. Only a handful would put my criteria and in most cases, we use advisory over discretionary due to costs.

Is there an easy way to establish the options on providers here ?

Not for DFMS, no.