Would you feel comfortable...

RetSol

I think that EthicsGradient is asking the right sort of questions here.  If I were investing a very large sum in one or two funds, I would spread each holding across two or more platforms.  I would also want to know in advance what the procedure would be if the platform failed. Would the units would be transferred to another broker or would they be sold and the proceeds transferred (or returned to me)?  Whatever the answer, the investment might well be inaccessible while the transfer/sale was sorted out and that could take some time.  But then, I am very averse to having all my eggs in one basket

sixpence.

Yeah I don't enough about it, to be honest.
I am trying to qualify the risk level. It sounds as if a lot of people on here would be fine with holing seven figures in a VLS 60 with Vanguard as a platform. 

AnotherJoe

Like Albermarle id have no qualms about the amount but qualms about a fund that has an artificial concentration in a few industries and will remain so due to the arbitrary so-called UK weighting. 

Albermarle

If I were investing a very large sum in one or two funds, I would spread each holding across two or more platforms

Probably so would most people , but the OP basically asked would you be happy to keep more than £85K with Vanguard and the answer to that is , no problem.

It sounds as if a lot of people on here would be fine with holing seven figures in a VLS 60 with Vanguard as a platform. 

Or any mainstream fund with any mainstream platform., although from an investment portfolio /diversification point of view, I guess there is not many who have a Million quid in just one fund. 

ColdIron

sixpence. said:

Or do you feel the risk of not being covered by the FCA beyond 75k makes this a bad idea.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is a regulatory body and provides no compensation in the event of failure, perhaps you mean the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) which provides protection up to £85,000

FWIW I have several accounts (with different objectives) all in excess of that level and am quite comfortable with it. The extra complication and likely extra cost of chopping everything into £85k chunks outweighs whatever small benefits may exist in the unlikely event of failure of a mainstream provider

But like everything it's horses for courses. If you are very risk averse with a £150k pot then the peace of mind may be worth it to you and not that onerous in practise. But what about a £500k, or larger, pot? Would you really divvy it up into 6 pensions or 3 pensions and 3 ISAs? Six or more logins? Imagine the rebalancing etc

Unless you are young I would imagine that most people's company DC pensions are much greater than that level and most people don't give it a seconds thought

Notepad_Phil

sixpence. said:

Holding six or seven figures in a Vanguard LifeStrategy? It's a low cost, diverse passive fund.
Or do you feel the risk of not being covered by the FCA beyond 75k makes this a bad idea. 
I'm on the fence, obviously, which is why I've started this thread 

I'm early retired and not invested in LS but do have other funds with low 6 figure sums in them and I don't have a problem with that - but I'd be looking for other funds (and platforms to hold them) if the total amount being held in it is a high percentage of your total worth. Not so much for the FSCS protection, but in case of any issues that stopped me accessing the income that I'd be drawing from the fund/platform.

DireEmblem

I would have no issues with holding just the Lifestrategy fund.  I see them as essentially a Global market tracker fund, where you can choose your split between Equity/Bond investments.  I think I read somewhere that when you drill down into it, someone holding the 60% LifeStrategy fund, which holds up to another 20 funds, will in turn hold in aggregate near 20k equity/bond holdings.

That sounds fairly diverse to me, as a means to invest your capital and spread it to maintain your global buying power.  If you're not sure what to invest in, a cheap global equity fund is the way to go in my opinion.  The bias to UK/US stocks as some say is not so much a concern - as a lot of the UK/US stocks are actually global companies.

Others have commented on the fact if Vanguard go bust, that Vanguard only manage your funds, so your funds would be protected by the Depositary.

barnstar2077

AnotherJoe said:

Like Albermarle id have no qualms about the amount but qualms about a fund that has an artificial concentration in a few industries and will remain so due to the arbitrary so-called UK weighting. 

I know that it is considered prudent to to be invested globally according the size of each market, but I heard somewhere that there is an argument for being overly weighted in your own country because it offsets currency risk?

I just tried googling it but I couldn't find what I was looking for.  Your thoughts on the idea?

RetSol

Albermarle said:

If I were investing a very large sum in one or two funds, I would spread each holding across two or more platforms

Probably so would most people , but the OP basically asked would you be happy to keep more than £85K with Vanguard and the answer to that is , no problem.

It sounds as if a lot of people on here would be fine with holing seven figures in a VLS 60 with Vanguard as a platform. 

Or any mainstream fund with any mainstream platform., although from an investment portfolio /diversification point of view, I guess there is not many who have a Million quid in just one fund. 

I agree that, all things being equal, the risk of the VLS funds going t**ts up is minimal and, if it happens, we will all have probably started eating one another by then anyway.  However,  I would distinguish between the fund and the platform.  If there is a problem with the platform (as a result of eg corporate failure or system outage) that might lead to difficulty accessing the investment for some time. 
Personally, I would not sleep at night if 100% of my investments were invested in one fund. (I don't know whether that is the OP's proposed position.). However reputable the institution appears to be, it cannot guard 100% against fraud or unauthorised activities by its employees. 

Albermarle

barnstar2077 said:

AnotherJoe said:

Like Albermarle id have no qualms about the amount but qualms about a fund that has an artificial concentration in a few industries and will remain so due to the arbitrary so-called UK weighting. 

I know that it is considered prudent to to be invested globally according the size of each market, but I heard somewhere that there is an argument for being overly weighted in your own country because it offsets currency risk?

I just tried googling it but I couldn't find what I was looking for.  Your thoughts on the idea?

https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/icrrhb.pdf