Risk factor investing with vanguard only

reddevil375

Hi 
Me and my wife recently moved our savings all across to vanguard directly online and invested in mixture of life strategy and retirement funds.  Wife has around £145k in a sipp and then around £15k in a ISA. I have around £150k in sipp and then £60k isa also split between retirement and life strategy.  Does it make sense to have all our savings with vanguard only or would you look to diversify and spread around between other providers? We are looking to contribute £40k each this year to our pensions via our company and was going to put into our sipp with vanguard. 

Thanks in advance for help

valiant24

I'm sure that Vanguard themselves are perfectly reputable and safe, and in any case investments held with them should be ring-fenced and therefore recoverable even should they fail.
The question is probably more if Vanguard alone provides the range of investments you want?   If you follow someone like Lars Kroijer, who believes that all the average investor needs is to be invested in gilts and in a global index tracker in the appropriate prooprtion to the investor's situation, I am sure that a Vanguard Global Index Tracker will be as close as makes no difference to the very cheapest available, and in other respects as good as any also.
If you want to invest in non-Vanguard funds, you will have to look elsewhere.
So, what do you propose to invest in?

reddevil375

valiant24 said:

I'm sure that Vanguard themselves are perfectly reputable and safe, and in any case investments held with them should be ring-fenced and therefore recoverable even should they fail.
The question is probably more if Vanguard alone provides the range of investments you want?   If you follow someone like Lars Kroijer, who believes that all the average investor needs is to be invested in gilts and in a global index tracker in the appropriate prooprtion to the investor's situation, I am sure that a Vanguard Global Index Tracker will be as close as makes no difference to the very cheapest available, and in other respects as good as any also.
If you want to invest in non-Vanguard funds, you will have to look elsewhere.
So, what do you propose to invest in?

Thank you for reply.  I wanted to keep things as simple as possible and just leave alone and keep topping up every year. I was proposing to invest into the sipp again and put into our target retirement fund and some into the life strategy fund. We have around 15 years left to retirement. We also top up our isa every month which again is invested with vanguard. 

Albermarle

It is often commented that if a company like Vanguard went bust , it probably means that something very dramatic has happened to the world ( like thermonuclear war for example ) In which case you wouldn't be worrying about your pension anyway . Having said that most larger investors on this forum seem to use more than one investing/pension provider , just in case. Although the possibility some kind of drawn out IT meltdown ( like TSB) seems to be more of a worry than a financial issue.
If your pensions /investments are with an insurer ( means Scottish Widows, Aviva, Standard Life etc ) and in insured funds you have 100% protection anyway .

Alexland

Also worth mentioning that once the account gets big enough you wouldn't want to be paying a 0.15% platform fee when a fixed or capped price platform can offer better value and you could still use Vanguard investments although others might be cheaper. I know Vanguard Investor have a £375 pa cap but it's much higher than say Fidelity at £45 pa per account for holding ETFs, ITs or shares.

ivormonee

Alexland said:

Vanguard Investor have a £375 pa cap but it's much higher than say Fidelity at £45 pa per account for holding ETFs, ITs or shares.

Or no fee at all for ETFs, ITs and shares at iWeb and a dealing charge of £5 - the £100 opening fee would be recouped during the course of the account, most likely.

Albermarle

ivormonee said:

Alexland said:

Vanguard Investor have a £375 pa cap but it's much higher than say Fidelity at £45 pa per account for holding ETFs, ITs or shares.

Or no fee at all for ETFs, ITs and shares at iWeb and a dealing charge of £5 - the £100 opening fee would be recouped during the course of the account, most likely.

If it is a SIPP , then you can add another £180 pa on I web - zero with Fidelity
If you want drawdown on I web then an additional £180 and/or £90 per UFPLS payment - zero with Fidelity .
Plus other charges - all of which are zero with Fidelity

Alexland

Yes my mention of Fidelity was more aimed at the OPs larger pensions but yes I agree for a larger ISA then iWeb are also good and that's exactly how we use them both. However now I would urge caution before transferring pensions due to the possibility that some existing scheme members might get age 55 protection.

reddevil375

Thank you everyone for replying. I will take a look at the other platforms as well and might split between mine and my wife's.
Will also open another thread later to see if we can get some advise on our portfolios and how it is performing towards our retirement plans.

noclaf

Alexland said:

Yes my mention of Fidelity was more aimed at the OPs larger pensions but yes I agree for a larger ISA then iWeb are also good and that's exactly how we use them both. However now I would urge caution before transferring pensions due to the possibility that some existing scheme members might get age 55 protection.

Hi Alexland,
Just out of interest are all your accounts/platforms 'tax wrappers' such as S&SISA and LISA's, pensions etc?
I already have a Vanguard S&SISA and LISA. I drip feed the vanguard a/c monthly but was thinking to switch this to a lump sum investment before the new tax year and then open a new S&Sisa on a new platform in the 21/22 tax year to create a global portfolio using a couple of etf's. That means I can't contribute further investments to the Vanguard S&Sisa in the new tax year so maybe not the most efficient setup. It's curiosity more than anything to see how the etf portfolio would fare Vs the single global equities fund with Vanguard.The other option is to use a standard dealing account for the ETF'S but this brings with it the potential capital gains tax liabilities depending on how the investments perform.

Alexland

noclaf said:

Just out of interest are all your accounts/platforms 'tax wrappers' such as S&SISA and LISA's, pensions etc?

Yes we have never been fortunate to get a lump sum large enough to have problems wrapping it so yes everything we have invested has been drip fed into the markets over a couple of decades. We sometimes have little general accounts for cashback deals or because iWeb requires one but otherwise we aim to use efficient tax wrappers.

noclaf said:
It's curiosity more than anything to see how the etf portfolio would fare Vs the single global equities fund with Vanguard.

You can build a portfolio using a mix of OEIC funds and/or ETFs on the Vanguard platform. If they track the same index then either investment should have comparable performance. My largest ETF is Vanguard VEVE in a SIPP which would cost the capped £375 to hold on Vanguard Investor compared to £45 plus 4 quarterly £1.50 dividend reinvestment trades so over £300 pa cheaper with Fidelity.