Aviva pension fund selection

granta

I have only fairly recently started paying attention to the underlying investments within my work pensions (past and current) with a view to making changes. Have been learning lots from many of the helpful posts on this forum about asset allocation, fees, active vs passive etc.
I would be grateful for any suggestions or input into the next stage of my pension action plan:
Currently have a work Aviva pension (last 6 years) with active payments by employer and me. All payments since the beginning have been going into this default fund: 

Aviva Pensions My Future Focus Growth S6

It uses a Lifestyle approach though I am currently in the growth stage with 15-20 years to retirement. Having now looked at the fund, it is around 25% bonds, 43% global equity; 13% UK equity. When I look at this fund on Trustnet, it has a 1 star rating but I don't know the reasons for this as performance has been ok.

I would like to move the existing value and any new contributions to a higher equity %, 90-100%. For context, I also hold the Vanguard LS 100 and a smaller amount of HSBC Global Strategy Dynamic (planning to move Vanguard all to HSBC shortly) in my SIPP and would like a strategy that roughly mirrors this in my Aviva one: multi-asset, low cost, buy and hold for 15-20 years.
The fund above is 0.5% but Aviva tell me this is the platform charge and that the fund costs 0% so ideally, I am looking for a fund that is also 0% AMC and then I will continue to pay 0.5% without anything else on top (is that correct?).
If anyone has time to look at this fund filter to give me some pointers and what to look at, I'd be be thankful:
Aviva Fund Centre (fundslibrary.co.uk)
It is Pension Series 6 that I am allowed to buy from.
There is a fund called Aviva Pension Diversified Assets Fund 5 S6 which is 0% AMC and has a higher equity %. Does anyone have a view on this?
Thanks for any help.

Albermarle

The fund you have. has grown over 50% in 5 years , so not too much to complain about there .
The current % equity of 56% , is I am guessing  lower than it has been , as the cash holding of >10 % is quite high.
Whether to go to a higher % equity is a personal decision . If the markets were to drop you would be better staying where you are , but nobody knows what will happen in future .

kuratowski

In the filters take a look at using the ABI sector.  "Global Equities" would be 100% equities, so similar to the Vanguard LifeStrategy 100.  "Mixed Investment 40-85% Shares" would be similar to HSBC Global Strategy Dynamic.

granta

Thank you Albemarle. Yes, I have feeling that when I looked at the % equity a while ago it was higher, and perhaps also the UK equity weighting was more than 13% as that was something else I wanted to bring down a little.
No complaints about the 50% increase though if it had been in a global equity tracker it would have been quite a lot more. I am happy to take a bigger risk and would have done 6 years ago if I had known what I know now about asset allocation. So it's just a case of finding a fund on the choices Aviva offer that can give me 90-100% equity exposure.

granta

kuratowski said:

In the filters take a look at using the ABI sector.  "Global Equities" would be 100% equities, so similar to the Vanguard LifeStrategy 100.  "Mixed Investment 40-85% Shares" would be similar to HSBC Global Strategy Dynamic.

Thank you, kuratowski for the steer.
So when I search under Global equities, the only 0% options are BlackRock Global equity tracker (70:30, 50:50 etc) which has too high a UK weighting for me, or BlackRock World equity (ex UK) tracker which has no UK weighting!
Under the Mixed investment 40-85 filter, the only low cost (0.02%) option is Aviva Pension Mixed investment (40-85%) S6. This has 38% global equities and 23% UK, and around 18% bonds.
I don't know if I am misreading the information but it's surprising Aviva doesn't have a multi-asset fund with a higher equity weighting.

masonic

Could you not just split between the Blackrock World (ex-UK) tracker and their own UK index tracker fund?

dunstonh

Aviva have pension versions that have one fund through to versions that are whole of market.

The fund above is 0.5% but Aviva tell me this is the platform charge and that the fund costs 0% so ideally, I am looking for a fund that is also 0% AMC and then I will continue to pay 0.5% without anything else on top (is that correct?).

unless it is held on the Aviva platform it will not have a platform charge.   I don't believe any of the Aviva workplace schemes are on the platform but are held via the Life & Pensions arm.  So, there wouldn't be a platform charge with those. The fund AMC would be bundled as a single charge.  These are known as mono charged plans as they have just one charge all in.

granta

masonic said:

Could you not just split between the Blackrock World (ex-UK) tracker and their own UK index tracker fund?

Thanks, that's a good suggestion I will look into this. Just means no other asset classes will feature.

granta

dunstonh said:

Aviva have pension versions that have one fund through to versions that are whole of market.

The fund above is 0.5% but Aviva tell me this is the platform charge and that the fund costs 0% so ideally, I am looking for a fund that is also 0% AMC and then I will continue to pay 0.5% without anything else on top (is that correct?).

unless it is held on the Aviva platform it will not have a platform charge.   I don't believe any of the Aviva workplace schemes are on the platform but are held via the Life & Pensions arm.  So, there wouldn't be a platform charge with those. The fund AMC would be bundled as a single charge.  These are known as mono charged plans as they have just one charge all in.

Thanks, maybe I misunderstood them. I will call them again. The customer service person said I pay 0.5% as the only charge but maybe she meant that is the fund charge and there is no platform charge. But she said to search in the fund library and if I didn't want to pay more than 0.5%, to select a fund with 0% charge and then I will continue to pay only 0.5%. So that sounds like the mono charge plan you mention.
Basically though, it means to keep my costs down, I should not select, say a Schroder fund with an AMC of 0.6% as that will be on top of the 0.5%?

masonic

granta said:

masonic said:

Could you not just split between the Blackrock World (ex-UK) tracker and their own UK index tracker fund?

Thanks, that's a good suggestion I will look into this. Just means no other asset classes will feature.

The principle of combining funds to tune exposure to different regions/asset classes can probably be used to achieve what you want. For example, if your critique of your current fund is that it is too heavy on UK equities and bonds, then diluting it with the Blackrock World (ex-UK) tracker would address both of these. A 1:1 ratio would reduce the UK exposure close to neutral and cut the bond exposure to ~12%.

You also have options for standalone bond funds, property funds etc should you be inclined to diversify further.

granta

masonic said:

granta said:

masonic said:

Could you not just split between the Blackrock World (ex-UK) tracker and their own UK index tracker fund?

Thanks, that's a good suggestion I will look into this. Just means no other asset classes will feature.

The principle of combining funds to tune exposure to different regions/asset classes can probably be used to achieve what you want. For example, if your critique of your current fund is that it is too heavy on UK equities and bonds, then diluting it with the Blackrock World (ex-UK) tracker would address both of these. A 1:1 ratio would reduce the UK exposure close to neutral and cut the bond exposure to ~12%.

You also have options for standalone bond funds, property funds etc should you be inclined to diversify further.

I hadn't thought of that. So keeping a % in the existing multi-asset fund and moving the rest to the BlackRock World tracker so it was 50:50 (e.g. 10k in the multi-asset, and 10k in the world tracker, and new contributions split 50:50 too?)?