Vanguard - personalised service

vulcanrtb

Hi all,

VanguardInvestor offers a personalised service for account holders they call "Vanguard Personal Financial Planning".
I have found myself to be quite traumatised trying to manage my fund over the last year , and find the idea of someone/something actively managing things for me appealing.

My question is, has anyone took them up on this offer (0.79% annual fee)? If you did, care to share your experiences and thoughts?

Thanks.

tacpot12

If you pay this annual fee you will probably be giving away 10% of the return on your investments.  I've always had an aversion to paying a fee to be told what to buy, but if they are providing an ongoing service that is managing the risk and the asset allocation then if might be worth it to you. 

dunstonh

I have found myself to be quite traumatised trying to manage my fund over the last year 

Vanguard is a provider of passive funds in the UK (although the lifestrategy funds are not passive, they use underlying passives).

There should be little or no management of a single fund.  Especially if the single fund is a multi-asset fund or a 100% global tracker.  So, you shouldn't be getting traumatised. - what is it that is causing that?

and find the idea of someone/something actively managing things for me appealing.

How would they be actively managing things for you with this service? - my understanding is that it is limited to cashflow modelling and risk profiling.  The investment options are similar to VLS.

It is obviously aimed at smaller investors as it lacks the advice areas that higher value investors need.   However, smaller investors are often better served with transactional advice rather than ongoing (irrespective of whether that is full advice or a restricted advice service).   So, it is probably best at this stage to understand what you want from a service.  You may find that the Vanguard offering matches what you want but it may also be the case that what you want and what it provides does not match.

[Deleted User]

Haven’t used it but:

1. The charge for advice is 0.5%. The rest is fund/platform charges you would incur anyway.
2. If you have less than 100k, you get help with “practical stuff like setting up payments “.  You should get that kind of help for free if you haven’t figured it out. 

3. If you have over 100K, I assume you get the initial help with planning and can then switch to non-advised “cruising” mode.

Sharktail

vulcanrtb said:

Hi all,

VanguardInvestor offers a personalised service for account holders they call "Vanguard Personal Financial Planning".
I have found myself to be quite traumatised trying to manage my fund over the last year , and find the idea of someone/something actively managing things for me appealing.

My question is, has anyone took them up on this offer (0.79% annual fee)? If you did, care to share your experiences and thoughts?

Thanks.

Hi
i signed up for the service in April , filled in Questionnaire had a zoom meeting monies invested next day ,,all straightforward 

never really  looked at the portfolio until I seen your post so decided to take a peek ,my risk profile was 60/40 though the make up is somewhat different to the life strategy 60% , I’ve also checked the progress against VLS 60 & hey presto both have performed exactly the same 6.3% ,  whether the .5% annual fee  adds value time will tell , TBF though I’d be probably still be sitting on cash waiting for a pull back if I hadn’t  signed up

DoublePolaroid

Philosophically it’s interesting Vanguard offer this service. Their motto, given their founding and business model, might as well be if you can’t beat the market, buy the market (unless you pay us 0.5% apparently) and their USP, such as it is, is offering no frills, do-it-all-for-me investments for people who are keen to fire and forget. 

As Sharktail alludes to, I wonder how much over-performance it’s possible to expect even in a best case scenario with their managed service given they can only ever invest you in a handful of their relatively few in-house offerings many of which themselves overlap considerably in terms of holdings. 

BritishInvestor

DoublePolaroid said:

Philosophically it’s interesting Vanguard offer this service. Their motto, given their founding and business model, might as well be if you can’t beat the market, buy the market (unless you pay us 0.5% apparently) and their USP, such as it is, is offering no frills, do-it-all-for-me investments for people who are keen to fire and forget. 

As Sharktail alludes to, I wonder how much over-performance it’s possible to expect even in a best case scenario with their managed service given they can only ever invest you in a handful of their relatively few in-house offerings many of which themselves overlap considerably in terms of holdings. 

It has nothing to do with outperformance in the fund sense (although they may add value around the investor behaviour side), and I've no doubt the underlying funds in the advisory model will be broadly identical to what you can access as a DIY investor.

MX5huggy

Sharktail said:

vulcanrtb said:

Hi all,

VanguardInvestor offers a personalised service for account holders they call "Vanguard Personal Financial Planning".
I have found myself to be quite traumatised trying to manage my fund over the last year , and find the idea of someone/something actively managing things for me appealing.

My question is, has anyone took them up on this offer (0.79% annual fee)? If you did, care to share your experiences and thoughts?

Thanks.

Hi
i signed up for the service in April , filled in Questionnaire had a zoom meeting monies invested next day ,,all straightforward 

never really  looked at the portfolio until I seen your post so decided to take a peek ,my risk profile was 60/40 though the make up is somewhat different to the life strategy 60% , I’ve also checked the progress against VLS 60 & hey presto both have performed exactly the same 6.3% ,  whether the .5% annual fee  adds value time will tell , TBF though I’d be probably still be sitting on cash waiting for a pull back if I hadn’t  signed up

But what are the fund fees? If they have built you a bespoke LS 60 using other funds then I expect your total fund fee will be less than LS because UK all share is 0.06% and FTSE Europe is 0.1 S&P 500 0.07 etc all less than 0.22 for LS offsetting some of the 0.5% so instead of 0.22 plus 0.5 you’ll be around 0.12 plus 0.5. 

Sharktail

But what are the fund fees? If they have built you a bespoke LS 60 using other funds then I expect your total fund fee will be less than LS because UK all share is 0.06% and FTSE Europe is 0.1 S&P 500 0.07 etc all less than 0.22 for LS offsetting some of the 0.5% so instead of 0.22 plus 0.5 you’ll be around 0.12 plus 0.5. 

Fees are 
financial planning .5%

Account fee.         .15%

Fund management.14 %

  Total.                   0.79

So indeed the fund does offset the plan fee 

BritishInvestor

MX5huggy said:

Sharktail said:

vulcanrtb said:

Hi all,

VanguardInvestor offers a personalised service for account holders they call "Vanguard Personal Financial Planning".
I have found myself to be quite traumatised trying to manage my fund over the last year , and find the idea of someone/something actively managing things for me appealing.

My question is, has anyone took them up on this offer (0.79% annual fee)? If you did, care to share your experiences and thoughts?

Thanks.

Hi
i signed up for the service in April , filled in Questionnaire had a zoom meeting monies invested next day ,,all straightforward 

never really  looked at the portfolio until I seen your post so decided to take a peek ,my risk profile was 60/40 though the make up is somewhat different to the life strategy 60% , I’ve also checked the progress against VLS 60 & hey presto both have performed exactly the same 6.3% ,  whether the .5% annual fee  adds value time will tell , TBF though I’d be probably still be sitting on cash waiting for a pull back if I hadn’t  signed up

But what are the fund fees? If they have built you a bespoke LS 60 using other funds then I expect your total fund fee will be less than LS because UK all share is 0.06% and FTSE Europe is 0.1 S&P 500 0.07 etc all less than 0.22 for LS offsetting some of the 0.5% so instead of 0.22 plus 0.5 you’ll be around 0.12 plus 0.5. 

https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/content/documents/legal/vanguard-personal-financial-planning-costs-charges.pdf

MX5huggy

Sharktail said:

But what are the fund fees? If they have built you a bespoke LS 60 using other funds then I expect your total fund fee will be less than LS because UK all share is 0.06% and FTSE Europe is 0.1 S&P 500 0.07 etc all less than 0.22 for LS offsetting some of the 0.5% so instead of 0.22 plus 0.5 you’ll be around 0.12 plus 0.5. 

Fees are 
financial planning .5%

Account fee.         .15%

Fund management.14 %

  Total.                   0.79

So indeed the fund does offset the plan fee 

0.12 was not a bad guess.