Quilter?

legalfreak

I've been following this site for a long time and the advice has always been helpful. 

Have started my investment journey in earnest after dabbling in some passives and mostly savings.

Was recommended by an advisor to transfer circa £200,000 to Quilter on their Cirilium platform (Moderate risk).  Charges would be: 0.22% product charge plus %1.15 per year for the platform. This on top of advisor charges of 0.50-0.75% per year.

Any thoughts on Quilter and Cirlium? Many thanks.

jimjames

1.15% for platform charges seems very high and would be over 2% in total. Even HL only charges 0.45% for their platform fee and one like iWeb would charge nothing other than the opening fee of £100.  That's would be a saving of £2300 per year compared to the option given but obviously it's DIY vs advised although you're then paying the adviser on top of that as well. 

Rollinghome

Are you sure you've got those figures the right way around?

afaik Cirilium are a range of multi asset funds (oeics).  Cirilium Moderate Portfolio R has an OCF (annual charge) of 1.15% while  0.22% sounds like a platform charge.  Do you know what initial charge, if any, is being proposed?

It's an expensive semi-"fund of funds" that hasn't done very well. See https://www.trustnet.com/factsheets/o/bkz7/quilter-investors-cirilium-moderate-portfolio

Is that adviser suggesting you put all £200k into the fund and what proportion of your whole portfolio would that be? Will the adviser annual fee be 0.5% or 0.75%? You need to know every detail of what you will pay and what you will get.

jbuchanangb

These are the platform charges for my Quilter Stocks & Shares ISA, if that is of any help:

After setting up the ISA a few years ago I dispensed with the adviser, so all I pay are the platform fees.

Albermarle

jbuchanangb said:

These are the platform charges for my Quilter Stocks & Shares ISA, if that is of any help:

After setting up the ISA a few years ago I dispensed with the adviser, so all I pay are the platform fees.

Plus the fees for the actual investment funds, but they are taken automatically out of the funds.

maxsteam

The website quilter.com isn't exactly clear which company you are dealing with or which FCA authority they are using. There are a number of companies (Quilter Investors Limited, Quilter Cheviot Limited, Quilter Fund Management Ltd, Quilter Private Client Advisers Limited, Quilter Investors Portfolio Management Limited) which are on the FCA register at their London address with various restrictions on their activities.

Normally, I expect the company's name and registration numbers to be stated at the bottom of each page, or, at the very least, on the "about us" page. It's not there so there's no chance of me recommending anything other than that you do something else with your £200k. There's more information on their "legal" page which introduces yet more company names and FCA authorisation to operate from a Southampton address.

What raises the biggest alarm bells for me is that the company name appearing most prominently on the website, Quilter Plc, throws up just one result when searching the FCA database....



Maybe there's a mix up but, if they gave clear details on their website about who they were and what their FCA registration number was, such a mix up wouldn't happen. They should certainly not be displaying the company name "Quilter Plc" on their website when that particular company is not registered with the FCA.

There's too much uncertainty to be considering sending them life-changing amounts imho.

A decent firm would be upfront about who they are and what they are authorised to do.

legalfreak

jimjames said:

1.15% for platform charges seems very high and would be over 2% in total. Even HL only charges 0.45% for their platform fee and one like iWeb would charge nothing other than the opening fee of £100.  That's would be a saving of £2300 per year compared to the option given but obviously it's DIY vs advised although you're then paying the adviser on top of that as well. 

Yes, went back to check and .22% is 'product' charge which was later clarified to 'platform charge' and 1.15% is 'investment charge'. Thank you.

legalfreak

Rollinghome said:

Are you sure you've got those figures the right way around?

afaik Cirilium are a range of multi asset funds (oeics).  Cirilium Moderate Portfolio R has an OCF (annual charge) of 1.15% while  0.22% sounds like a platform charge.  Do you know what initial charge, if any, is being proposed?

It's an expensive semi-"fund of funds" that hasn't done very well. See https://www.trustnet.com/factsheets/o/bkz7/quilter-investors-cirilium-moderate-portfolio

Is that adviser suggesting you put all £200k into the fund and what proportion of your whole portfolio would that be? Will the adviser annual fee be 0.5% or 0.75%? You need to know every detail of what you will pay and what you will get.

No initial charge to Quilter but there is the charge to the adviser. Will have to get back to the adviser, all I know now is that it's between 0.5%-0.75% per anum. Regarding the exact sums I don't want to go into too much detail but it will be the majority of my savings/investments. Many thanks.

When you say that the fund hasn't done very well, do you mean by comparing what seems to me a benchmark 'IA Mixed Investment 40%-85% Shares'? The latter seems to show a better performance?

Rollinghome

legalfreak said:

No initial charge apart from the charge to the adviser. Will have to get back to the adviser, all I know now is that it's between 0.5%-0.75%. Regarding the exact sums I don't want to go into too much detail but it will be the majority of my savings/investments. Many thanks.

When you say that the fund hasn't done very well, do you mean by comparing what seems to me a benchmark 'IA Mixed Investment 40%-85% Shares'? The latter seems to show a better performance?

Yes, assuming that's the fund you mean, it has consistently under-performed similar funds in that sector. Over 5 yrs it ranks 97 out of 138 and appears to have never risen above the third quartile.

Quilter used to be called Old Mutual.  While it had a couple of decent funds, it had more than its fair share of dogs. Which presumably was why it felt the need to change its name. It's a very big company, so no concern on that front.

The reason I asked about the numbers was because,  if a big chunk of a reasonably sized portfolio, it would seem a very lazy recommendation for any adviser to make and charge an ongoing fee for, even if it were a half-decent fund. To pay that on anything but a small sum you should get a portfolio designed for you.  Not pay an adviser and then pay a fund manager again to do his job, and then pay other managers of the funds within the Quilter fund.  You'd be paying three times over.

I'd suggest you ask your adviser his reasons for recommending what is substantially a fund of funds

legalfreak

Rollinghome said:

legalfreak said:

No initial charge apart from the charge to the adviser. Will have to get back to the adviser, all I know now is that it's between 0.5%-0.75%. Regarding the exact sums I don't want to go into too much detail but it will be the majority of my savings/investments. Many thanks.

When you say that the fund hasn't done very well, do you mean by comparing what seems to me a benchmark 'IA Mixed Investment 40%-85% Shares'? The latter seems to show a better performance?

Yes, assuming that's the fund you mean, it has consistently under-performed similar funds in that sector. Over 5 yrs it ranks 97 out of 138 and appears to have never risen above the third quartile.

Quilter used to be called Old Mutual.  While it had a couple of decent funds, it had more than its fair share of dogs. Which presumably was why it felt the need to change its name. It's a very big company, so no concern on that front.

The reason I asked about the numbers was because,  if a big chunk of a reasonably sized portfolio, it would seem a very lazy recommendation for any adviser to make and charge an ongoing fee for, even if it were a half-decent fund. To pay that on anything but a small sum you should get a portfolio designed for you.  Not pay an adviser and then pay a fund manager again to do his job, and then pay other managers of the funds within the Quilter fund.  You'd be paying three times over.

I'd suggest you ask your adviser his reasons for recommending what is substantially a fund of funds

Thank you very much. Yes, it's the 

Quilter Investors Cirilium Moderate Portfolio R Acc GBP

Sorry, when you write 'Not pay an adviser and then pay a fund manager again etc.' I presume you meant to write 'To pay an adviser...'?

dunstonh

Quilter used to be called Old Mutual.  While it had a couple of decent funds, it had more than its fair share of dogs. Which presumably was why it felt the need to change its name. It's a very big company, so no concern on that front.

Old Mutual decided to leave the UK and spun the FA network, fund house and platform into a new company.  IIRC, the Quilter name was a legacy brand that OM owned and didn't use anymore and they reactivated it.

Old Mutual bought Skandia and Skandia had bought Selestia.   I had a soft spot for Selestia as it was technically advanced for its day and was a good IFA platform.    That was one of the reasons Skandia bought Selestia as Skandia's software was poor and they moved the Skandia clients onto the Selestia platform.  Skandia barely did any updates to the software and nor did OMW.   And when platforms started going down in price. OMW stayed at the higher end despite the software being old fashioned at that point.   OMW started focusing more on its own salesforce and less on IFAs.   OMW then spun the UK business off and it changed the software provider to FNZ instead of being in-house when it rebranded to Quilter.   

if a big chunk of a reasonably sized portfolio, it would seem a very lazy recommendation for any adviser to make and charge an ongoing fee for, even if it were a half-decent fund. 

One of the problems with national salesforces is that the systems and controls have to cater for the lowest common denominator.   Effectively, I view it as low knowledge reps selling basic options to low knowledge consumers using the cheapest distribution method possible (i.e. everything own brand and in house controlled centrally).   It reduces liability and makes it easier to tick the compliance boxes.  It also means a margin can be added part of the distribution.  i.e. a cut from the reps earnings, a cut from the platform earning and a cut from the fund charges.      Commercially, it is very good.  It's similar to the likes of True Potential and SJP.       

I'd suggest you ask your adviser his reasons for recommending that fund of funds

Because his employer requires him/her to.  They are not IFAs.