Useless Financial advisor

dunstonh

I'm due to retire but since I have invested it, the storms seem to be never ending, stagnant growth between 2018-2020, but i was expecting that as it was the first couple of years,

There was a crash at the end of 2018.  It had recovered by mid 2019.  2018 was a negative year.  2019, 2020 and 2021 were all positive years.  Despite 2020 having the third largest stockmarket decline in the last 22 years. 

2022 is down around 15% across the board. i.e. irrespective of your risk profile everyone is down by around 15% (+/- small amounts either side)

at the moment it is Never ending bad news. 

Often it goes that way in a cycle.   i.e. you get 5-6 years of steady growth with little or no wobbles and then you get 5-6 years of volatility as the cycle changes and then you get the better years that follow.   You never know when it is going to happen or how it will play out.  You just know it will happen.  This is why investing is long term and not to be viewed at as a year or two in isolation.

 I got told very low/minimum risk when Investing it, I have a report somewhere upstairs but I would need a fair bit of time to set this up. 

Unfortunately, assets tend to behave as expected 90-95% of the time.   Gilts, the lowest risk asset after cash, has suffered that 5-10% period where they have lost more money than equities.  It's an extremely rare period.

Millyonare

A £4.5k fee on £150k! Wow...

eskbanker

BigDarren said:
I got told very low/minimum risk when Investing it, I have a report somewhere upstairs but I would need a fair bit of time to set this up.

If you're going to accuse the advisor of being useless, you should refamiliarise yourself with exactly what you told them about your circumstances, objectives, risk tolerance, etc, and then what they told you about their recommendations that would fulfil your stated requirements.

If you had an expectation that your investments couldn't lose any value then investing at all wouldn't have been suitable, as fluctuations in both directions go with the territory, and a 14% short term value loss really isn't massively significant in the general scheme of things, even though it obviously makes you nervous.

BigDarren said:

I set up an investment which i was told was very low risk 4 years ago and the advisor in the room on the day said it's a very low risk investment It shouldn't lose you any money and showed me an example of another portfolio that made 50k- as I'm coming up to retirement and naturally cautious I thought If i can make 15-20k over the investment before i retire

The bolded statement probably needs context - most sensible mainstream investments shouldn't lose you money over the long term but that doesn't mean that they'll always be going up every year, and negative periods, such as the last nine months or so, have to be expected.

BigDarren said:
I'm on the minimum wage and due to retire in the next couple of years so waiting it out would be a bad idea If it continued to go down. The only thing I can think of is draw it out and put in a high interest bank account and hope to recoup some of the losses.I just panic that we get to January and another 10-20k is gone.

Crystallising paper losses is rarely a good idea unless it's critical that you get your hands on all the cash in one go in the very near future.  However, that's presumably not the case if you're intending to retire in a couple of years, so how much would you be planning to draw down from this pot each year, i.e. how many years would you be hoping it would last?  This sort of planning should have been discussed with the advisor at the time, as it informs the strategy.

BigDarren said:
last year my advisor was meant to set up an appointment with me in August to have a talk about the Investment Portfolio it was at 167,000 last August so since then its lost around 14% and my advisor never contacted me it took me looking at it myself and keeping a track of it.

Depending on the scope of the relationship you have with this advisor, routine annual suitability reviews may be part of what you're paying for (beyond the initial one-off setup charge, are you paying annual fees?), but in itself a drop in value isn't something you ought to expect to be notified about.  However, if you're paying for a service and aren't receiving it then that's obviously untenable and worthy of a complaint....

UncleK

Millyonare said:

A £4.5k fee on £150k! Wow...

3% - that's about standard, isn't it?

dunstonh

UncleK said:

Millyonare said:

A £4.5k fee on £150k! Wow...

3% - that's about standard, isn't it?

No.  The average is around 1.8%.    Average means some get charged more and some get charged less.    Larger amounts tend to benefit from a charge cap or tiering whilst smaller amounts tend to suffer the highest tiers or a collar charge (i.e. minimum charge).

Albermarle

UncleK said:

Millyonare said:

A £4.5k fee on £150k! Wow...

3% - that's about standard, isn't it?

For a smaller amount , 3% would be normal, but usually less for a fund this size. Assuming there was nothing particularly complicated involved, which seems to be the case.

Eyeful

BigDarren:
With money there is always risk involved. All that changes is the type and size of the risk.

Putting your money into a low risk savings account at this time will mean it will loose value, due to inflation. If inflation carries on rising it will, lose even more of its purchasing power. Keep that in mind as you decide what to do with your money.

Investments are supposed to be held for the long term (say 10) and you are judging them over a short term.
I can not tell you what will happen in the future. However, if you cash in now, that "paper loss" will be made into a "real loss".

You have supplied the names of the fund houses. Can you please supply the names of the actual funds you are invested in? 

inflationbuster

£4500 these advisors are a complete rip off. 

My company pension is down 5% worst it's performed since inception.   

Need to know name of the funds. 

dunstonh

My company pension is down 5% worst it's performed since inception.   

That is highly unlikely unless you started it a few months ago.

The 2020 crash was bigger.  The 2018 crash was comparable as was the 2015/16 crash.  2008/9 was bigger as was 2000-2002.

newatc

BigDarren said:

 From being told a low risk investment to being around £10,000 down after 4 years and the lack of contact has frustrated me.


As others said impossible to provide opinion on mis-selling claim without full picture but my sympathy for being in the position you are with relatively little time for it to correct itself.
The wording of the report is key, the only time I used an IFA he described one of my advised investments as equivalent to a bank deposit. It proceeded to lose 80% of the capital value so my claim against mis-selling was pretty straightforward. I suspect advisors are a lot smarter these days.
Good luck.