Royal London fund range: global index tracker? 15 January at 5:58PM in Pensions, annuities & retirement planning 2 replies 162 views

Altior

My workplace pension is restricted to the RL range (RL own funds and a modest whole of market offering).

There is a 50% reduction in fees for RL's own range, which doesn't apply to the rest of the market options. So this makes it 0.5% for the RL fund range. 

I've been trying to identify the closest match to something along the lines of VG LS 100, or HSBC's Global Strategy Adventurous for a long time. I contribute to various SIPPs on top of this workplace pension, and have maxed out my SS (internal) cap. So I just want to replicate one of these globally diversified index tracking type funds, and forget about it, and customise my entire pensions portfolio via the more flexible SIPPs where needed.

Searching RL's fund library is quite painful. It's not really congruous at all, but I've settled on the RLP/BlackRock Aquila World ex UK Index Pension Fund as a stop gap. As this is not a RL fund, I don't get the 0.5% fee, it's higher. 

So the question is to anyone very familiar with RL's full fund suite, what's the closest to those trackers I've mentioned? Ideally this would be a RL own option to get the discount, however I would settle for a wider market one if it meant being closely aligned with VG LS 100, or HSBC's Global Strategy Adventurous.  

dunstonh

There is a 50% reduction in fees for RL's own range, which doesn't apply to the rest of the market options. So this makes it 0.5% for the RL fund range. 

A good quality of RL pensions also have fund based discounts on their own funds.  i.e. above £x, the charge will drop further.   Plus, there is mutual bonus once a year.   I don't know but its worth checking if that applies to your off product offering. i.e. it may only apply on RL funds.

I've been trying to identify the closest match to something along the lines of VG LS 100, or HSBC's Global Strategy Adventurous for a long time. 

VLS100 is global managed fund.  RL have one of those but a global tracker is usually considered a better option unless you like Vanguards management decisions on VLS100.

So the question is to anyone very familiar with RL's full fund suite, what's the closest to those trackers I've mentioned? 

I have never used the off product functionality as the brief look at it was that it was built a long time ago and looks and feels it.  Plus, RL's range was perfectly fine without the need to, when I was using the RL pension.  They do have  global tracker.

Altior

dunstonh said:

There is a 50% reduction in fees for RL's own range, which doesn't apply to the rest of the market options. So this makes it 0.5% for the RL fund range. 

A good quality of RL pensions also have fund based discounts on their own funds.  i.e. above £x, the charge will drop further.   Plus, there is mutual bonus once a year.   I don't know but its worth checking if that applies to your off product offering. i.e. it may only apply on RL funds.

I've been trying to identify the closest match to something along the lines of VG LS 100, or HSBC's Global Strategy Adventurous for a long time. 

VLS100 is global managed fund.  RL have one of those but a global tracker is usually considered a better option unless you like Vanguards management decisions on VLS100.

So the question is to anyone very familiar with RL's full fund suite, what's the closest to those trackers I've mentioned? 

I have never used the off product functionality as the brief look at it was that it was built a long time ago and looks and feels it.  Plus, RL's range was perfectly fine without the need to, when I was using the RL pension.  They do have  global tracker.

Thanks dunstonh.

Yes, the fee is not too much of a concern, and we do get topped up with a tiny share of the profits. 0.15% off the top of my head. This is applied to the portfolio value. Which does mitigate the fees somewhat. However, obviously the lower the fee, the better, especially with growth. 

I like vanguard's tilt to the UK, overweighted to about 20% domestically I believe. I have that kind of tilt in my overall portfolio, as I've thought that US has been overvalued since the lockdown/vaccine rebound. If I could buy that within my employer pension, I'd be happy. What I do now is buy an ex UK fund in my employer pension, and flex the UK weighing within my other holdings.

Do you know the tracker fund name per chance (or the ISIN!)? One of the negatives of RL online fund management is that many of the fund names in the software have completely different names to the listings in the library (with no ISIN or other identifier). Half the time you're left to guess when requesting a switch request, it's a process of elimination and educated guesswork in regard to which is the 'right ' fund. For example, the Blackrock one identified in my OP is listed as BR World Eq on the software within my actual account!