My retirement journey is about to start

gm0

There are low cost focused SIPP providers (basic, service levels lower) and middle market ones.  I'd put AJ Bell and Fidelity in the middle bracket from my experience with them during screening.

A lot of them do cashback on transfer in - different ones do it each season tiered with value to attract funds under management in. This can easily be *several years* of platform fees entirely offset right there.  So it is worth looking at who is doing an offer this time around - if you are happy in general with a shortlist of two or three providers.  Even if you don't move again (as they intend) there is no need to miss out on this incentive at setup.

You need to understand how your SIPP behaves when taking income.  Does it use cash / cash fund first to exhaustion, allowing you to rebalance when you choose and control the trade, or does it use largest holding, smear across all (preserving asset allocation).  Or is there a choice of behaviour if you tell them (and they record it correctly on their systems).

Control of when equity sales for income happens is an aspect of drawdown strategy and so you need to know. And be happy that it fits with your chosen approach. Spoiler: They don't all do it the same way by default.

Bianchiintenso

gm0 said:

There are low cost focused SIPP providers (basic, service levels lower) and middle market ones.  I'd put AJ Bell and Fidelity in the middle bracket from my experience with them during screening.

A lot of them do cashback on transfer in - different ones do it each season tiered with value to attract funds under management in. This can easily be *several years* of platform fees entirely offset right there.  So it is worth looking at who is doing an offer this time around - if you are happy in general with a shortlist of two or three providers.  Even if you don't move again (as they intend) there is no need to miss out on this incentive at setup.

You need to understand how your SIPP behaves when taking income.  Does it use cash / cash fund first to exhaustion, allowing you to rebalance when you choose and control the trade, or does it use largest holding, smear across all (preserving asset allocation).  Or is there a choice of behaviour if you tell them (and they record it correctly on their systems).

Control of when equity sales for income happens is an aspect of drawdown strategy and so you need to know. And be happy that it fits with your chosen approach. Spoiler: They don't all do it the same way by default.

Thanks for this info I’ll take a look to see if any cash back offers, I know aj bell will pay £500 of transfer costs if applicable, all good questions for me to ask aj bell, appreciated 🙂

Albermarle

Bianchiintenso said:

gm0 said:

There are low cost focused SIPP providers (basic, service levels lower) and middle market ones.  I'd put AJ Bell and Fidelity in the middle bracket from my experience with them during screening.

A lot of them do cashback on transfer in - different ones do it each season tiered with value to attract funds under management in. This can easily be *several years* of platform fees entirely offset right there.  So it is worth looking at who is doing an offer this time around - if you are happy in general with a shortlist of two or three providers.  Even if you don't move again (as they intend) there is no need to miss out on this incentive at setup.

You need to understand how your SIPP behaves when taking income.  Does it use cash / cash fund first to exhaustion, allowing you to rebalance when you choose and control the trade, or does it use largest holding, smear across all (preserving asset allocation).  Or is there a choice of behaviour if you tell them (and they record it correctly on their systems).

Control of when equity sales for income happens is an aspect of drawdown strategy and so you need to know. And be happy that it fits with your chosen approach. Spoiler: They don't all do it the same way by default.

Thanks for this info I’ll take a look to see if any cash back offers, I know aj bell will pay £500 of transfer costs if applicable, all good questions for me to ask aj bell, appreciated 🙂

These cashback offers pop up at regular intervals and usually last for a couple of months.
The last one from HL could have gained you £1500, although their charges are on the higher side.
The last one from Fidelity would have paid £750 - £1000 for a big pot like yours.
Other offers tend to be a bit lower and sometimes a bit more complicated to claim.

Bianchiintenso

Appreciate that, thanks for the info I’ll see what’s currently available 

older_and_no_wiser

Bianchiintenso said:

After doing much research and much reading of this forum, I’m ‘planning’ to open a SIPP with AJ Bell for the £380,000 and using a mix of majority of Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Equity A Acc and HSBC Global Strategy Balanced C Acc with a smaller percentage in HSBC Global Strategy Adventurous AC (do I need to leave some in cash?)

I'm not really sure on the merit of combining different multi-asset funds. They will overlap each other in a lot of areas and you just end up with a VanBC GlobalLife fund with all the underlying assets mixed up. A multi asset fund is designed to take the difficulty out of picking separate funds to build different portfolios with various risk/volatility levels. I would think it's better just to pick the one that matches your requirements and stick with it.

Albermarle

older_and_no_wiser said:

Bianchiintenso said:

After doing much research and much reading of this forum, I’m ‘planning’ to open a SIPP with AJ Bell for the £380,000 and using a mix of majority of Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Equity A Acc and HSBC Global Strategy Balanced C Acc with a smaller percentage in HSBC Global Strategy Adventurous AC (do I need to leave some in cash?)

I'm not really sure on the merit of combining different multi-asset funds. They will overlap each other in a lot of areas and you just end up with a VanBC GlobalLife fund with all the underlying assets mixed up. A multi asset fund is designed to take the difficulty out of picking separate funds to build different portfolios with various risk/volatility levels. I would think it's better just to pick the one that matches your requirements and stick with it.

Each provider of multi asset fund has different ideas on their makeup. So can be an idea to have them from more than one provider to hedge your bets.
For example VLS funds have a fixed % of equity ( 60%, 40% etc ) and a bias towards UK ( typically around 25%UK)
HSBC GS funds do not have a fixed equity % and have no bias towards UK ( hold about 5% UK) 
In recent times the HSBC GS ones have outperformed their VLS counterparts by a small margin. Maybe in future will be the same or the other way around.

Bianchiintenso

Albermarle said:

older_and_no_wiser said:

Bianchiintenso said:

After doing much research and much reading of this forum, I’m ‘planning’ to open a SIPP with AJ Bell for the £380,000 and using a mix of majority of Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Equity A Acc and HSBC Global Strategy Balanced C Acc with a smaller percentage in HSBC Global Strategy Adventurous AC (do I need to leave some in cash?)

I'm not really sure on the merit of combining different multi-asset funds. They will overlap each other in a lot of areas and you just end up with a VanBC GlobalLife fund with all the underlying assets mixed up. A multi asset fund is designed to take the difficulty out of picking separate funds to build different portfolios with various risk/volatility levels. I would think it's better just to pick the one that matches your requirements and stick with it.

Each provider of multi asset fund has different ideas on their makeup. So can be an idea to have them from more than one provider to hedge your bets.
For example VLS funds have a fixed % of equity ( 60%, 40% etc ) and a bias towards UK ( typically around 25%UK)
HSBC GS funds do not have a fixed equity % and have no bias towards UK ( hold about 5% UK) 
In recent times the HSBC GS ones have outperformed their VLS counterparts by a small margin. Maybe in future will be the same or the other way around.

I would agree with this as my wife’s SIPP has a mix of HSBC and vanguard LS and in the last couple of years the HSBC has easily outperformed the VLS, having said that my Zurich fund has easily outperformed them both. If anyone could figure out how to replicate that I would be all ears!

Linton

Bianchiintenso said:

Albermarle said:

older_and_no_wiser said:

Bianchiintenso said:

After doing much research and much reading of this forum, I’m ‘planning’ to open a SIPP with AJ Bell for the £380,000 and using a mix of majority of Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Equity A Acc and HSBC Global Strategy Balanced C Acc with a smaller percentage in HSBC Global Strategy Adventurous AC (do I need to leave some in cash?)

I'm not really sure on the merit of combining different multi-asset funds. They will overlap each other in a lot of areas and you just end up with a VanBC GlobalLife fund with all the underlying assets mixed up. A multi asset fund is designed to take the difficulty out of picking separate funds to build different portfolios with various risk/volatility levels. I would think it's better just to pick the one that matches your requirements and stick with it.

Each provider of multi asset fund has different ideas on their makeup. So can be an idea to have them from more than one provider to hedge your bets.
For example VLS funds have a fixed % of equity ( 60%, 40% etc ) and a bias towards UK ( typically around 25%UK)
HSBC GS funds do not have a fixed equity % and have no bias towards UK ( hold about 5% UK) 
In recent times the HSBC GS ones have outperformed their VLS counterparts by a small margin. Maybe in future will be the same or the other way around.

I would agree with this as my wife’s SIPP has a mix of HSBC and vanguard LS and in the last couple of years the HSBC has easily outperformed the VLS, having said that my Zurich fund has easily outperformed them both. If anyone could figure out how to replicate that I would be all ears!

If you give some details about the Zurich fund(s) we should be able to suggest something similar using funds available from any SIPP provider.

However beware, past performance is no guarantee of future performance and funds that do very well under one particular set of circumstances may perform very badly when those circumstances change.  In retirement it is probably better to aim for doing moderately well under most circumstances.

Bianchiintenso

Appreciate that Linton, the fund name, codes are

Fund name.                    SEDOL
Zurich Managed AP.       0406181

Zurich Equity AP.            0406493
as I have said, very happy with performance, it may be that a VLS or HSBC fund will be close in which case I’d feel more confident going forward 

Linton

Bianchiintenso said:

Appreciate that Linton, the fund name, codes are

Fund name.                    SEDOL
Zurich Managed AP.       0406181

Zurich Equity AP.            0406493
as I have said, very happy with performance, it may be that a VLS or HSBC fund will be close in which case I’d feel more confident going forward 

The Zurich Managed AP fund is 60% equity, 20% property, 20% bonds.  So similar equity % to VLS60 and HSBC Global Strategy Balanced though the high property allocation is unusual.

Over 10 years:




Over 3 years


Zurich Managed's good performance recently is probably due to it holding 20% bonds rather than the 40% of the other 2 funds.  The circumstances causing this were very unusual and may not occur again in your lifetime.

The Zurich Equity fund invests in 100% global equity. However it is not a typical index tracker.  I cannot find it in morningstar so cannot do a detailed analysis but from its fact sheet it is only 42% invested in the US with 16% UK. It has underperformed a Global Index Tracker over 10 years, though by not as much as VLS100.