Fisher Investments UK - opinions?

UncleK

I did some calculations when I was talking to Fisher comparing their charges to a tracker at Vanguard, so I can plug in these numbers. It takes into account the compounding effect of the fees departing your portfolio rather being part of next years growth.
I reckon at these growth figures and nine years Grimboh is down about 22% - of course making the massive assumption that Fisher managed funds have the same performance as Vanguard passive funds. Feel free to ignore!

Grimboh

dunstonh said:

A bit late to this thread but I hope still relevant. I have been with Fishers for just coming up 9 

Many many years ago, I spoke with someone who boasted about how good their decision had been to move one pension to another.   He said he lost money on the first one but the second one is doing great.    We looked at the investments and both were invested in a FTSE100 tracker.    So, he hadn't changed the investments at all.   The previous pension went a crash. The new one went through a recovery.   It also turned out the newer pension was more expensive.    So, actually the newer one was worse than the previous one but he just couldnt see it.

Fair point dunstonh well made and balanced, which is great to see.
I can't find a 20 year annualised figure for Fishers fund but the charts on various platforms from inception show a starting price of 100 in May 2002 to now at 610. Morningstar have a 15 year stat of 12.4 but obviously doesn't cover the 2008 crash, and would hit the 20y annualised return. But that's also true for pretty much all stocks and funds I would have thought.
I'm sure the more adventurous traders here will have achieved much higher returns, but a lot of people are just looking for good long term returns for a comfortable retirement. With the support that Fishers give to that type of investor I do think they do an OK job.
What I really wanted to do was to try to partially balance the bias (as I see it) on this thread (and others) and comments such as 'wouldn't touch with a bargepole'. Unfair and not helpful in my opinion.
Obviously for experienced active investors Fishers are certainly not the company for them, but I don't think most people are not that type of investor.

Albermarle

Grimboh said:

dunstonh said:

A bit late to this thread but I hope still relevant. I have been with Fishers for just coming up 9 

Many many years ago, I spoke with someone who boasted about how good their decision had been to move one pension to another.   He said he lost money on the first one but the second one is doing great.    We looked at the investments and both were invested in a FTSE100 tracker.    So, he hadn't changed the investments at all.   The previous pension went a crash. The new one went through a recovery.   It also turned out the newer pension was more expensive.    So, actually the newer one was worse than the previous one but he just couldnt see it.

Fair point dunstonh well made and balanced, which is great to see.
I can't find a 20 year annualised figure for Fishers fund but the charts on various platforms from inception show a starting price of 100 in May 2002 to now at 610. Morningstar have a 15 year stat of 12.4 but obviously doesn't cover the 2008 crash, and would hit the 20y annualised return. But that's also true for pretty much all stocks and funds I would have thought.
I'm sure the more adventurous traders here will have achieved much higher returns, but a lot of people are just looking for good long term returns for a comfortable retirement. With the support that Fishers give to that type of investor I do think they do an OK job.
What I really wanted to do was to try to partially balance the bias (as I see it) on this thread (and others) and comments such as 'wouldn't touch with a bargepole'. Unfair and not helpful in my opinion.
Obviously for experienced active investors Fishers are certainly not the company for them, but I don't think most people are not that type of investor.

It is probably worth pointing out that for many investors ( advised or DIY) a 100% equity fund is already far too adventurous.
Most investors/pension pot holders are nervous about big market drops, even if everybody says it will recover again at some point. So the typical investor is in medium risk funds- the classic being 60:40 funds, although ideally they should be taking on more risk, at least if they are still 10 years away from retiring.
Even on these forums, the number of really active adventurous investors/traders is small.
The usual mantra is buy and hold. High % equity if you have the nerves for it. More medium risk if you have not/already have enough/are near or in retirement. 
Plus of course this being an MSE forum, as low charges as possible.
On the related pensions forum, there is a lot more discussion about tax, gilt ladders, buying annuities, safe drawdown etc rather than maximising investment growth, which shows were most peoples priorities lie.

InvesterJones

Grimboh said:

I'm sure the more adventurous traders here will have achieved much higher returns, but a lot of people are just looking for good long term returns for a comfortable retirement. With the support that Fishers give to that type of investor I do think they do an OK job.
What I really wanted to do was to try to partially balance the bias (as I see it) on this thread (and others) and comments such as 'wouldn't touch with a bargepole'. Unfair and not helpful in my opinion.
Obviously for experienced active investors Fishers are certainly not the company for them, but I don't think most people are not that type of investor.

I think you're missing the point that was made about how you don't need to be an experienced active or adventurous investor to have beaten Fishers - a simple, well diversified, passive global index tracker would have done. Set and forget, and the vastly lower fees only add to the return (and unlike investment performance, are a guaranteed impact on return).

Active funds, let alone investment management companies, should always look to justify why they are worth the added expense over a simple, diversified, passive benchmark. Paying additional sales people isn't high on the list.

Eyeful

Grimboh said
So, that's charges - but why look at charges? They are incidental - what matters is the actual return AFTER charges.

 1. Why look at charges?

Because the more you pay in charges:

more money ends up in the advisors pocket and 

less money ends up in your pocket. Its s simple as that.

If you do not believe me use the T Rex score below

https://larrybates.ca/t-rex-score/

2. What maters is the actual return AFTER charges.

No one can see into the future, so no one can tell what they will end up with at the end.

What you do have some control of is charges and fees you have to pay.

3. Academic research repeatably shows that ,after charges are applied, most fund managers fail to beat a simple index tracker.

4. Suggest you look at the following video:

https://www.kroijer.com/

Grimboh

InvesterJones said:

I think you're missing the point that was made about how you don't need to be an experienced active or adventurous investor to have beaten Fishers - a simple, well diversified, passive global index tracker would have done. Set and forget, and the vastly lower fees only add to the return (and unlike investment performance, are a guaranteed impact on return).

Potentially, but from what I can find with large cap global passive trackers the Fisher OIEC AFTER fees is either similar or often better. Seems to me that one has to go to actively managed funds to better that by a significant margin, for example Fidelity's Active Strategy Global Fund, amongst others.
Their OEIC and their backup service (which has good and bad aspects!) is a very reasonable performer, if not the best.
The posts here give the impression that they are a very bad choice, which is not the case.

artyboy

InvesterJones said:

Grimboh said:

I'm sure the more adventurous traders here will have achieved much higher returns, but a lot of people are just looking for good long term returns for a comfortable retirement. With the support that Fishers give to that type of investor I do think they do an OK job.
What I really wanted to do was to try to partially balance the bias (as I see it) on this thread (and others) and comments such as 'wouldn't touch with a bargepole'. Unfair and not helpful in my opinion.
Obviously for experienced active investors Fishers are certainly not the company for them, but I don't think most people are not that type of investor.

I think you're missing the point that was made about how you don't need to be an experienced active or adventurous investor to have beaten Fishers - a simple, well diversified, passive global index tracker would have done. Set and forget, and the vastly lower fees only add to the return (and unlike investment performance, are a guaranteed impact on return).

Active funds, let alone investment management companies, should always look to justify why they are worth the added expense over a simple, diversified, passive benchmark. Paying additional sales people isn't high on the list.

And that's why I got out of Nutmeg - I proved over 10 years that HMWO beat their highest risk (i.e. all equity) managed portfolio, both on aggregate, and for 9 out of the 10 individual years in question. And for a much much lower overhead.

Yes, the bonus Avios for transferring have come in very useful, but they are in no way a good long term prospect.

Funnily enough, my Nutmeg RM stopped calling me shortly after we'd had that discussion. Must have realised he was milking a dead cow... 

masonic

Grimboh said:

InvesterJones said:

I think you're missing the point that was made about how you don't need to be an experienced active or adventurous investor to have beaten Fishers - a simple, well diversified, passive global index tracker would have done. Set and forget, and the vastly lower fees only add to the return (and unlike investment performance, are a guaranteed impact on return).

Potentially, but from what I can find with large cap global passive trackers the Fisher OIEC AFTER fees is either similar or often better. Seems to me that one has to go to actively managed funds to better that by a significant margin, for example Fidelity's Active Strategy Global Fund, amongst others.
Their OEIC and their backup service (which has good and bad aspects!) is a very reasonable performer, if not the best.
The posts here give the impression that they are a very bad choice, which is not the case.

To generate a level of returns after fees, the fund manager has to achieve an even greater level of returns before fees. Given that the explicit fees are not the whole story, and there is plenty hidden away within the mechanics of the fund it may be necessary to outperform by a significant margin. To do that, requires a greater level of risk. In situations like this one where the fund has not outperformed an appropriate low cost option, the investor has taken on all of that extra risk, so that the manager can cream off those additional returns for himself. That is a very bad choice for the investor to have made, even if over a specific period of time, they have not been personally impacted by the additional risk. They could have avoided exposing themselves to it, or got the benefit of the additional risk through a lower cost product.

To Dunstonh's point, it is perhaps in the nature of opportunistic companies to hard-sell their expensive products just after a crash, when they can take advantage of naive investors concerned with a period of poor performance, knowing that they can capitalise on markets bouncing back to give the appearance their investments are superior. And people do get sucked in, which is a pity.

Bostonerimus1

Grimboh said:

A bit late to this thread but I hope still relevant. I have been with Fishers for just coming up 9 years now. I had a local IFA for a few years, was very disappointed with returns and the advice, then self-invested with Fidelity for a few years. I achieved an annualised 9% return after charges over those few years. Not bad from where I was but I found it stressful. So I contacted a few firms, including Fishers. Took me 18 months and 2 salesman to eventually commit some of our funds.
Someone stated that it's an initial 5.25% charge, but that's just when you look at fund stats - the reality was a 1% initial charge and an annual 1.5%, now reduced to 1.25% due to value threshold reductions. And 1% I think for £5m+, not sure though.
So, that's charges - but why look at charges? They are incidental - what matters is the actual return AFTER charges. To the end of Q2 2025 my annualised return after charges was 12.4% over nearly 9 years. Probably bordering on 13% at the end of Q3 but I don't have the figures yet.
Their emphasis is long term investing (30 year time horizon they say) , and yes it's volatile and the market can drop significantly. So hold tight, take out minimum money, none ideally, and wait for it bounce back - it will. Unless WW3 starts and then there's whole load of other issues of course....
Some are stating returns around 23-25% for other funds - fine, but that's just one year and 2024 was a good year for stocks. You have to look at the long term annualised return - for me this is really the only yardstick that counts.
OK, so there certainly are frustrations with Fishers. Too many layers involved, 3 for sipps 2 for ISA and taxables. Their admin isn't great - although not dreadful either. The delay with America for discussions with your Investment contact is a frustration - yes they're a UK company with a UK OIEC, but they service you, mainly, from the states.
And they have various departments who fail to communicate and/or carry out instructions quite how you might expect sometimes.
But overall am I happy with 12%+ returns? - definitely. Could I get more? Almost certainly. But you'd probably have to try to time the market to achieve that and deal in individual stocks. And timing the market is tricky. Did you get in with Invidia at the right time? If you did then you've done fantastically well. But it really is risky. Long term investing isn't really risky if you stick with it.
Fisher sold on achieving 10% returns over the prior 20 years. I struggled to believe that 9 years ago - but they have delivered and it does work. And for me it's much less stressful than DIY. And finding a good if IFA is tricky, more chance of seeing a unicorn in my experience.
So bad mouth them for high charges if you wish, but that's not the full story.

In the US Fisher is widely seen as an expensive, high pressure sales company. I get things from them in the post regularly trying to sell me "retirement income strategies". They are also criticized for wrapping simple strategies up in layers of fees and administration.  Their asset mixes are easy for the DIYer to replicate and manage and, although you don't actually give us the portfolio, I bet there are some big name index funds in there. Don't get me wrong I think that's the right way to invest long term, but it would probably be cheaper to use an IFA and you might get better service and it would definitely be less expensive to DIY. But I believe that most financial professionals are little more than parasites so you won't get an unbiased opinion from me about Fishers. Still your returns should be more than sufficient to make any reasonable financial plan work so it's not the end of the world.

Silverpete

In the UK Fishers run their own funds through Purisima. The most adventurous appears to be Global return (B version unless you've c.£5M and are an IFA to invest) :-) 
I've had half my pension in this fund with them for 3 years now and have struggled to beat them self investing the other half. Fees are highish but the service is very good. They've been happy to share research on individual shares with me.