Fund options/guidance

DunnersO

I currently have c£50K invested with Foresters Financial in their stakeholder fund managed by Schroders, with annual fees at 1.5%.  The fund breakdown is c60% shares (mainly global) and 40% cash/bonds/fixed income.

Performance for the past five years is as follows:

• 2019/20 – 1%

• 2022/21 – 6.9%

• 2021/22 – 2.9%

• 2022/23 - -5.1% (ouch)

• 2023/24 – 8%

My risk appetite is fairly unadventurous/moderate, and I’m looking to remain invested for at least another five years. I’m not interested in any regular trading, and more than happy to go with pre-packaged funds that match my risk profile. I’m a “fire and forget” kinda guy, who is happy to check in annually to see how things are going.

Going forward, I want to add to my investments with contributions of c£1K per month, increasing annually with inflation. Having read some of the guidance on the main website, I believe I could be doing better on fees.  But I’m less clear on how performance compares with other  "lazy investor" options.

Is it worth me transferring my S&S ISA to another provider and continuing to invest there, or am I just as well sticking with where I am?  Any guidance grateful received.

Aminatidi

OK well let's use HSBC Global Strategy Balanced as an example of a roughly 60/40 low-cost multi-asset fund.

I'm assuming you quoted rolling returns for the Foresters fund so these are rolling from the end of Feb.

• 2019/20 – 6.98%

• 2020/21 – 11.07%

• 2021/22 – 5.52%

• 2022/23 - -2.43% (ouch)

• 2023/24 – 10.14%

And for LifeStrategy 60 which tends to be used a lot when discussing multi-asset funds.

• 2019/20 – 7.61%

• 2020/21 – 9.33%

• 2021/22 – 6.26%

• 2022/23 - -4.46% (ouch)

• 2023/24 – 9.25%

Linton

DunnersO said:

I currently have c£50K invested with Foresters Financial in their stakeholder fund managed by Schroders, with annual fees at 1.5%.  The fund breakdown is c60% shares (mainly global) and 40% cash/bonds/fixed income.

Performance for the past five years is as follows:

• 2019/20 – 1%

• 2022/21 – 6.9%

• 2021/22 – 2.9%

• 2022/23 - -5.1% (ouch)

• 2023/24 – 8%

My risk appetite is fairly unadventurous/moderate, and I’m looking to remain invested for at least another five years. I’m not interested in any regular trading, and more than happy to go with pre-packaged funds that match my risk profile. I’m a “fire and forget” kinda guy, who is happy to check in annually to see how things are going.

Going forward, I want to add to my investments with contributions of c£1K per month, increasing annually with inflation. Having read some of the guidance on the main website, I believe I could be doing better on fees.  But I’m less clear on how performance compares with other  "lazy investor" options.

Is it worth me transferring my S&S ISA to another provider and continuing to invest there, or am I just as well sticking with where I am?  Any guidance grateful received.

You can get some comparison with the Vanguard Life Strategy 60 which is a commony used 60% global index equity and 40% bond fund.  For 5 years going back from now:

0-12 month: 10.9%
12-24 month: -4.9%
24-36 month: 4.7%
36-48 month: 24.9%
48-60 month: -5.7%

Note the precise dates when the performance was measured may well be different.

So VLS60 has had significantly higher overall returns than the Foresters fund but has also been rather more volatile with higher highs and lower lows.  This is perhaps not surprising with you holding an old stakeholder fund with, I would guess from the results ( Foresters dont appear to provide any details about the fund),  less money invested in US Tech than a modern fund.  US Tech has been a major area of growth in the last few years.  However there is no guarantee that this will be the case in the next 5 years.

Moving your money to another provider/fund with lower fees may well be worthwhile as the total fees could be around 0.5% for platform and fund but you may have to accept the higher volatility.  I assume you are not paying for advice which would be an extra,

DunnersO

Linton said:

DunnersO said:

I currently have c£50K invested with Foresters Financial in their stakeholder fund managed by Schroders, with annual fees at 1.5%.  The fund breakdown is c60% shares (mainly global) and 40% cash/bonds/fixed income.

Performance for the past five years is as follows:

• 2019/20 – 1%

• 2022/21 – 6.9%

• 2021/22 – 2.9%

• 2022/23 - -5.1% (ouch)

• 2023/24 – 8%

My risk appetite is fairly unadventurous/moderate, and I’m looking to remain invested for at least another five years. I’m not interested in any regular trading, and more than happy to go with pre-packaged funds that match my risk profile. I’m a “fire and forget” kinda guy, who is happy to check in annually to see how things are going.

Going forward, I want to add to my investments with contributions of c£1K per month, increasing annually with inflation. Having read some of the guidance on the main website, I believe I could be doing better on fees.  But I’m less clear on how performance compares with other  "lazy investor" options.

Is it worth me transferring my S&S ISA to another provider and continuing to invest there, or am I just as well sticking with where I am?  Any guidance grateful received.

You can get some comparison with the Vanguard Life Strategy 60 which is a commony used 60% global index equity and 40% bond fund.  For 5 years going back from now:

0-12 month: 10.9%
12-24 month: -4.9%
24-36 month: 4.7%
36-48 month: 24.9%
48-60 month: -5.7%

Note the precise dates when the performance was measured may well be different.

So VLS60 has had significantly higher overall returns than the Foresters fund but has also been rather more volatile with higher highs and lower lows.  This is perhaps not surprising with you holding an old stakeholder fund with, I would guess from the results ( Foresters dont appear to provide any details about the fund),  less money invested in US Tech than a modern fund.  US Tech has been a major area of growth in the last few years.  However there is no guarantee that this will be the case in the next 5 years.

Moving your money to another provider/fund with lower fees may well be worthwhile as the total fees could be around 0.5% for platform and fund but you may have to accept the higher volatility.  I assume you are not paying for advice which would be an extra,

Thanks, that's a helpful way for me to look at things.