Orbis

thenewcomer

Signed up with Orbis stocks and shares ISA in 2018, when they were doing the offer of opening a new account and deposit £100 for free £100 top up in that account.

I am wondering what others did with their account? 
On one hand, i am keen to leave the money in Orbis to diversify funds and FSCS only cover up to £85K for platform failure.
On the other hand, I am keen to sell my holdings and transfer the money to top up another ISA platform.

Please share what you did with your orbis account and why. Thanks

Alexland

If you saw the offer here that might have been my thread at the time.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5775047/orbis-100-match-offer-now-ended/

Yeah they were good for the £100s and while the performance of the global equity fund has obviously done loads better than cash savings rates it has generally underperformed global index funds since 2018. I transferred our accounts out and invested in global index funds a long time ago however in current market conditions now bonds are attractive again I have moved to a multi-asset portfolio.

IvanOpinion

Similar to Alexland, Orbis were good for the £100 although I think I lost about £3 on the original investment. In the end I transferred the £197 out to my main ISA and into Fidelity Index World. I have no idea if this has done better or worse than the Orbis Global Equity fund (sometimes you are better not knowing).

thunderroad88

I am thinking of moving a portion of my pure equity funds into multi asset, and the Orbis Global Balanced fund looks very appealing. It’s been a very solid performer for years and consistently beats the HSBC GS funds, has a significantly lower exposure to the US which I have plenty of, and has a 5% holding of gold. No ongoing charge but there can be a performance fee which makes it a little more expensive than a passive tracker but I think it’s justified.

thenewcomer

thunderroad88 said:

I am thinking of moving a portion of my pure equity funds into multi asset, and the Orbis Global Balanced fund looks very appealing. It’s been a very solid performer for years and consistently beats the HSBC GS funds, has a significantly lower exposure to the US which I have plenty of, and has a 5% holding of gold. No ongoing charge but there can be a performance fee which makes it a little more expensive than a passive tracker but I think it’s justified.

I think to use orbis for exposure outside the US is justifiable. But like yourself, I found orbis performance fee expensive.

thenewcomer

my main concern with Orbis has been it is a small provider.

thunderroad88

thenewcomer said:

my main concern with Orbis has been it is a small provider.

It was, now globally it has £27bn aum and the Global Balanced Fund is £527m so not that small. The performance fee of 40% of outperformance above the index is certainly the major drawback. I’ve compared it to HSBC Global Strategy funds as I consider those to be one of the best multi asset funds. Maybe that fee is still worth it given the there is a pretty significant outperformance vs those. From Fidelity site, Orbis has growth of 20%, 43%, 77% over 1,3,5 years. HSBC GS Balanced has 12, 18, 35 and even HSBC GS Adventurous has only 17,33 and 62. Adjusting for that higher fee still leaves Orbis looking attractive. Definitely food for thought as a value option and a little diversification away from the US.

Alexland

Yeah Orbis are hardly small and with the Balanced fund they didn't make the mistake of holding bonds when they were clearly overvalued. Given any multi-asset portfolio needs asset allocation decisions (as passive is not possible) they have done well in that period. Going forward who knows - they are clearly more active than the mild tactical allocation seen in the HSBC GS series. That may backfire one day if they make the wrong call.

When I was reading about their approach to the Balanced fund several years ago I found myself in agreement that fixed income valuations required investors to look elsewhere for diversification. They sought and found that answer to maintaining lower volatility but I took the easy route and just held more equities and accepted the risk for the period.

So while the Global Equity fund has underperformed an index tracker the Balanced fund has done well.