Royal London asset allocation - life strategy equivalent or add bonds?

mrklaw

currently 100% in RLP worldwide. 5-6 years out from hopeful retirement, looking at either partial transfer out to a SIPP platform, or adjusting within RL portfolio to a more blended strategy. adding some bonds (80/20 or 70/30 maybe) or using a life strategy type single fund to do that for me. 

I’m tempted to stay inside RL partly as I’m worried about delays wiht partial transfer to a SIPP - assume I’d be cashing out and transferring and that will introduce delays etc. But partly also I’ll be heavily contributing over the next 5 years and tracking overall balances etc will be a little simpler in one place. 

The RL governed portfolios and GRIP funds (?) are opaque as heck. They are made up of funds so a fund of funds, and I can’t get my head around what they contain. Their fact sheets aren’t super helpful either. I think I’m really just looking for somethign that would be close-ish to some ratio of a FTSE/MSCI all world tracker for the equities and a UK gilts (maybe global bonds) for the bonds portion. 

Doesn’t seem like a hard ask but I can’t see if there is something like that with whats available. if a SIPP and partial transfer is the best option I’m happy to do that and then invest in something like Vanguard lifestrategy80 for now. Not looking at target date funds as I am aiming for sorting the bridge period out using a DB + my wife’s DC which will be converted to more fixed income; and then after state pension we’ll only need my DC for optional spend so I’m happy being relatively high in equity but with some volatility calming measures

Somebody

Check the fees you're paying.  I've just recently moved away from RL to a SIPP.  It was an ex-employer scheme with acceptably OK'ish fee wise (along with Profit Share) if I stayed with RL's own fund range, but moving to another RL affiliated fund house's fund increased the total fee to somewhere just under 0.5%, so I decided to move to ii where I already have a SIPP and pay a low monthly fixed price.  

Albermarle

Somebody said:

Check the fees you're paying.  I've just recently moved away from RL to a SIPP.  It was an ex-employer scheme with acceptably OK'ish fee wise (along with Profit Share) if I stayed with RL's own fund range, but moving to another RL affiliated fund house's fund increased the total fee to somewhere just under 0.5%, so I decided to move to ii where I already have a SIPP and pay a low monthly fixed price.  

Although it depends a lot on what investments are bought in a SIPP.

If they are not cheap ones it will wipe out the advantage of low platform fees.

dunstonh

The RL governed portfolios and GRIP funds (?) are opaque as heck.

RL publish good details on them and give a rolling three months of any changes made by the invesmtent committee.     

They are made up of funds so a fund of funds, and I can’t get my head around what they contain. 

RL publish the information on the underlying funds on their website.  They are easy to follow.  And as it is an MPS using software, you actually hold the underlying funds.  Although RL have just launched an OEIC version (so MPS within a fund) - but that may not be available to you yet.     This makes them the same as Vanguard and HSBC in having an MPS as a fund version and an MPS using software.

 I think I’m really just looking for somethign that would be close-ish to some ratio of a FTSE/MSCI all world tracker for the equities and a UK gilts (maybe global bonds) for the bonds portion. 

So, their Governed portfolio with you self selecting a global tracker for the equities component instead of the default global managed.

mrklaw

How can you change the equities component? thats interesting. although again limited to RL funds but that could be the RL Worldwide which I’m already in for equities. 

I suppose opaque isn’t the correct term - more like overwhelming to decode as there are so many compoennts to try and analyse and then compare with eg lifestrategy80 or 60. Especially as there are no past performance stats at the moment. 

Are their governed portfolios generally decent? (all things being relative of course)

mrklaw

eg Governed Portfolio enhanced look about 70/30 equities/other and about 20% bonds/cash 10% property/commodities. Maybe a reasonable split I don’t want to go much lower in equities and the next one up is about 80% equities but almost no bonds - the 20% is mainly property/cash/commodities so not sure how I feel about that. 

But could replace the RLP global managed with RLP worldwide which seems more of an all world index tracker less overweight in UK.  Does that seem reasonable?