Vanguard lowering fees - that's nice

GeoffTF

"Vanguard said it offers the lowest-cost UCITS ETF range in Europe on an
asset-weighted basis. Following the latest cut, the average
asset-weighted expense ratio across its European equity and fixed income
ETF range will stand at 0.11%."

https://www.trustnet.com/news/13480976/vanguard-cuts-fees-on-europes-largest-ftse-all-world-etf

Kaizen917

I did some brainstorming a while ago when SPDR ACWI's fee reduction to 0.12% coincided with me transferring away from Vanguard. Back then VWRP was 0.22% so it boiled down to things such as whether I wanted a more established fund and how I felt about the FTSE and the MSCI ACWI indexes. Up to then, I used the VHVG+VFEG combo but eventually I saw it as quite fiddly and pointless so I switched to ACWI once I transferred to Freetrade.

In hindsight, it didnt seem to matter whether I use a FTSE or an MSCI ACWI index as both have been performing really close. At the time, I was even trying to future proof my decision by trying to assume that VWRP eventually went down to 0.15% (to compete with the similar Invesco fund). Ultimately, I would have still stuck with ACWI because the fund is also pretty established.

Its nice to see that Vanguard actually brought it down to 0.14% but I doubt this justifies a switch. There is also a chance that StateStreet might not sit on 0.12% forever. The only practical benefit to switch for me would be if I prefer to pay less for individual ETF shares because ACWI is now gone to circa GBP 240 per share which is getting chucky but VWRP isnt super cheap either.

For the people on the fence right now, best I could suggest is to stick to what they do. If VWRP seems really tempting and you dont feel funny about holding multiple funds, there is also the option to simply direct future buys to the fund (and keep the rest of the portfolio as it is).