Pension fund performance - do you monitor yours, how is it doing, do you actively change it?

I get yearly updates on my pension - i also took out 25k from it to play on the uk stockmarket which i invest in uranium stocks, it means i cant get in too much trouble myself but ive done alright doing it this way.
 
Here is a fund my scheme offers. Meant to be a pre-retirement fund - so one would assume that means its meant to be safe...look what happened to it!

pension4.png
 
200sols said:
Risk ratings are a guide. As I'm sure all the 'low' risk bond fund holders just found out.

If you're youngish just a world index tracker and forget about it.
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The financial services company I worked for didn't deal directly with the public, only through intermediaries
7/8 years ago the FCA said you have to get to know your end customers better, despite the fact that we never dealt with them
I think it was all about how you are positioning your products: what was the target market, and are the holders of those funds in that target market?
Cue a load of money spent on analysis, interviews, focus groups etc.
The biggest thing to come out of it was a load of post-retirement folks were heavily/wholly invested in funds rated 6/7, which the FCA thought was inappropriate
When this was explained to end customers, the reported general response was "Eff off. I'm not an idiot. Don't tell me where to invest my money. I decide the level of risk I'm prepared to take. Giving financial advice now, are we?"
Lol, what a waste of time
 
Just downloaded all 77 factsheets from my provider. Now to get examining.


Any thoughts on what are acceptable fees? My available funds seem to go from about 0.15% lowest, through 0.45-0.60% quite a few in that range, and then the highest there are a couple of over 1% fees. There doesn't seem to be a flag on my factsheets for whether a fund is passive or active.
 
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My work’s default fund is 6/7 risk rating and has 90% in international equities, 8% in UK equities and 1% in property, plus a few other tiny bits (including 0.19% international bonds). Seems to be doing pretty well so far, and charges 0.15%.

I also have a chunk in a Global All Cap fund in a S&S ISA which has similar returns.
 
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danlightbulb said:
Just downloaded all 77 factsheets from my provider. Now to get examining.


Any thoughts on what are acceptable fees? My available funds seem to go from about 0.15% lowest, through 0.45-0.60% quite a few in that range, and then the highest there are a couple of over 1% fees. There doesn't seem to be a flag on my factsheets for whether a fund is passive or active.
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Passive world tracker should be in the 0.15-0.2% range.
 
Yes I went through mine a few years ago too.
Never really paid it much attention up till then but my work switched DC pensions to Standard Life so I thought it work checking out.
I opted out of the default investment fund which I think was charging something like an 0.5% fee, & just put it all in UK/world equity trackers (Split something like 20% UK / 80% RoW)
 
danlightbulb said:
Just downloaded all 77 factsheets from my provider. Now to get examining.


Any thoughts on what are acceptable fees? My available funds seem to go from about 0.15% lowest, through 0.45-0.60% quite a few in that range, and then the highest there are a couple of over 1% fees. There doesn't seem to be a flag on my factsheets for whether a fund is passive or active.
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Acceptable is what you are willing to pay for it.

For some it's 0.5% for others it's 1.5% - What is deemed "value" for you might not be for someone else.

As a guide - most of the portfolios I look after for clients are around 0.6-0.7% in OCF... Some funds down around 0.07% for trackers, others are around 0.9/1% - blended to make an average around 0.6%

Fund factsheets will/should confirm the style of management - Active/Passive (tracker) - Generally the lower the cost, the more "likely" it will be passive/tracker.
 
danlightbulb said:
Just downloaded all 77 factsheets from my provider. Now to get examining.


Any thoughts on what are acceptable fees? My available funds seem to go from about 0.15% lowest, through 0.45-0.60% quite a few in that range, and then the highest there are a couple of over 1% fees. There doesn't seem to be a flag on my factsheets for whether a fund is passive or active.
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Waste of time downloading 77 fund factsheets.

Do a risk profiler online, then look at funds that suit your attitude to risk... That will rule out 50/60% of the funds you have access to.

Unless you have a large fund, don't over complicate it. Stick with 2/3/4 funds max.

Each of those funds are diversified enough then you'll have another level of diversification across various sectors/geographical areas
 
I've managed mine pretty closely ever since I started contributing to a scheme at 21. I was fortunate enought to work for an accounting firm which had a wealth management business, and one of the advisers gave the other staff a presentation on the basics.

My general strategy has been
  1. Minimize fees - Ultimately the stock market is made up of a bunch of fund managers investing in stocks and claiming they are investing better than the other managers. Unless you are capable of assessing the competence of one manager over another (and how on earth do you do that - don't say past performance!), you are taking a complete guess. Therefore the logical thing to do is find the one who is charging the least for what you want to invest in, which will usually just be a tracker fund. This accords with research that shows, on average, active fund managers do not outperform passive funds after taking into account fees. Also check fees if you have multiple pensions schemes and look at switching - I have two Aviva schemes with different employers and the fees on one are 2.5 times of the other!

  2. Maximize exposure to risk when young - The UK's rules on pension funds are extremely conservative which is reflected in the funds available to invest in. Even if you select the most super duper risky fund the underlying investments will still be a vastly diversified range of securities in a range of mostly public companies, meaning that its hard to get it too wrong. Generally you should be fully exposed to equities for a significant chunk of your working life to maximize returns whilst you can ride the volitility.

  3. Stick to your strategy - Short term poor performance will make you question whether you made the right investment decision, but the point of investing for your pension is that there will be ups and downs which are likely to mostly even out over your working life. If you decide to change strategy you are probably wasting your time because whatever issues you think have with your existing strategy are already priced in. Switching funds also means locking up cash for a few days whilst the provider arranges the transfer, meaning you could lose out on a few % of gains if you are unlucky, exposing yourself to uneccessary risk.
At the moment, my funds invested in are as follows:

34% emerging markets (0.26% fee)
18% world ex UK (0% fee)
16% US (0% fee)
15% UK (0% fee)
7% Europe (0.03% fee)
7% Pacific rim (0% fee)
3% Japan (0% fee)

There is also a 0.14% platform fee
 
booyaka said:
Waste of time downloading 77 fund factsheets.

Do a risk profiler online, then look at funds that suit your attitude to risk... That will rule out 50/60% of the funds you have access to.

Unless you have a large fund, don't over complicate it. Stick with 2/3/4 funds max.

Each of those funds are diversified enough then you'll have another level of diversification across various sectors/geographical areas
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I get you, but examining all of the funds is the only way I can rank their performance. There are a lot of similar funds - for example several versions of 50/50 equity or 70/30 equity. I will need to see how they perform against each other and what the differences are between them, and all of that info is on the factsheets.
 
weringo said:
I've managed mine pretty closely ever since I started contributing to a scheme at 21. I was fortunate enought to work for an accounting firm which had a wealth management business, and one of the advisers gave the other staff a presentation on the basics.

My general strategy has been
  1. Minimize fees - Ultimately the stock market is made up of a bunch of fund managers investing in stocks and claiming they are investing better than the other managers. Unless you are capable of assessing the competence of one manager over another (and how on earth do you do that - don't say past performance!), you are taking a complete guess. Therefore the logical thing to do is find the one who is charging the least for what you want to invest in, which will usually just be a tracker fund. This accords with research that shows, on average, active fund managers do not outperform passive funds after taking into account fees. Also check fees if you have multiple pensions schemes and look at switching - I have two Aviva schemes with different employers and the fees on one are 2.5 times of the other!

  2. Maximize exposure to risk when young - The UK's rules on pension funds are extremely conservative which is reflected in the funds available to invest in. Even if you select the most super duper risky fund the underlying investments will still be a vastly diversified range of securities in a range of mostly public companies, meaning that its hard to get it too wrong. Generally you should be fully exposed to equities for a significant chunk of your working life to maximize returns whilst you can ride the volitility.

  3. Stick to your strategy - Short term poor performance will make you question whether you made the right investment decision, but the point of investing for your pension is that there will be ups and downs which are likely to mostly even out over your working life. If you decide to change strategy you are probably wasting your time because whatever issues you think have with your existing strategy are already priced in. Switching funds also means locking up cash for a few days whilst the provider arranges the transfer, meaning you could lose out on a few % of gains if you are unlucky, exposing yourself to uneccessary risk.
At the moment, my funds invested in are as follows:

34% emerging markets (0.26% fee)
18% world ex UK (0% fee)
16% US (0% fee)
15% UK (0% fee)
7% Europe (0.03% fee)
7% Pacific rim (0% fee)
3% Japan (0% fee)

There is also a 0.14% platform fee
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Interesting thanks. Heavy on emerging markets I see. And no bonds at all.
 
I'm in a civil service defined benefit pension now, so my retirement is largely in the hands of those who run the country.

For my small private pot from before I joined the service, I just banged it all in the lowest fee global equity tracker with Legal and General. This is the performance as of the past 5 years:

Annual fund performance to last quarter​

12 months toFundpercentage growth
12 months to
31 Dec 2023		Fundpercentage growth
17.85 %
12 months to
31 Dec 2022		Fundpercentage growth
-8.31 %
12 months to
31 Dec 2021		Fundpercentage growth
23.4 %
12 months to
31 Dec 2020		Fundpercentage growth
14.29 %
12 months to
31 Dec 2019		Fundpercentage growth
24.39 %

It was sat in a medium risk, lifestyle portfolio for a couple of years, which was doing awfully.

*Edit*

This was the standard 'diversified growth fund:

Annual fund performance to last quarter​

12 months toFundpercentage growth
12 months to
31 Dec 2023		Fundpercentage growth
12.97 %
12 months to
31 Dec 2022		Fundpercentage growth
-9.81 %
12 months to
31 Dec 2021		Fundpercentage growth
16.71 %
12 months to
31 Dec 2020		Fundpercentage growth
7.58 %
12 months to
31 Dec 2019		Fundpercentage growth
16.57 %

Considering it is actively managed and almost 6x more expensive, the returns aren't great.
 
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Just logged into my current workplace pension plan and got confused. A lot. But basically it says the risk profile "automatically changes its investment mix over time from higher-risk to lower-risk investments and therefore the risk rating of each fund will vary over time from 6 (High) at the beginning of the investment cycle to 3 (Medium-Low) at the maturity date of that fund." I think I'm currently in the high risk one. It claims the performance of my plan did 11.5% Fund and 11.5% Benchmark over the last 12 months. However, my pot has grown 15% over the last 12 months.
Erm...is that good lads? :confused:
 
I've got 1x final salary pension
1x investment pension (I've consolidated my pensions from other employments into a higher performing fund).
1x employee pension

The latter 2 I keep an eye on and manage proactively.

They're both growing steadily my portfolio is in good shape.
 
Screenshot-2024-01-22-at-6.21.48-pm.png

This is my current pension scheme, from 10 years to retirement they start to move it more into bonds. I'm going to ask them to keep it in the scheme for longer as I'm going to live a long life and I hopefully will have other means to to support myself in the first few years.

As said before, the fund as access to other investments that I don't have access to if I opted out and went pick a mix.
It's basis towards the UK market but there are some advantages of that, as you don't have to worry about foreign taxes and exchange rates.

I work for one of the largests banks in the world, deemed too big to fail (if we do; the world will be in ****).. I have thought about opting out and making my own pension fund all the time but the people who work and get paid to trade for a living, have all have recommended that I don't.

Yes, there are some right rubblish pension funds in the uk but anyone who set up their own pension will need to manage their pension way past retirement.[/URL]
 
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slinxy said:
Screenshot-2024-01-22-at-6.21.48-pm.png

This is my current pension scheme, from 10 years to retirement they start to move it more into bonds. I'm going to ask them to keep it in the scheme for longer as I'm going to live a long life and I hopefully will have other means to to support myself in the first few years.

As said before, the fund as access to other investments that I don't have access to if I opted out and went pick a mix.
It's basis towards the UK market but there are some advantages of that, as you don't have to worry about foreign taxes and exchange rates.

I work for one of the largests banks in the world, deemed too big to fail (if we do; the world will be in ****).. I have thought about opting out and making my own pension fund all the time but the people who work and get paid to trade for a living, have all have recommended that I don't.

Yes, there are some right rubblish pension funds in the uk but anyone who set up their own pension will need to manage their pension way past retirement.[/URL]
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I dont have access to any Alternative Credit funds and limited property funds as well. But isn't that rather low on equities at 35%? How old are you?
 
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Freefaller said:
I've got 1x final salary pension
1x investment pension (I've consolidated my pensions from other employments into a higher performing fund).
1x employee pension

The latter 2 I keep an eye on and manage proactively.

They're both growing steadily my portfolio is in good shape.
Click to expand...
Vote name change to controlledfuture
 
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