Advice on fund choice with Zurich

Hi All,

Looking for some advice on my PRSA with Zurich. I am 32 and have approximately €23,000 in a PRSA getting 52% tax relief as I am a director of an umbrella company and the company pays contributions. I am currently contributing €700 per month to this and plan on increasing to €1,200. I also have a retirement bond from a previous employment which has approximately €25,000.

My PRSA with Zurich is split 50:50 in the Zurich Dynamic fund and the indexed tech top 100.

The AMC is 1.25% on each of these funds and 100% allocation.

I am wondering if anyone has any advice/opinion on the funds I am invested in? Or could I get a better AMC anywhere else? I was hoping to sort these before upping my monthly premium.

Thanks

I suspect you could switch to an execution-only broker, if you are comfortable with that, and pay 0.75% AMC on the exact same funds.

For example: www.prsa.ie

Thanks Protocol, I had been looking at that website this morning after posting. At the moment I'm not getting very much advise from my broker and would be happy to go this route. Can I switch my existing funds to a different broker to avail of the lower AMC?

I also notice that they offer 1% AMC on Zurich savings account. I am currently paying 1.5%, so may also look at that.

Yes, you should be able to switch, although I am not an expert.

I have switched existing pension policies to new brokers/agents, it should be possible.

As long as you are clear and comfortable about execution-only service.

Hi Gsecoo

You are young and have probably another 30 years pension contributions ahead of you. There is a lot of merit in having a broker that you trust and have a relationship with to advise and guide you, answer your questions, deal with any transactions and regulation and generally support you. An ideal client for any decent broker to have. Having first tried to self-manage my pension, I used a number of different brokers during my working career and don't regret it. The broker fees I paid were very worthwhile in the long term.

That most certainly does not suggest that you should be throwing money at a broker, especially one that you do not consider to be giving you value. The funds you mention are available at .75% AMC as @Protocol mentions. So paying more than doesn't make much sense, especially if you aren't receiving service you value from your broker.

I don't like the commission based model the a lot of brokers rely on. It means their renumeration flows in, irrespective of the value they add. I much prefer to work with them on a fee basis.

I'd suggest you look at other brokers (there are a few good ones that regularly contribute here). At least have an introductory meeting and hear what they have to say. You can always deal with them on a fee basis, whereby you get the lower AMC from the Zurich or whoever, and pay for the broker advice/services when required.

Royal London Ireland have just entered the Irish PRSA market with AMC from 0.4 - 0.6%

The only execution-only RL offer I'm aware of is at @GSheehy site: https://www.execution-only.ie/ which offers 0.6% AMC.

I think that's the current market leading offer rate for a PRSA to access passive tracking funds.

For fund choice, I always recommend the Global Index tracker.

as above, a good meeting with a broker who can assess what risk level you are happy with is probably best. I'm with Unio (originally Acumen & Trust) and find them excellent on response times to any changes I request.

I do also like that you can switch between different Zurich funds quickly and without penalty.