Can an employee dictate who the pension provider is?

[LDFerguson]

How can the trustees get away with such a poor fund offering?

I'm amused by one of the funds being named the "Quality Equity" fund. What does that say about the other equity funds in the range? Should they be renamed? The Also-Ran Equity fund? The Rubbish Equity fund? The Inferior Equity Fund?

 

[Fortune]

I'm amused by one of the funds being named the "Quality Equity" fund. What does that say about the other equity funds in the range? Should they be renamed? The Also-Ran Equity fund? The Rubbish Equity fund? The Inferior Equity Fund?

The "Here listen, we're better at picking some shares, but still do it passively, and it's totally not us trying to hide our inability to replicate the index" fund.

 

[AJAM]

How can the trustees get away with such a poor fund offering?

I much prefer a selection with a small number of excellent funds. Rather than a large number of crap funds!

Speaking from experience, when I was young my first job pension fund offered a myriad of choices, all with high fees. Not knowing what I was doing I spread my choice among 6 or so funds. Only 1 of them performed any way decently.
Now I do Know what I'm doing, I still think the right thing for a pension provider to do is to curate the offered funds to low cost good ones, instead of confusing (the majority of people who know nothing about funds) with lots of choice.

 

[AJAM]

I'm amused by one of the funds being named the "Quality Equity" fund. What does that say about the other equity funds in the range? Should they be renamed? The Also-Ran Equity fund? The Rubbish Equity fund? The Inferior Equity Fund?

"Quality Equity" refers to one of the well known factors that modern portfolio theory has shown outperforms.

The Factors being
Size,
Value
Quality
Momentum
Low Volatility

Specifically Quality: Quality factors focus on the financial health and stability of companies. High-quality companies typically exhibit strong profitability, low debt levels, consistent earnings growth, and high operating efficiency and hence give better risk adjusted returns.

Note its risk adjusted returns not straight returns.

So the Quality Equity fund is a great choice for someone who wants market-like returns with a slightly smoother ride.

FYI I have a portion of my pension invested in the Quality Equity fund

 

[AJAM]

The "Here listen, we're better at picking some shares, but still do it passively, and it's totally not us trying to hide our inability to replicate the index" fund.

The Quality index fund is a passive fund and follows an index.

Here a few Quality Factor ETF's for you

The best Quality-Factor ETFs | justETF

Which Quality-Factor ETF is the best? The annual total expense ratio, performance and all other information about Quality-Factor ETFs.

www.justetf.com

 

[Fortune]

I much prefer a selection with a small number of excellent funds. Rather than a large number of crap funds!

Speaking from experience, when I was young my first job pension fund offered a myriad of choices, all with high fees. Not knowing what I was doing I spread my choice among 6 or so funds. Only 1 of them performed any way decently.
Now I do Know what I'm doing, I still think the right thing for a pension provider to do is to curate the offered funds to low cost good ones, instead of confusing (the majority of people who know nothing about funds) with lots of choice.

It's a poor curation of funds. What's a person to do if they want an 80/20 passive equity/bond investment split?

 

[LDFerguson]

"Quality Equity" refers to one of the well known factors that modern portfolio theory has shown outperforms.

The Factors being
Size,
Value
Quality
Momentum
Low Volatility

Specifically Quality: Quality factors focus on the financial health and stability of companies. High-quality companies typically exhibit strong profitability, low debt levels, consistent earnings growth, and high operating efficiency and hence give better risk adjusted returns.

Note its risk adjusted returns not straight returns.

So the Quality Equity fund is a great choice for someone who wants market-like returns with a slightly smoother ride.

FYI I have a portion of my pension invested in the Quality Equity fund

Thanks. I just think that using the word "Quality" in a fund name is odd from a marketing perspective as it could be interpreted that the other equity funds are therefore "Not Quality".

 

[PaddyW]

Fees for all the funds.
View attachment 8643
They told me that everyone in the Master Trust pays the same fees (not sure if that is true or not).

We have less than 30 members and less than 4M in assets.

Not fully sure of the charges that apply to us with APT (through Unio), but like yours, the funds on offer are severely limited and also somewhat different to yours. I'm in Irish Life Navigate World Equity Fund S2.

By the by, have your contributions been allocated since December? Ours are still not showing online, 3 months later.

 

[AJAM]

I'm in danger of becoming the APT marketing guy here. Which I am not.
But APT do have other funds available (including bond funds) which were not listed on the original marketing material we got (that I posted) but were available when we went to choose funds. Also on request, they added an extra bond fund for us.

But as I said, I'm not here to promote APT, so I'll circle back to my actual point,
That if your employer pension is charging high fees, you should ask your employer to shop around and get quotes from the various master trusts that are currently available.

Switching employer pension providers sounds like it should be a massive ordeal, but for us, it was a few emails, and a long wait. It was not complicated or difficult. It just took a long time.

 

[Gordon Gekko]

Thanks. I just think that using the word "Quality" in a fund name is odd from a marketing perspective as it could be interpreted that the other equity funds are therefore "Not Quality".

To be fair, it has a specific meaning in finance, but I agree that for something aimed at the general public, it’s an odd name.

 

[AJAM]

Just a note, the APT Master Trust is now the UNIO Master Trust