Irish Life Funds: Index tracking error / TER

Has anyone calculated the TER (total expense ratio) or the annualised index tracking error on any Irish Life indexed funds?

I want to see how much their tracking of their respective indexes is actually costing an investor.

In particular I'm interested in their Indexed European Equity fund, but I would also be interested in TER / index tracking error for any of these funds below.

Indexed European Equity
Indexed UK Equity
Indexed Irish Equity
Indexed North America Equity
Indexed Emerging Markets Equity
Indexed Japan Fund

If anyone has any record of the value of a unit in any of these funds from several years ago I will try to calculate the index tracking error.

Hi SPC100,

Irish Life have a charting tool on their website which actually does a bit of the work for you. [broken link removed]

You can select the fund(s) you want to chart and the date range and by hovering your cursor over a specific date point on the chart, the tool will tell you the performance of the chosen fund from your start date to the specific point you're looking at. From there you can annualise it.

Thanks Liam!

For others trying to do this - please note that you have to select two funds before you the tool will show you the return. I would prefer to have the raw unit values mind you. And I would wonder if the fund charges are included in the graphed results.

I am going to use the same dates as in the Quinn Life TER thread.

It says the Irish Life return (I assume cumulative) is -5.39% for indexed European equity from 2006-04-19 to 2012-09-13 (2341 days)

This [broken link removed] says that equates to an
annualised return of -.86%

Irish Life's Indexed European equity tracks the FTSQ Europe ex UK (apparently by holding stock directly that makes up the index). I believe they also make some extra money by loaning out stock. This will increase the return of the fund, and their profits, but it has a counterparty risk (which is lowered by having some collateral from the counterparty). (I think some (most?) passive ETF's also do this)

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=WIEXUKSG.L&a=03&b=19&c=2006&d=08&e=13&f=2012&g=d&z=66&y=1518

WIEXUKSG.L values were 365.08 (19-apr-2006) 337.62 (13-sep-2012)
Total fall -7.522%
Annualised fall -1.212%

So the Irish Life fund appears to have outperformed the index by .35% p.a., I assume this out-performance comes from profit from loaning out shares, which is not risk-free.

Caveats:
* maybe the irish life chart is showing the return before charges?
* I need to confirm that Index WIEXUKSG.L is the cumulative index for FTSE Europe ex UK but it looks like it is
* It appears the quoted AMC on this irish life fund is .75% (vs 1% for QL customers)
* In order to infer how "expensive" their index tracking is, we would need to know how much money they made from loaning out shares. AFAIK Quinn was not loaning out shares, so it is not an apples for apples comparison.


As an Aside - this raw index has performed considerably different to the Eurostoxx 50 one!

Hi SPC100,

The chart text boxes say this about charges -

"Warning: Performance figures are before tax and after management charges on either our Signature 2 or Complete Solutions products; except for the Irish Property Fund which is shown net of a 1% management charge. The management charges on other products may be different to those shown above. Please refer to your product booklet or fund guide for details of the management charges that apply to your plan."

I noticed that Liam. And it is in English, But it leaves me none the wiser.

I'm also not clear if they are referring to the returns listed on the first page, or on the chart page.