Irish Life - Technology QLD January Returns

:) Nice one 3CC...

I am no economist or financial wizard but the least I expect is to be able to track my investments. I invested in the QLD Technology fund which was supposed to track the Nasdaq. Now I have no idea what im invested in, but the bit that really worrys me is how am I supposed to make money when the market is up and my fund goes down. I appreciate Apple (for example) was down 20% in January but the whole point in investing in a so called Index tracker is that you are diversified in that index. Who's to say Irish life has invested my money in 10 shares from the Nasdaq, Apple being one of them and has a 70% weight. This is not what I want and not what I asked for.!!
PMU said that I should have got a document marked “This is an important document” from Irish Life, I moved house and never got this.
Did we have a choice of funds to transfer our investments into ? My understanding was our funds would be invested in the same type of Irish Life Fund.
If the funds are not the same, thats not good as basically Irish Life can do what they want with our money.
Im interested in what there reply to my last mail will be.
It better make sense or I may lose the plot with them.
Scanner
 
Am I the only policyholder who got these documents?

On I June 2012 QL wrote to all policy holders enclosing a Policyholder Circular and a Summary of an Independent Actuary’s Report. They were required to do this by the High Court. The circular provided information on how the transfer of QL policies to IL would take place and the actuary’s report was his assessment of the likely effects of the transfer on the longterm policy holders of QL. In his report the actuary states that ”1.88 ILA has mapped the QLD internal unit-linked funds to comparable ILA internal funds. These do not replicate the QLD funds exactly in all cases. These differences have been explained in the policyholder circular. I am satisfied that QLD policy holders’ reasonable expectations will not be materially adversely affected by the fund mandate differences.”

Personally, I must admit that I did not at that time pick up the point that some of the new funds were not index trackers but instead aimed to match the average returns of all the shares that make up the [benchmark] index. And it now appears that performance monitoring for the non-index tracking funds is difficult. Also as these funds are not being marketed I doubt a prospectus exists.



There was no debate on AAM in June 2012 when the transfer took place.
 
Hi PMU,
Thanks for your response, your time is appreciated.

While I have not read the document (yet) I would make two points.
1) How can someone else decide to move your investment from one fund to another
without making sure it was replecated exactly.
If IL were happy to take our investments (and mgmt fee)then they should
have been made to ensure the funds that they were moving to were the same.
2) I am satisfied that QLD policy holders’ reasonable expectations will not be
materially adversely affected by the fund mandate differences.”
Is the actuary saying here there should be no difference in the funds
performance ?
From 12% to -1% is not only a difference it's a disaster.

Does anyone know if the regulator was involved in this transfer ?

Like you PMU, I knew the transfer was happening but I expected IL to transfer my funds into a like fund.
This does not seem to have happened which is very frustrating.

Scanner
 
I have to admit that I did receive correspondence regarding the changeover from QL to IL. I scanned the document and saw a table showing that there were no major changes between the funds before and after the changeover. I don't think it was possible at that time to predict that the minor changes would effectively make it impossible to monitor performance of some funds.

Having said that, I have monitored performance of the QL funds prior to them being transferred to IL and they leave a lot to be desired. So we have moved from QL who had a high (and consistently negative) tracking error to IL who we cannot monitor for tracking error.

Whether it is in the terms and conditions or not, I think it is perfectly reasonable for IL to tell me what each fund is invested in and also publish the tracking error (for both the index tracking funds and the funds that track a basket of shares).

There are too many other alternatives that are more transparent to stick with IL if they do not meet this simple request.

BTW, I would be interested to know if QL effectively novated the investment contracts to IL (in which case IL will still be liable to investors for any past breaches by QL) or if IL offered new replacement contracts under differerent terms and conditions which would probably limit their liability prior to the changeover.
 
Hi,

Irish Life responded to my email. This is there response.


"In relation to your query, part of your overall investment is invested in the Technology QLD fund and therefore the overall value of your plan will be affected by all 3 funds that you are invested in.However, not all of your investment would be impacted by the index i.e. if the index is up by +12% this is does not mean that the value of your plan will increase by that percentage. As requested I conducted an asset split to determine what exactly the Technology QLD fund is invested in and I found that the only asset it is invested in is the NASDAQ 100 E-Mini. In order to provide you with an idea on how the Technology QLD fund has performed over the month of January I have outlined the different valuations of different pricing dates over that month.
Amount of Units Unit Price Date Value
19,935.92 1.06 02/01/2013 €21,132.07
19,935.92 1.062 10/01/2013 €21,171.94
19,935.92 1.054 18/01/2013 €21,012.45
19,935.92 1.028 31/01/2013 €20,494.12
19,935.92 1.048 20/02/2013 €20,892.85

I would recommend consulting with a financial adviser if you require financial advice in relation to your plan."

Found this index http://quotes.ino.com/exchanges/contracts.html?r=CME_NQ
Im finding it difficult to find out the returns for January for this.
Does anybody know anything about the NASDAQ 100 E-Mini.

Scanner
 
I have never heard of the emini Nasdaq 100 but from a quick google it seems to be a futures contract? I know nothing about futures contracts except that I do not want to invest in them as I do not understand them.

I would be a bit annoyed if I thought I was invested in an index fund and then discovered I was invested in a futures contract.
 
Hi, yes it appears to be a futures index...
I know nothing about how these work either and yes I am annoyed now.

Is there anyone out there that can explain the emini Nasdaq 100 to me in simple language?

Thanks
Scanner
 
Thiis quite interesting, i have been in contact with Irish Life over the last few days about switching funds etc,as you are unable to switch online as with quinn-life,i found them to be less than forthcoming about any questions i had as i too found the funds i am invested in are not doing good despite the fact that most markets are on the up at the moment, it reminds me of the PIPS and PEPS i had with AIB in the nineties that kept losing money no matter what the markets were doing.


Pat
 
I emailed them last Monday to ask them to confirm the tracking error for the funds I am invested in but no response yet.
 
Hi Folks,

Is there anyone out there that can explain how an investment in the Emini Nasdaq 100 works ?

Thanks
Scanner
 
Investment Performance - Plan v NASDAQ

Dear Scanner,

I am a Team Leader in Irish Life Customer Service and have noticed your various attempts above to try to get an answer to your questions. In order to do so, can I ask that you contact our Customer Service Team on (01) 704 1010. Please select Option 3 - Savings & Investments and ask to speak with the Team Leader at which stage I will provide you with the answers that you seek.

Thanks,
IL Customer Service
 
Scanner, thank you very much for starting this thread. Previous threads had shown that Quinn Life was doing a decent job of tracking several of the indexes. We do need to do the same analysis for Irish life.

The summary of the actuarial report that was posted to all policy holders, said the following about this new Irish Life fund ;

Style of investing: Indexed. Direct investment
Benchmark: nasdaq 100

And in general it said that policy holders could expect the same returns that they were getting with Quinn Life.

Did you get the difference between your account and the nasdaq 100 performance explained?
 
michael raymond said:
Any update on Quinn/Irish Life TechnologyQLD fund.
Time to grt out??
Click to expand...
Timing the market is a mug's game and a sure fire way to lose money.
Choose the appropriate investment for your specific needs and try to stick with it for the long term even during periods of volatility.
 
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