Platform fees for Equity Index Funds with SSAP/SSAS

Hi All, we are currently paying 0.3% platform fees via Conexim for our equity index fund within an SSAP. Vanguard takes an additional 0.1%. The 0.1% is obviously pretty competitive. Are there any other platform providers within Ireland that Pension Trustees will allow that might do better than 0.3% ? I'm happy with SSAP at the moment but have worked out the figures for a notional fund approaching the Standard Fund Threshold @ 2m and it's more eye watering. Just thinking ahead.

Any thoughts are welcome. Thank you in advance

I think Vanguard is a bit more than 0.1% 0 in my pension fund via Conexim there is Vangaurd Global Index (0.18%) and Vanguard Emerging Markets (0.23%). Also, Conexim insists you have a Financial Adviser which I would think would add a minimum of 0.15%.

If you find a 'better deal', let us know!

I presume that you're paying an ongoing fee as well for the SSAP itself. Standard Life offer Vanguard index-tracking funds from under 0.5% per year, which includes both the Vanguard fee and the fee to Standard Life for the product (effectively replacing the platform fee and the SSAS fee). You'll need to pay a financial broker to set it up on these terms for you.

It sounds like you have a separate pension trustee with a Conexim account inside it? You most likely pay an additional pension trustee charge aswell.

you can arrange a packaged price for trustee plus dealing account for 0.40%pa which is probably better value.

the 0.1% is for the Conexim tick box packaged solution which excludes most widely available vanguard funds and all other fund managers

you could replace that with a better constructed portfolio including for example the vanguard global smaller companies which isn’t a component of the Conexim portfolio and which you can’t get via standard life

.

Our pension trustee is 1,750+vat per annum and then Conexim are 0.3% of Vanguard fund. My Vanguard is definitely only 0.1% as it is one of their lowest cost equity index funds. Knowing the above, what would you reckon is best approach for a fund of about 1m? The fixed fee of trustee looks very good the higher my fund value grows. Conexim 0.3% is the one I was wondering about

Interesting

so your trustee is costing about 0.21% currently plus 0.30% to Conexim when you could have had an all in charge of 0.40% from Conexim. That’s over a grand a year!

We could get you a dealing platform for 0.1% min €1000pa Inside a pension and a fixed trustee fee of €2,100pa which gets you to 0.31% all in but you would need to be a professional investor and move your portfolio offshore.

it’s definitely worth exploring your trustee options further for that size of pension fund. Even if you are not a professional investor it’s still worth looking into offshoring as IIORPs II will make small Irish trustees even more uncompetitive in the future. My trustee operates in over 80 countries and has more than 7,000 staff. An Irish pension trustee simply can’t compete.

we would generally still plug in Conexim as in reality your custodian is Pershing which is a $2 trillion custody business. You are paying for the cost of EU regulation and that will also get more expensive in future.

you are definitely not paying 0.1% for the vanguard fund

we have access to their institutional plus share class which has a minimum investment of €200 million and we pay more than that

unless you are buying a US ETF in which case you are also paying Conexim a dealing charge of 0.2% and an FX spread which you aren’t properly accounting for

you would also have exposure to US federal estate tax at a rate of 40% on death benefits so I’d give that a miss if I were you

Marc Westlake
Chartered Certified and European Financial Planner
www.globalwealth.ie