Zurich pension funds seemed to have fallen more than market

ClubMan said:
I would generally try to keep it simple and invest in passive index trackers.
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those are the only global funds available with a zurich standard prsa, i would have chosen those passive index trackers if they were available, surely those "article 8" trackers are specialist not standard and it should have been explicit from the outset, those funds are the bedrock of the zurich fund portfolio not a specialist subset, yet it appears their investment criteria are excluding large sections of the market, thats fair enough if you specifically wish to select that but it is being now done as the default position and the performance of the funds has been hit
 
joe sod said:
those are the only global funds available with a zurich standard prsa
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Ok, I've only ever had (execution only) non-standard PRSAs with different providers, including Zurich, so maybe I had access to a wider range of funds including passive index trackers.

How/why did you choose a standard PRSA and the funds that you invested in?
 
very good point which I hadn't fully taken into account, the msci world index by my estimates is actually down 11% over last month when you convert back to euros, and you are correct alot of the fall is down to the devaluation of the dollar. Its only down 6% or so in dollars.
It just shows you the over concentration in US assets of all those financial funds. Even though I had been discussing that myself in other posts I hadn't looked too closely at my prsa as I was using it more as a method to reduce my tax bill
 
I'm seeing the same in my old 2x Irish Life pensions & seeing a similar drop. One of my old pensions has a very very similar split to yours, heavy in US equities, Asia Pac, etc its the one more badly hit than the other old Irish Life bond which I think is mostly in a consensus fund.
(For transparency I do work for Zurich, though not for the Irish Business, and not in the business end of things, & admittedly I've no idea how to view my DC or AVC plans there!)
 
With a large part of the fall in funds like zurich "international equities" due to very large exposure to big US stocks mainly and dollar , 70% US in the case of this fund. Is it a good idea to sell these funds down to buy eurozone funds and Asia Pacific funds in order to pull down this US exposure. I know in my personal portfolio my US exposure is way lower than 70% ?

There has been a very large and quick fall in value of dollar these fund providers could be too slow in changing course. In the early 2000s the same thing happened, US dollar fell alot and stayed down for well over a decade ? I mean it fell all the way to $1.45 to 1 euro at its deepest. That's a heck of alot of potential depreciation to go from it's current level of $1.13. Look at the damage this relatively small move has already done to US stock exposure
 

@Fortune has explained this very well.

At other times, the Zurich Life funds have beaten the benchmark index. Sometimes they outperform the index; sometimes they underperform it. Why did you choose actively-managed funds if you just wanted to track the index?


All of the marketing material for these funds explain how the funds work. Brochures, factsheets etc. And their public website has all this information easily available. https://www.zurich.ie/funds/fund-products/ How can that be described as "misleading" or "having to dig deep"?

The 5*5 Global fund in particular is a concentrated fund typically holding no more than 50 stocks across 5 sectors. Why should a fund like this not deviate from the full-market equity index from time to time?

Did you ask your broker these same questions? What did s/he say? As @GSheehy said above, your broker got paid and is possibly still getting paid to explain how these funds work.
 
LDFerguson said:
At other times, the Zurich Life funds have beaten the benchmark index. Sometimes they outperform the index; sometimes they underperform it. Why did you choose actively-managed funds if you just wanted to track the index?
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I chose a bog standard execution only prsa, only "actively managed funds" are included in that fund choice. These are the staple funds of the Zurich portfolio not niche funds with megastar managers . I was only expecting dull average pension fund returns so wasn't expecting a 15% drop in the last 3 months. Afterall I wasn't investing in the nasdaq 100 or in Cathy woods Ark technology fund I was investing in a dull pension international equity fund. As I said already it never knocked the ball out of the park nor was it supposed to . It never rose 15% in 3 months i can assure of that yet it has fallen hard like a "big tech " fund hence why I started this thread.

In fact in the fund literature it says
"As the fund is managed from the point of view of a euro investor ,any currency hedging that may be conducted will be into euros"
which should have reduced the dollar exposure but it has actually fallen more than full dollar quoted indices such as msci global index

I accepted that I was a bit harsh in not taking into account the depreciation in the dollar when comparing the fund to the msci global.
However I detect a bit of defensiveness and the "idiot is behind the keyboard" type of responses to my posts without actually answering my fundamental questions about US exposure in these bog standard zurich equity funds
 
"actively managed funds"

There's your problem.

The strongest recommendation I have ever heard for "actively managed funds" was over 20 years ago from a certain Harry Cassidy. Thankfully neither I nor the contact who accompanied me to that meeting fell for it.
 
Hilarious!!

The Blackrock Global Index Tracker is on the ZL platform since 10/03/2011.

From that date to 10/03/2025 the Global Index (Passive) Tracker has an annualised return of 11.05%

The International Equity (Managed) has had an annualised return of 11.06%.

And just for the hell of it - 5*5 Global Equity (Managed) Fund 11.20%

All funds net of all costs on a like-for-like basis.

No one seems to have any interest in factual/accurate information anymore. Just make stuff up based on feelings/perceptions in the hope of getting an auld misinformed thread going.
 
GSheehy said:
No one seems to have any interest in factual/accurate information anymore. Just make stuff up based on feelings/perceptions in the hope of getting an auld misinformed thread going.
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I think all the informed people are sitting at home, either ignoring their pension values or noticing that they're behaving as the news would have one expect.

I was once told (a long time ago) that anyone who complains about fund performance when the fund is moving downwards in the same general velocity as the market should never have been investing on the first place, as it's obvious their risk appetite isn't appropriate for it. They all seem to have an expectation that the pension fund managers have a crystal ball that alerts them when to switch 100% to cash, investment mandate be damned.
 
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No it's not "hilarious " you are being deliberately deflective, we all know that most of the damage to funds has happened since the beginning of March outside of that year you quoted, so none of the sell off is reflected in your post.
Everything I have posted is not based on "feelings ", it's based on facts and you are just moving the goal posts again rather than just answering the question.
Are zurich funds overexposed to us dollar and us assets? What's your opinion on that?
Everything in the financial world stays the same for years and then suddenly changes and my suspicion is that the Zurich portfolios have been caught with their pants down through over exposure to big US tech stocks. But nobody wants to discuss that do they?
 
If you need to be right this much then, okay, you're right with the alternative facts.


[For the benefit of everyone else - for the period 28/02/2025 to 10/04/2025 (as these are the dates that the pricing of both passive and managed funds are avilable for) the Blackrock Global Equity is down 14.70% and the International Equity is down 14.71%. Indexed TopTech100 is down 22.78%]
 
According to the fact sheet, 72% of the Zurich international fund is invested in North American equities (MSCI World is 75%) and 23% is invested in the IT sector (MSCI World is 23.5%).

So, no, Zurich are not overweight US or IT stocks relative to the broader market.
 
OK thanks for all the responses, so what happens to funds during times like these where there is a rapid revaluation of stocks, specifically us assets and dollar fall out of favour and when they constitute such a high proportion of all the indices. I mean we have a precedence after the dot com crash although technology stocks were not such a big proportion of the indices even in 2001. How do fund managers react to such rapid changes, presumably they have to get their US exposure down but how do they go about that since they are selling into a falling market? Are they like ducks on a pond all serenity above the water but feet scurrying furiously underneath?
 
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For passive index tracker funds, I guess they only need to sell a percentage of a given US stock if its weighting in the given index (e.g. MSCI World) falls below its weighting in the fund. The tracker funds do this regularly to ensure that they are tracking the index.
According to Blackrock, "rebalances in MSCI indexes occur on the last business day of February, May, August and November." I.e. once a quarter.

For actively managed funds, I guess the fund manager has some discretion on what he does to try to achieve the fund's objectives.
 
joe sod said:
How do fund managers react to such rapid changes, presumably they have to get their US exposure down but how do they go about that since they are selling into a falling market?
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They don't have to get their US exposure down if they don't believe that it would be the correct long-term investment strategy for the fund. So they're not forced to sell into a falling market. Active fund managers have discretion on what they do.
 
Passive managers don’t have to do anything due to market movements of individual securities.

Index providers like MSCI carry out periodic index reviews (normally quarterly) and announce additions or deletions to a particular index and hence the corresponding quarterly rebalancing by the fund manager so that the fund holdings mirror the index.
 
We could get the two chimpanzees and the tabby cat, who generated better returns than 90% of investment managers, a while ago. Their method was throwing darts at a board and pushing a toy mouse around with a paw.
 
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