written by on 25/10/2012
I transferred my pension to them in 2009 during the financial crisis. Their promise was to protect my investment with a primary goal of out-performing cash in the bank. Not a difficult goal you might think given the dropping interest rates. However, 3 years later my pension fund is worth 25% less than when I started.
Key strengths: Active rather than passive management. Access to account online. Nice people.
Key weaknesses: They bet on a major market collapse. No hedge strategy and no exposure to equity rallies. After 3 years they are currently 60/40 risk on with no hope of recovering from the losses in the short-medium term. Also infuriating is that they keep large amounts of fund in cash for extended periods and charge a management fee for doing so.
Would avoid them until they can demonstrate they can outperform the FTSE (their own measurement criteria) over 6 months / 1 year / 3 years to show some consistency of performance.
As rated by our community of reviewers
Spikedish's Comment
Written on: 04/02/2013
All true, exactly the same thing in my case. They sound so clever and "on the ball" but cannot deliver what they promise. Like a group of keen sixth formers investing with imaginary funds, they're essentially amateurs.