Self Directed PRSAs

phantom_lord

IS Davy the only option for a self-directed PRSA?

I currently have a PRSA with Irish Life paying 1% fees, and I really want to move somewhere self-directed where I've access to Vanguard funds.

There's an abundance of fees and charges with Davy though, and before I sit down and work out when it would be worth moving over, I'm just curious to find out if there's any other options?

Frogdog

I believe Merrion have the best self-directed PRSA on the market at the moment.

AlmightyCushion

Frogdog wrote: »

I believe Merrion have the best self-directed PRSA on the market at the moment.

Do you have any details on it. There seems to be very little information available on their website.

phantom_lord

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Do you have any details on it. There seems to be very little information available on their website.

would be curious about this too!

Frogdog

My wife set one up through an independent financial advisor/certified financial planner, so I'm afraid I haven't looked at their website. I know she did get a good deal and the advice she was given was that they're currently the best. You can PM me for details of the financial advisor if you wish.

Dardania

After setting up a Davy one myself int he last few weeks, to consolidate some pensions from old employment. Will update when I get usernames & passwords on how it actually is...

AlmightyCushion

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Do you have any details on it. There seems to be very little information available on their website.

Merrion use Zurich Self Directed Pension Portfolios I believe.

Merrion PRSA charges are 0.75% Annual Management Fee along with tranaction commissions 1% on the first €25,000, 0.75% on the balance(minimum charge €100).

phantom_lord wrote: »

.............

There's an abundance of fees and charges with Davy though, and before I sit down and work out when it would be worth moving over, I'm just curious to find out if there's any other options?

DAVY SELECT PERSONAL RETIREMENT SAVINGS ACCOUNT
(PRSA) (EXECUTION-ONLY) fees 0.75% per annum and if you buy low cost ETFs the associated additioonal management charges are typically 0.1/0.2% ........... easy to tend towards the 0.1% too to be fair. Some other costs too but to say there's an abundance of fees and charges with Davy though isn't at all accurate.

srsly78

Yeah you still pay the same fees for self-directed fund, so what is the point?

srsly78

srsly78 wrote: »

Yeah you still pay the same fees for self-directed fund, so what is the point?

Well the OP mentions they have a PRSA with Irish Life with 1% management fees.

IrishLife clear PRSA also have contribution fees ranging from 3.5 to 5%, that's quite significant. A 3% contribution fee over the life of a pension funded from a €60k salary using the maximum contribs that fit the tax relief limits per age with 6% annual growth would take €50k+ from the fund

The Davy and Merrion options don't have contribution fees.
You can go the self directed option but use the default investment strategy so you are hands off

Also, many folk want to manage their own pensions and aren't happy filling in a ticky boxy thing at the start of their pension and paying thousands for nothing going forward.

phantom_lord

Irish Life don't have a contribution fee (you can go through brokers that charge you one, but Irish Life themselves don't).

Yeah you still pay the same fees for self-directed fund, so what is the point?

I just wish there was a way to use Vanguard funds in my PRSA instead of paying 1% management fees for Irish Life funds.

phantom_lord

phantom_lord wrote: »

Irish Life don't have a contribution fee (you can go through brokers that charge you one, but Irish Life themselves don't). ..........

https://www.irishlife.ie/pensions/products/prsa-from-irish-life

"Reduced entry charges
Entry charges are the fees you pay on the contribution you make. If you stay invested in your PRSA pension for five years, we will reward your loyalty by reducing this entry charge. From year six on, the entry charge on your regular contribution will reduce by 0.5% (if there is an entry charge on your plan)"

phantom_lord

I don't pay any through these guys:

https://www.labrokers.ie/pensions/irishlifePRSA.aspx

srsly78

phantom_lord wrote: »

I don't pay any through these guys:

https://www.labrokers.ie/pensions/irishlifePRSA.aspx

Did you miss the bit about 1% per annum fees?

phantom_lord

phantom_lord wrote: »

Irish Life don't have a contribution fee (you can go through brokers that charge you one, but Irish Life themselves don't).



I just wish there was a way to use Vanguard funds in my PRSA instead of paying 1% management fees for Irish Life funds.

phantom_lord wrote: »

I don't pay any through these guys:

https://www.labrokers.ie/pensions/irishlifePRSA.aspx

So with some brokers Irish life waive the contribution fee
"By setting up your PRSA on a nil commission basis through LA Brokers you save 5% on each and every contribution you make to the plan for the life of the plan"

You said earlier that "Irish Life don't have a contribution fee"

phantom_lord

srsly78 wrote: »

Did you miss the bit about 1% per annum fees?

We're talking about contribution fees.

Augeo wrote: »

So with some brokers Irish life waive the contribution fee
"By setting up your PRSA on a nil commission basis through LA Brokers you save 5% on each and every contribution you make to the plan for the life of the plan"

You said earlier that "Irish Life don't have a contribution fee"

I didn't realise that they charge people going to them directly, seems like a strange system. I'll amend it to "you can have access to Irish Life funds without paying a contribution fee".

JackieChan

I set up a Davy Self Directed fund in October last year.

Here are a summary of my findings with them:

Trading Shares in Ireland
No additional charges.Just the stamp duty (1%).

Trading Shares on London Exchange
No additional charges. Just 0.5% stamp duty (No stamp duty on shares trading on AIM exchange). No stamp duty for trading ETFs

Trading on NYSE, European exchanges
€25 custody charge on each trade. Additional 0.1% overseas charge also.

Davy Standard Fees
0.75% for PRSA accounts(its charged in June and December)
0.90% for Executive accounts(only useful if you want to fund it with amounts over the PRSA age limits)

You have USD,EUR,GPB account balances
You can transfer funds to each account using your account ref and it will show up in the app for trading.
But if you want to be a little lazy like me you can just transfer to the EUR account and take the exchange rate they have when trading which I find is probably better than I would get than from transferring my EUR to a USD/EUR bank account.

When you trade shares, you can decide from which account to fund/accept the value.
So I can (if for some reason I wanted to) buy GBP traded Royal Mail shares on FTSE, by paying from my EUR account and I could sell them and have the money placed in my USD account.

All dividends are converted to EUR and placed in your EUR account. Perhaps if contacted Davy could let it go to the relevant currency account but I've not asked them.

Trading Options
You can trade shares and ETF on many of the worlds stock markets. But sometimes I've looked at this you will get a "unfortuntely we are unable to place the order online". In these cases you can ring their trading desk and pay the fees you would have paid if you could have done it online.
This has not happened for the NYSE and LSE exchanges.

They seem to love Blackrocks iShares as currently they have 142 ETF funds available whereas for Vanguard they have less than 10!!
And over half of those are on non-UK exchanges which means you have to pay the €25+overseas charges

You can ask them to make a fund available to you and sometimes they can do it, sometimes not.

My usage and experience
I tend to buy stocks and ETFs on LSE just to avoid the additional fees for buying on other markets, as I may only be buying a few shares each month in each fund.
I can get low cost S&P, Stoxx 50,FTSE,Japanese and EM ,etc..and the bond funds I want so I'm pretty happy and it allows me to have the allocations that I want

I also take a few punts on individual US stocks but the costs here can add up (Need an increase of 0.2% transaction+€50 just to break even).

I transferred three other pension funds into this account and bar a few forms it wasn't a problem. If you need to do this, contact the other pension provider and they will provide the forms to complete. Engage Davy once you have the forms as they will have to send on Willing and Able forms to the provider to say they can take the funds but nothing hairy here.

Any questions just shout.

JackieChan

JackieChan wrote: »

..............
0.90% for Executive accounts(only useful if you want to fund it with amounts over the PRSA age limits)...............

............ the additional tax relief isn't useful?
If you can open an executive pension account opening a PRSA instead is lunacy.

JackieChan

Augeo wrote: »

............ the additional tax relief isn't useful?
If you can open an executive pension account opening a PRSA instead is lunacy.

Surely, only if you have the funds to make it worthwhile. There is no point in paying 0.9% annual fee if you can't fund more than the PRSA limits which would only cost 0.75%? Please let me know if I have this wrong, always open to correction.

I can't edit my earlier post, but here is link to Davy portal which gives a good feel to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iA3q9KdVjM

Well if you fund any of the PRSA as an employee you get PAYE tax relief, personal contribution does not qualify for PRSI or USC relief. You can fund 100% of the executive pension direct from the company.

Employer contributions to an employee PRSA is a BIK for income tax, this BIK is subject to USC .... which the employee pays.

I don't think the extra 0.15% saved in management fees exceeds the above charges

JackieChan

Great. So executive is a no brainier..I had looked at the options when deciding on the pension type and had gone with the executive because of higher thresholds.

Dardania

So, I've had my Davy Select PRSA account working for about 10 days now, with 1 of two old pensions funded into it. So have been able to mess around with the interface etc. - JackieChan's review earlier is great.

Coming from a Goodbody world, in my opinion, the Davy interface & particualrly the link up with MorningStar, are far superior. One thing Goodbody does well is the historical perspective, showing your history with each stock. Will come handy when I eventually sell my Goodbody portfolio, and finally figure out tax implications, what CGT I owe etc.

Speaking of tax, and maybe this is better directed at Davy themselves, have people here been charged the dividend withholding tax on any dividends yet, or do Davy automatically apply an exemption as this is a pension account?
And has anyone encountered difficulty with electing for SCRIPS rather than income? 

On the available finds & stocks sides, similar to JackieChan, they are sometimes heloful, sometimes not. I fund I wanted to invest in was one I read extensively about, the Swedish national pension fund - it was apparently designed to give good long term returns for people, with minimal fees (http://www.morningstar.se/Funds/Quicktake/Overview.aspx?perfid=0P0000O4CX ) - mo dice, Davy couldn't offer it to me. 
However, for the IPO of todays Greencoat (http://www.ise.ie/Market-Data-Announcements/Companies/Equity-Details/?equity=2015023 ) - there was a minor issue in Davy's platform where it showed the Irish equity as GBP - a brief telephone call later and they execuuted the trade for me over the phone. So they do respond positively also...

OU812

Dardania wrote: »

So, I've had my Davy Select PRSA account working for about 10 days now, with 1 of two old pensions funded into it.

Can you use the value of the old pension to fund purchasing stocks/further investments?

Dardania

OU812 wrote: »

Dardania wrote: »

So, I've had my Davy Select PRSA account working for about 10 days now, with 1 of two old pensions funded into it.

Can you use the value of the old pension to fund purchasing stocks/further investments?

Yes - got them transferred in

OU812

Dardania wrote: »

Yes - got them transferred in

And you're using the funds in that to finance trading?

Dardania

OU812 wrote: »

Dardania wrote: »

Yes - got them transferred in

And you're using the funds in that to finance trading?

Buying long term investments, yes.
Still have the Goodbody account for riskier propositions, or money I might want to get access to before I retire easily

Dardania

For those that are interested, and hopefully this works - these are the ETFs Davy allows access to:

https://lt.morningstar.com/m3dllinql4/etfquickrank/default.aspx?davyadvisor=www

and these are the funds:

https://lt.morningstar.com/m3dllinql4/fundquickrank/default.aspx?davyadvisor=www

Of particular note, and mentioned by a poster on another thread (which convinced me to go for the Davy execution only PRSA route) are the Davy funds with no fees e.g. this one:
https://lt.morningstar.com/m3dllinql4/snapshot/snapshot.aspx?id=F00000WBD6
I'm guessing that the ETFs it invests in still pay fees, but still, a nice way to get a good spread of different ETFs I think (in my naive mind)

Edit: Maybe that Davy fund isn't actually no fees - this seems to suggest there are fees: http://www.davyselect.ie/investment-choices/gps-funds.html  - or maybe that applies to the "B" funds: 2]1]FOALL$$ALL_1118&Id=F00000PZOH&ClientFund=1&BaseCurrencyId=EUR&CurrencyId=EUR&LanguageId=en-GB]https://lt.morningstar.com/m3dllinql4/snapshot/snapshot.aspx?tab=0&SecurityToken=F00000PZOH]2]1]FOALL$$ALL_1118&Id=F00000PZOH&ClientFund=1&BaseCurrencyId=EUR&CurrencyId=EUR&LanguageId=en-GB

JackieChan

Hi Dardania,
Those gps funds have ongoing fees between 1.46% and 1.6% ( I'm assuming the pension charge of .75%/.9% is on top of this also!)

The fund from the last link has a 1% annual charge but the TER is not given so probably higher again.

I'd say keep it relatively simple (and cheaper )with a geographic spread of low cost ETFs

Dardania

JackieChan wrote: »

Hi Dardania,
Those gps funds have ongoing fees between 1.46% and 1.6% ( I'm assuming the pension charge of .75%/.9% is on top of this also!)

The fund from the last link has a 1% annual charge but the TER is not given so probably higher again.

I'd say keep it relatively simple (and cheaper )with a geographic spread of low cost ETFs

Thanks for that - I suspect you're right, and they have just not correctly identified the fees on morningstar. I have emailed Davy to confirm so I'll see what they say as to what the exact fees are.

I was quite hoping these funds would be free, as they've done the hard / intelligent work which I don't have the experience for or confidence in, of choosing the geographic spread of ETFs (hence my earlier interest in the Swedish pension fund) - but I may just have to figure it out...

davyselect

Dardania wrote: »

Thanks for that - I suspect you're right, and they have just not correctly identified the fees on morningstar. I have emailed Davy to confirm so I'll see what they say as to what the exact fees are.

I was quite hoping these funds would be free, as they've done the hard / intelligent work which I don't have the experience for or confidence in, of choosing the geographic spread of ETFs (hence my earlier interest in the Swedish pension fund) - but I may just have to figure it out...

Hi Dardania,

Thanks for choosing Davy Select. The pension management fee is not charged on top of the GPS fee. When you invest in GPS you only pay the GPS fees. Also, the funds/etfs which you see on Morningstar and only a fraction of the funds available on the platform. There are over 9,000 ETFs and 20,000 Funds available. Just call the dealing desk and they will advise if a particular fund you want is available.

Dardania

davyselect wrote: »

Dardania wrote: »

Thanks for that - I suspect you're right, and they have just not correctly identified the fees on morningstar. I have emailed Davy to confirm so I'll see what they say as to what the exact fees are.

I was quite hoping these funds would be free, as they've done the hard / intelligent work which I don't have the experience for or confidence in, of choosing the geographic spread of ETFs (hence my earlier interest in the Swedish pension fund) - but I may just have to figure it out...

Hi Dardania,

Thanks for choosing Davy Select. The pension management fee is not charged on top of the GPS fee. When you invest in GPS you only pay the GPS fees. Also, the funds/etfs which you see on Morningstar and only a fraction of the funds available on the platform. There are over 9,000 ETFs and 20,000 Funds available. Just call the dealing desk and they will advise if a particular fund you want is available.

Thanks for that - what is the GPS fee? As on this :

https://lt.morningstar.com/m3dllinql4/snapshot/snapshot.aspx?tab=5&Id=F00000WBD6&ClientFund=0&BaseCurrencyId=GBP&CurrencyId=GBP&LanguageId=en-GB

There is noted no fees.

Whereas on this:

https://lt.morningstar.com/m3dllinql4/snapshot/snapshot.aspx?tab=5&SecurityToken=F00000PZOH&Id=F00000PZOH&ClientFund=0&BaseCurrencyId=EUR&CurrencyId=GBP&LanguageId=en-GB

There is a fee noted.

davyselect

davyselect wrote: »

Hi Dardania,

Thanks for choosing Davy Select. The pension management fee is not charged on top of the GPS fee. When you invest in GPS you only pay the GPS fees. Also, the funds/etfs which you see on Morningstar and only a fraction of the funds available on the platform. There are over 9,000 ETFs and 20,000 Funds available. Just call the dealing desk and they will advise if a particular fund you want is available.

Welcome along, I'm a big fan
You might need to enquire about getting a verified account, just an FYI