Irish Life Property Portfolio Fund 1

banoffe2

Anyone invested in the above?
After being constantly encouraged and advised by the bank I foolishly invested in 2007.
To my horror and disbelief it hit an all time low, so much so that I was almost afraid to check the unit price.
It has improved quite a bit in past 2 years, still not back to what I invested in yet.
Any advice or opinions welcome

Actioncomet

banoffe2 wrote: »

Anyone invested in the above?
After being constantly encouraged and advised by the bank I foolishly invested in 2007.
To my horror and disbelief it hit an all time low, so much so that I was almost afraid to check the unit price.
It has improved quite a bit in past 2 years, still not back to what I invested in yet.
Any advice or opinions welcome

I am surprised there are not more people interested in this topic.
Irish Life claim they have over a million customers in their pension funds.
I was guided by my "Professional Financial Advisers" to move my pension fund to Irish Life a few years ago, I will now use a line from your post that I have quoted from "To my horror and disbelief" the charges on my pension fund they call it Plan Charge on their annual statement. They are taking out three times the amount I am paying in.

Do take a very close look at your statement,
There is a plan Fee which looks quite reasonable.
There is a plan charge which is every month.
There is also a Fund charge.

They have the use of forty years of my saving into a pension fund and they are charging me for the privilege.

Does anyone know what the Central Bank of Ireland does when it says:

Irish Life Assurance plc is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland

The J Stands for Jay

Actioncomet wrote: »

I am surprised there are not more people interested in this topic.
Irish Life claim they have over a million customers in their pension funds.
I was guided by my "Professional Financial Advisers" to move my pension fund to Irish Life a few years ago, I will now use a line from your post that I have quoted from "To my horror and disbelief" the charges on my pension fund they call it Plan Charge on their annual statement. They are taking out three times the amount I am paying in.

Do take a very close look at your statement,
There is a plan Fee which looks quite reasonable.
There is a plan charge which is every month.
There is also a Fund charge.

They have the use of forty years of my saving into a pension fund and they are charging me for the privilege.

Does anyone know what the Central Bank of Ireland does when it says:

Irish Life Assurance plc is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland

Why don't you move your pension fund away from them to someone cheaper?

banoffe2

Thanks for the replies, I decided not to cash it is just yet as I would be loosing out too much, the only good thing is that it has and continues to improve per unit price getting closer to what I originally invested, glad I was in a position to be able to wait.

Actioncomet

@McGaggs
Irish Life have a penalty clause, five years minimum to get out without penalty.

banoffe2

Sorry about the long post,
Contacted Irish life Mid March speculating unit price would diminish with the advent of Covd
Sent a few e mails advising I wanted to cash in on the Policy ( bearing my fund never recovered its original 2007 investment

At cash in time 19th March 2020 it had dropped to €7,000 of its original investment value.

When I got in touch the phones were extremely busy, I sent mails, supplied all the relevant info they looked for incl drivers licence etc regarding total withdrawal cash in fund, thought I was playing it safely

to my disbelief they sent an e mail then to say they have introduced a moratorium of 6 months withdrawal notice---

at no stage was I advised about this on any of the mails or phone calls, I had submitted the necessary documentation and clearly stated I need total fund withdrawal. I feel they are fobbing off customers unfairly, my fund has dropped a further 3,500K since March to present
I am almost sick with the thought of loosing the extra due to the 6 month embargo - I am afraid to ring them to ask will I receive the value on the date the documents were sent or will it be the current value, I have my e mails for records.

Final e mail reply received from the head person,
E mail rec - The current value of your plan on a pricing date of 13 March 2020 is

---

. As discussed, the value you receive from the encashment of your plan will be the value on the pricing date that we receive all requirements.[/I]

Thank you for your email below.
We need a withdrawal request to specifically state that you wish to fully surrender a plan, the request we received was not sufficient for us to surrender a plan.
As you have confirmed the full surrender via email, this is sufficient to process a claim on your plan.
Please be advised, as in from 19 March 2020, there was a 6 months restriction placed on all fuThank you for your email below.
I am sorry you feel the criteria for a withdrawal has changed, however, this is not the case. The request we received on 19 March was not sufficient for us to process a withdrawal on your plan. The 6 month restriction was put into plan on 19 March. As we did not receive the necessary confirmation from you until 23 March, we could not process the withdrawal on your plan.
The original request we received on 19 March was too late to be processed as the restriction was put into place with effective of 19 March. Any withdrawals received on or after the 19 March unfortunately do fall into the 6 month restriction.
I am sorry you were not advised of this in my previous email and for any inconvenience this may cause.
Your claim is due to be paid in September and we will send you confirmation when this has been processed.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

The advise about the change in their policy came the last minute, very conveinently they kept sending me back e mails looking for info I had already submitted, it looks like it was a deliberate strategy to make a change and use delaying tactics
Wonder will I only receive current value from Sept due date, or from time the application was submitted Mar 19th though they are saying 23rd
Any advise welcome, thanks for reading

Shedite27

It;s one of the problems with Property Funds, if the fund managers haven't enough money held in Cash, then if a lot of people want to take their money out, then they need to sell a Property to get the money, which is why they can take 6 months. All above board unfortunately.

They'll say it's to protect the policyholders, and they're entitled to do it. If they have to sell 4 properties, at a time when the market is low, then all policyholders suffer (as it locks in losses).

I'm not sure what encashment price they'll give you, I'd imagine it'll be the current (Sept) price, but I'm not 100% on that

The J Stands for Jay

Shedite27 wrote: »

It;s one of the problems with Property Funds, if the fund managers haven't enough money held in Cash, then if a lot of people want to take their money out, then they need to sell a Property to get the money, which is why they can take 6 months. All above board unfortunately.

They'll say it's to protect the policyholders, and they're entitled to do it. If they have to sell 4 properties, at a time when the market is low, then all policyholders suffer (as it locks in losses).

I'm not sure what encashment price they'll give you, I'd imagine it'll be the current (Sept) price, but I'm not 100% on that

And then there's a bigger difference between the buying price and the selling price of property, so if the fund goes from lots of premiums going in to lots of redemptions, there can be a large swing in the unit price