Large difference in pension performance

[martinbiz]

Here's an interesting one for the experts. I have 2 work place pensions, one with standard Life and the other with Scottish Widows. The standard life one is just sitting there and has not been contributed to since 2016, the Scottish life is still paid into every month. The investment performance of both has pretty much mirrored each other over the past few years until the last 6 months where the SL one has reached an all time high, but the SW one has dropped in value in real terms. I have a few other investments including a couple of S and S ISA's and they have all performed very well over the last 6 month period, again pretty much mirroring the SL performance.

Obviously they all took a big dive last Feb / March with the start of the Pandemic, but all rallied since then except SW

So I suppose really the question is what's up with Scottish Widows?

[xeny]

Presumably the underlying investments differ - do you have any information on that?

[martinbiz]

Not to hand, but I would assume them to be a broadly similar platform as they have performed pretty much the same since last Jan as have 3 other investments I have, its only since October all the otheres have rallied and SW has plummeted

[PorkInsider]

martinbiz said:

Not to hand, but I would assume them to be a broadly similar platform as they have performed pretty much the same since last Jan as have 3 other investments I have, its only since October all the otheres have rallied and SW has plummeted

Sounds possible that the SW one is underpinned with US stocks?

USD has climbed considerably against GBP since October.




If you do have US stocks (or a fund heavily weighted to US stocks), as a very rough estimate, you'd need $100k of US stocks on October 1st to be worth $108k today, in order to have the same £ value.

So an 8% rise in stock value would only see you standing still.

Other than that, no idea!

Edited by PorkInsider on Thursday 15th April 11:49

[LeoSayer]

Post the name of the funds held in both and someone will give you the answer.

My guess is it's due to different % allocation to bonds.

[mikeiow]

martinbiz said:

Here's an interesting one for the experts. I have 2 work place pensions, one with standard Life and the other with Scottish Widows. The standard life one is just sitting there and has not been contributed to since 2016, the Scottish life is still paid into every month. The investment performance of both has pretty much mirrored each other over the past few years until the last 6 months where the SL one has reached an all time high, but the SW one has dropped in value in real terms. I have a few other investments including a couple of S and S ISA's and they have all performed very well over the last 6 month period, again pretty much mirroring the SL performance.

Obviously they all took a big dive last Feb / March with the start of the Pandemic, but all rallied since then except SW

So I suppose really the question is what's up with Scottish Widows?

You do know that both SL & SW are 'just' tax wrappers?
The performance will depend entirely on the investments sitting inside them.

If the same investments, I'd expect the performance to be broadly similar (of course the costs might vary and make a little difference).
If different....well, different performance will ensue!

What are the investments below the wrapper?

martinbiz said:

Not to hand, but I would assume them to be a broadly similar platform as they have performed pretty much the same since last Jan as have 3 other investments I have, its only since October all the otheres have rallied and SW has plummeted

The "platform" is not the investment! The funds or stocks held *within* the platform are what matter.

Am I missing something here?

[dingg]

I wondered when porky would see his error, made me think a while anyway :-)

[LeoSayer]

mikeiow said:

The "platform" is not the investment! The funds or stocks held *within* the platform are what matter.

Am I missing something here?

Given the lack of detail I made the assumption that the OP was invested in the defaults product(s) chosen by the employer / provider eg. probably lifecycle type structure.

A simple things like different default retirement ages would lead to different outcomes.

[PorkInsider]

dingg said:

I wondered when porky would see his error, made me think a while anyway :-)

Grass!!