Best Performing Irish Pension

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AJAM

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Not sure how accurate it is, but Ocean have published and ranked Irish Pension providers.

Best Irish Pensions Fund Manager? Well, Go Compare...

Managed pension funds increase in 2021. But which fund managers are providing the best returns over different time periods? Interactive graph over 20 years
ocean.ie

Zurich, Merrion and Aberdeen (according to the Ocean data) are consistently the best performing.
While, Aviva, New Ireland and Irish Life seem to be consistently under performing.
 
And just shows why people should focus more on investment performance than charges, Zürich prisma 5 fund returned over 5% in 2021 compared to Irish life MAP 5, and Zürich performance 2% p.a. More over 20 years than Irish life managed fund.
 
There is importance in this comparison, this is about comparing investment managers really. Some are just better than others.
 
No one knows the future but the past gives some indication when tying to pick something.

If there is a well run company that has been consistently performing better than its competitors for 20 years, would you simple ignore that?

Advice to pick the lowest fees makes sense if you for example want to find an ETF to invest in the S&P 500 or something. But in this case you are picking a group of investment managers really and they are not all the same.
 
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I've always felt that when starting on the pension journey you should be more concerned by the past performance rather than the fees going forward, and if somebody was to ask me who to start a pension with I'd automatically suggest Zurich
But when you've started your pension and are comfortable with the level of investment needed and have built up a bit of a fund that that is the time to really start looking at the fee structure
 
aristotle said:
If there is a well run company that has been consistently performing better than its competitors for 20 years, would you simple ignore that?
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Absolutely. All the data suggest that investment managers do not consistently outperform. In fact, because of high charges, they underperform the market.

The right strategy is to buy an index tracker with low charges.

Brendan
 
The funds in this “report” have different asset mixes - it’s comparing apples and oranges. If it was comparing the performance of funds with the same investment mandate (eg global equities), it might have some validity.

In any event, past performance is not predictive of future performance. That is particularly true of active fund managers.
 
Where can one access the year on year performance of a particular fund, Prisma 5 for example?
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Absolutely. All the data suggest that investment managers do not consistently outperform. In fact, because of high charges, they underperform the market.

The right strategy is to buy an index tracker with low charges.

Brendan
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Yes but the question about the OPs report relates to the performance of pension providers. It’s not about their performance versus the market, it’s about their performance compared to each other.
 
yes, if they compared indexes, maybe the consumer can see tracking error and wastage in fee structure....
 
Sorry for what may be a silly question but is it practical to change existing pension funds in light of relatively high fees or poor performance?
I have 2 Irish Life bonds, 1 Irish Life PRSA, 1 Zurich PRSA and an ongoing DC AON pension. I'm 53 and hope to retire in 10 years.
Should I move any/all of these to an index tracker with low charges or is such an option only available when starting a pension/PRSA/Bond?
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I had a quick look and they don't seem to compare them with index tracking funds.
That should be the real comparison.
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Is there any reason that it would be a bad idea to mandate that all pension providers have to provide this comparison with their usual historical performance data? It's the only really important metric when considering such a long term investment and would clearly illustrate how bad pension products generally are. It seems to me that the regulation of pensions in Ireland is almost akin to a scandal, with many people not sure what they have, what they are being charged and what they are losing over their lifetime as a result of high charges. It's too easy to just accept that the pension providers are acting in our best interests and I think most people are not equipped to question what they are told (I know that I certainly was not at the beginning of my career).
 
bankrupt said:
Is there any reason that it would be a bad idea to mandate that all pension providers have to provide this comparison with their usual historical performance data?
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Because such comparisons are easy to game, and people are already scared enough of pensions as it is without overloading them with even more barely-relevant data? Also index-tracking encourages and rewards groupthink.



I don't buy your doom and gloom about pensions. My own experience in relation to pension investment has been very, very positive overall. It doesn't bother me in the slightest if the chap next door has a slightly better pension outcome than mine, any more than if his car turns out a better option than mine. You pays your money and you takes your choices.
 
T McGibney said:
Because such comparisons are easy to game, and people are already scared enough of pensions as it is without overloading them with even more barely-relevant data? Also index-tracking encourages and rewards groupthink.
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You do make a valid point about not wanting to scare people away from pensions, it is imperative that people are encouraged to save for retirement. However, I think it would be possible to construct a regulation for such a comparison that is not so easy to game and of course it can always be revised if that is what ultimately happens. I'm not sure that I understand your point about group-think, if the group-think is actually correct then why is that a problem? Studies have shown time and again that index tracking beats actively managed funds over time.
I didn't mean to imply that pensions are a problem, indeed they are essential for all of us. How my pension performs relative to my neighbour is immaterial to me but the costs of what seems like a very small % charge over the course of a lifetimes' pension contributions are very much relevant to each of us and generally speaking involve very significant amounts of money lost (when compared to passive index tracking).
 
bankrupt said:
Studies have shown time and again that index tracking beats actively managed funds over time.
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This needs to be clarified. Index-tracking beats the average actively-managed fund investing in similar asset classes over time. Some active fund managers will beat the index. The difficulty is that it's impossible to definitively predict in advance which actively managed funds will be the ones that beat the index-trackers.
 
And can continue to beat the index over the long term.
 
bankrupt said:
However, I think it would be possible to construct a regulation for such a comparison that is not so easy to game and of course it can always be revised if that is what ultimately happens.
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Everything is possible in theory, but in the real world, most regulation ends up being gamed by someone and governmental inertia usually causes poor and ineffective regulations to remain on the statute books long past their sell-by dates.

bankrupt said:
I'm not sure that I understand your point about group-think, if the group-think is actually correct then why is that a problem? Studies have shown time and again that index tracking beats actively managed funds over time.
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I'd argue that groupthink, meaning adherence to a perceived group consensus as a substitute for gut feeling, instinct and common sense, is rarely if ever a positive phenomenon, especially in investing. If a punter wants to invest in a consensus or index tracking fund, good for them, but I don't want to leave my pension at the mercy of people who park their common sense at their office front door.
 
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