pension funds only averaged 4% over last 10 years

Looking up the 3 year return on the Aberdeen Asia Pacific fund gives +42.8% return.
Eagle star's 5*5 Asia Pacific returned 56.0% over the period. Over 1 Year Eagle Star returned -4.35% compared to +2.6% for Aberdeen.

My conclusions are that that fund is available to the Irish pensioner and i have no evidence of Irish fund managers being inferior.

As for UK emerging or small companies fund, I have no idea if they are available, but doubt they are widely available (or sought after!) outside the UK.
 
Standard Life's UK Smaller Companies Fund has returned +15.5% per annum from launch in April 2005 to 31st January 2008. Can't find the exact comparable time-frame for the Aberforth UK Small Companies Fund but over 3 years to 7/3/2008 it has achieved +7.3% per annum.

Now as we all know here on Askaboutmoney, part performance is not a guide to future returns, but I think you can safely say that there are plenty of competitive international pension funds available in Ireland through any broker if you want them. There are no cosy cartels or conspiracies trying to keep us Irish from investing our pension funds in international funds if we want to.
 
I think the big issue on pensions in this country is the ignorance of employers in choosing funds for their employees. I know my former company offered a Bank of Ireland based property fund that would have cost a lot of my former colleagues badly. There is also the issue of management fees. Like a few posters have mentioned, some Irish pension charges are ridiculously high.

So if you ask me, I think employers need to shop around and source funds with the lowest transaction fees for their employees.
 
Looking up the 3 year return on the Aberdeen Asia Pacific fund gives +42.8% return.
Eagle star's 5*5 Asia Pacific returned 56.0% over the period. Over 1 Year Eagle Star returned -4.35% compared to +2.6% for Aberdeen.

My conclusions are that that fund is available to the Irish pensioner and i have no evidence of Irish fund managers being inferior.

As for UK emerging or small companies fund, I have no idea if they are available, but doubt they are widely available (or sought after!) outside the UK.

i specifically chose funds with performance over 10 years (at least), however to get a true weighting you would need a longer time frame to analyse with regard to the lifetime of a pension. Eagle star asia fund produced 56% only over your lifespan of 3 years, what about 10 years or longer, you are not comparing like with like, berkshire hathaway (buffets fund) produces low returns over certain short term periods, however its over the long term that it outperforms everything, give me funds here that produce 10% returns over at least 10 years, then i will say that is good and that compares well with its international peers
 
Hate quoting myself but!

The following figures are from the Eagle Star website. Their performance fund has a growth of 728.50% from 01/11/89 (the fund's launch date) to 05/03/08.

How do you calculate the annualised return?

Thanks to DerKaiser for this

DerKaiser said:
Term = 18.5 years, so 7.285 ^ (1/18.5) = 1.113 i.e annualised return of 11.3% since the fund was set up.

joe sod said:
give me funds here that produce 10% returns over at least 10 years, then i will say that is good and that compares well with its international peers

Seems the Eagle Star Performance fund fits the bill.
 
Well can you not find one with 10 year returns to compare it too (with regard to asia pacific fund started 2004) this is not a comparable fund, the eagle star fund does fit the bill and does stand up when compared to its peers, however there are too many funds that do not stand up and are being chosen without regard to pedigree or history, this is the reason why the bulk of irish based funds have such poor returns over 10year and greater periods, consumers are not discerning and are bamboozled with financial gobbledygook, therefore they choosing poor performing funds which allows these to continue rather than being weeded out, the irish funds have by and large been riding the wave of the celtic tiger and have come crashing down with that wave
 
your initial point was that you could not access foreign funds. That was quickly disproved.

I'm not going to look at a weighted average of the ten year return on all asia pacific funds available to irish pension funds. You claim such a return would be inferior compared to its benchmark so you need to validate that claim.

I can't think of a response to the rest of your post because I don't know if you're blaming the fund managers for being crap, pension scheme trustees for sticking with crap fund managers or individuals for not having a go at their crap trustees for their use of crap fund managers.
 
this is the reason why the bulk of irish based funds have such poor returns over 10year and greater periods

In no particular order...measured over 15 years to 3/3/2008 if you want truly long-term...

Eagle Star Dynamic +11.7% p.a.
Acorn Life Pension Managed Growth +10.2% p.a.
Eagle Star Balanced +11.2%
Eagle Star Performance +11.4%
Friends First Irish Equity +12.9%
New Ireland Pension Irish Equity 3 +13.7%

I can provide more.
 
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