Zurich pension funds seemed to have fallen more than market

There has been an improvement in last couple of weeks regarding zurich prsa, when I started the thread my prsa was down over 15% compared to start of year, now I'm only down 9.5% since start of year. I don't expect to see that much more improvement in the near future due to the fall in dollar exchange rates. Even though I had been investing in global and European funds and tried to stay away from US over last few years I was still heavily affected by the US tech sell offand I was almost exclusively invested in equities

How are others doing now with their pensions and prsa?
 
I'm down 5.3% this year and about 8.3% from the peaks on the 19Feb. I had tried as much as possible to reduce my exposure to the US from Q3 2024 and also reduced my equity percentage from 80%. I'm now about 60% in equities and less than half of those equities are US.
 
joe sod said:
How are others doing now with their pensions and prsa?
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Hi Joe,

I was also down 15% between mid feb to mid april, allowing for 2 months of contributions.

Today i am down 10% versus peak of mid feb so its improving.

My pension is 100% in global equities.
 
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Unless you are due to retire within the next few years, I wouldn't lose much sleep over the markets and your pension fund performance. The market always bounces back and as long as you have a well diversified portfolio, you shouldn't have anything to worry about
 
My pension went down about 12% since February; it is almost 100% equities.

I look back to March-April 2020 when my pension nosedived about 35% due to Covid and it recovered to the original value by November and only increased exponentially thereafter (other than the volatile 2022) and despite the current drop, it is still well above the pre Covid levels. If I had moved to so called safer funds in April 2020, I would have lost out big time
 
redchariot said:
Unless you are due to retire within the next few years, I wouldn't lose much sleep over the markets and your pension fund performance
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And arguably even if you are but are likely to roll over to an ARF, vested PRSA, etc. rather than buy an annuity, in which case your investment horizon is your lifetime and not just to the date of retirement. I'm in this position myself gradually easing into early retirement.
 
well are these global funds themselves properly diversified with 70% exposure to US stock markets and dollar, that was the main point of the thread. The covid sell off which was worse actually seemed to increase the lack of diversification subsequently by focussing so much on US stocks. The zurich international fund which I discussed earlier changed its criteria for stocks which it could hold in 2023, it could only have stocks that satisfied ESG metrics so that effectively concentrated their stocks even more into US tech , it couldn't hold for example oil or mining stocks which is a huge sector to be excluded. It is questionable whether they should have been allowed to class themselves as a truly global equity fund.
 
joe sod said:
It is questionable whether they should have been allowed to class themselves as a truly global equity fund.
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That's why retail investors need to at least read the information leaflets about specific funds/indexes and apprise themselves of some of the details before making investment decisions. It would be pretty dumb to make investment decisions on the name of a fund/index alone.
 
i had been invested in this fund for 10 years and had presumed it was continuing on as before, there was no explicit indication that it had changed its investment criteria substantially in 2023, it was one of only 2 or 3 global equity funds available as a standard prsa not a niche fund as I explained already. Afterall most people invest in pensions as a default option , so the title of a fund is highly important .
Unfortunately people have found out to their cost that a "low risk fund" is actually a fund highly exposed to government bonds which got trashed after covid so not "low risk" at all
And an "international equity fund" benchmark "article 8" actually means that is a fund with large exposure to US technology stocks and not truly an international equity fund
 
I would agree with Redchariot.
In accumulation, If not close to retirement, I’d keep my hands in my pockets and perhaps not look at the portfolio value unless it’s to delight at the lower unit prices.
Anyone in accumulation mode are fortunate to be buying units at a hefty discount to what they were paying per unit a few months ago.
 
28/02/2023 to 25/04/2025

Global Index Tracker (Article 6) 29.27%
International Equity (Article 8) 29.79%
5*5 Global Equity (Article 6) 30.87%

28/02/2023

At Zurich we have reclassified a number of our most popular funds, including the Prisma multi-asset range, as Article 8 under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), a European regulation introduced to improve transparency in the market for sustainable investment products.

What that means is we are disclosing lots of information on how our funds promote sustainable characteristics. As an active investor, we are committed to playing our part to help promote environmental and social characteristics and our responsible investment efforts should help us all achieve our collective goal of a lower carbon and more sustainable world. We are also conscious of our overarching responsibility to our customers, and the primary objective of our funds continues to be to help Irish customers save for their long-term goals through delivering active investment outperformance.

I doubt that any investment manager is going to ask the permission of policyholders to reclassify funds ie. choose what stocks the investment manager can have in a fund. If someone didn't have any concerns about ESG principles then now is probably a good time to seek out Article 6 Funds to fill that need/desire.


Gerard

www.prsa.ie
 
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@GSheehy, is that a letter that was sent to investors or was it simply published on their website or something?
 
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the issue is that this wasn't an organic change in investment criteria it was forced by the decision to move the whole fund to article 8 in 2023, but the owners of the fund me and other pension fund holders were not explicitly informed about this substantial change. Surely a move to article 8 and ESG should have been an opt in or opt out decision whereby the fund continued on as before and you opted in to the new artcile 8 fund or opted out and stayed on in the non article 8 fund as before.

Another issue is that I had held this fund for the last decade and most of that time it was not article 8 restricted so could have held oil and mining stocks etc but then by 2023 it would have been forced out of those stocks and the pension fund holders were not informed of any of this !!

I also own investment trusts in my own investment account outside of prsa, i doubt an investment trust or ETF would be allowed to make a substantial change like moving the whole trust to "article 8" and not asking for a vote from their fund owners
 
I think folks need to appreciate how utterly meaningless a self-declared Article 8 designation really is.

A simple screen to avoid investing in cluster munitions would suffice.

It certainly doesn’t imply a ban on investing in oil or mining stocks as implied.
 
So, to recap -

1. Zurich’s international fund has not meaningfully lagged its benchmark In recent months as claimed;

2. Zurich’s international fund is not overweight IT or US stocks relative to its benchmark as claimed; and

3. The Article 8 designation does not represent a material change to the fund’s investment objectives or policies as claimed.
 
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