Hi David, Thanks for the comment. I think I did reply to him and I did update the article with his point however I did an update to my site around that time and had to refresh from a backup so lost some comments and replies. Gregory was right and I updated the article to reflect this.

Hi Gerard, Thanks for your feedback.

The reason I’m comparing investing on your own to an advisory service is based on my own experience, I managed to make more money investing on my own than I ever did with an advisory service, largely due to the fees I was paying, the true impact of which were never made clear to me. I think it’s important to demonstrate the cost of the advice for those that are comfortable investing on their own and leave it up to individuals to make the call if that cost is worth it to them.

Also, I agree the dynamic fund and S&P 500 are made up of different equity allocations however, the point I am trying to make is that you don’t need much knowledge of the markets to invest in a simple S&P 500 tracker to achieve a similar performance to what you could get with an advisory service through the dynamic fund. Even if I compared to a 100% equity fund like International Equity Fund with a 10 year performance of 11.44% it doesn’t make much of a difference to the end figures as the biggest hit is the initial commission and ongoing annual fees. Even the 101% allocation doesn’t make a huge difference.

Fair point on the free switches, I can update to make mention of that as something for people to look for if they do go with an advisory service.

In terms of not mentioning the S&P500 being high risk, I can clarify that it is also high risk, but basically what I was trying to say is that if you are not comfortable with the risk of investing and feel the need to use an advisory service then it may be more prudent to consider a lower equity split (which would also exclude the S&P 500).

Not sure about the average holding period as I’m sure that’s a personal choice? I do know that most ETF investors that I have come across in forums and community groups are long term buy and hold investors, which I’m guessing would be similar to a Life Assurance product. This would also explain why the deemed disposal came to be as the government wasn’t getting money from people buying and holding for long periods of time.

Why are you comparing “investing on your own” with no advice, with an advisory service?

The indicative equity range of the Dynamic Fund is 75% – 100%. It’s actively managed & it’s not a 100% equity fund. Comparing it to S&P500 is questionable.

It’s not that difficult to get a 101% allocation to compensate for the Government Levy.

You have (generally) 4/6 free fund switches in an investment product in any one year so the 5% initial commission (again) is nonsense.

You refer to the Dynamic Fund being ‘high risk’ but no such comment on S&P500 (wholly equity) index.

What’s the average holding period for an ETF and for a Life Assurance Investment product?

Thank you for the insightful article.

Maybe something trivial, but one thing that surprised me was the tax filing under the Product Comparison table. I hadn’t realised tax filing would be necessary in the case of buying funds (e.g. Zurich Prisma or Irish Life MAPs).

In fact, I thought it was part of their appeal. I believed the financial provider was responsible for calculating and filing the tax returns on your behalf.

If it is indeed the case, that you are responsible to file your own tax returns, it does significantly lessen the attractiveness of those funds. It wouldn’t surprise me that they’d obfuscate this responsibility.

Out of interest, I’d appreciate some confirmation on the above if you were willing to oblige.

Thanks again,

G

Hi Eoin, Thanks for the feedback. I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, to be honest. Happy to update if you could shed a bit more light around what I got wrong? The fees I used were taken from 2 websites in the publicly listed fees, am I not applying them correctly?