Money Management articles from April 2003

Money Management archives from April 2003

Introduction; Geoff Hawksworth, managing director Europe at Standard & Poors believes that the registered for sale universe of funds will change our view of the investment industry.
April 1, 2003... Welcome to the 13th annual UK Standard & Poors Fund Awards. The UK Awards were the first of a programme of awards covering 16 countries, offshore territories and pan-European markets that will truly cover the globe with the introduction of...

How the awards are calculated.
April 1, 2003... The Standard & Poors UK Fund Awards are calculated for four fund classes; UK Marketed Funds, Individual Pensions, Insurance Funds and Investment Trusts. The UK Marketed Funds universe comprises more than just UK unit trusts and OEICs. It...

Best UK investment manager 2003: FIDELITY INVESTMENTs.
April 1, 2003... The last time it hired new talent, Lady Thatcher was enjoying her first year as prime minister and Bob Hoskins was filming classic British gangster movie The Long Good Friday. In 1979, Fidelity International, which is the name of the...

UK marketed funds category winner: Fidelity Investments.
April 1, 2003... The winner of the UK Marketed Funds category has paraded its independence for many years. Fidelity Investments presents itself as a whiter than white organisation that is able to analyse companies with only their suitability as long term equity...

UK marketed funds larger group winners: Winner over one year: DWS Investments Winner over five and 10 years: Fidelity Investments; Michael Warren, managing director, at DWS Investments.
April 1, 2003... Few IFAs or private investors understand what Die Wertpapier Spezialisten means. But that has failed to stop the retail arm of Europes biggest fund group, Deutsche Asset Management, from being the most consistent manager of retail funds in...

UK marketed funds smaller group winners: Winner over one year: Allchurches Investment Management Winner over five and 10 years: St Jamess Place unit trust group.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... The smallest fund groups seem to be guaranteed to get the least attention. But their performance does not always justify widespread apathy at the mention of their names. Allchurches Investment Management, which is the fund management arm...

Investment Trusts category winner: Aberdeen Asset Managers; Piers Currie, Aberdeen investment trusts marketing director.
April 1, 2003... By the end of 2002, few brands in the funds industry could continue to evoke feelings of investor confidence. Aberdeen was not one of them. So it will come as a shock to both its competitors and the shareholders in its closed-end products...

Investment Trusts larger group winners: Winner over one, three and five years: Aberdeen Asset Management; Richard Hughes director of investment trusts at M&G winners in the smaller group.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Many of those who had invested money in split capital investment trusts will not understand why the company most associated with their collapse over the last 18 months has emerged triumphant in the investment trusts category over all three time...

Investment Trusts smaller group winners: Winner over one and three years: M&G Investment Management Winner over five years: Jupiter Asset Management.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Most fund managers over the last three years have behaved like frightened hedgehogs halfway through crossing a road and firmly in the path of a speeding juggernaut. Any manager who kept their exposure to equities at the same level as it was...

Insurance funds larger group winners; Winner over one year: Royal London Winner over five years: Threadneedle investments Winner over 10 years: Skandia.
April 1, 2003... Andy Carter, chief investment officer, Royal London Royal London, winner of the larger group award for life funds over one year is not going overboard with its celebrations. Its chief investment officer, Andy Carter, summed up the lethargy...

Insurance funds smaller group winners; Winner over one yea:rStandard Life Winner over five and 10 years: Norwich Union.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Standard Life has emerged from a difficult year to take the smaller group award for the 12 month period. Every one of the 16 funds that it offers has recorded above median performance over the year and eight were top quartile. Of the managed...

Pension funds category winner: WINTERTHUR LIFE; Bernard Henshall, head of investment marketing, at Winterthur Life.
April 1, 2003... That a company that failed to collect so much as a runners-up award last year should claim the category prize this year apparently suggests dynamic fund performance. But that has not been the case. In a pensions market with well documented...

Pension funds larger group winners; Winner over one and five years: Threadneedle Investments Winner over 10 years: Skandia.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Alex Lyle, joint head of pan-European equities at Threadneedle Threadneedle Investments has improved on last years five year runner-up award by taking both one and five years larger group awards. The companys vast offering of 160 funds has...

Pension funds smaller group winners.
April 1, 2003... St Jamess Place takes the smaller group award over one year, its modest range of 13 external funds having outperformed all competitors over a tricky time period for the pensions industry as a whole. The battering that the pensions market...

Equity income or other income; Suggestions that markets could take until 2018 to regain lost ground have refocused attention on dividends and income-paying investments. Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon investigates the prospects for equity income and looks at the alternatives.
April 1, 2003... Investors are having to entirely overhaul their thinking. Gone are the days when the intangible concept of equity growth could be relied upon to swell a portfolio to heady heights. Dividends and interest are fast becoming the only things that...

THE PROBLEM OF PROTECTING A FLUCTUATING INCOME; The ABI wants to raise the profile of income protection insurance but, as Helen Pridham points out, the self employed need to be careful that they dont get less than they bargained for.
April 1, 2003... The ABI is hoping to raise public awareness and understanding of income protection insurance through the launch of a consumer guide to income protection and statement of best practice due out before the end of May. It would like to encourage...

Tackling the pensions crisis or not; John Chapman reports the assorted views of many leading pensions pundits, and the apparent scarcity of new remedies that the Government might consider if it dared to enter into real debate.
April 1, 2003... An important conference on Pensions in crisis restoring confidence was held at the National Liberal Club on 26 February, organised by Cityforum with the Centre for Financial Innovation and the Retirement Income Reform Campaign. Leading...

Taking Stock; Stupidity and ignorance are not the same, says former investment banker Russell Taylor, and suppliers who confuse the two are apt to lose their business.
April 1, 2003... This first 21st century bear market has been more protracted than that of the early 1970s, but has not been accompanied by similar panicky talk of social collapse with discussion of military coups at London dinner parties. However, this decline...

ONLINE ON TARGET; The internet works best when it adds value to a service that works says John Hancock.
April 1, 2003... It seems only yesterday THAt the vision set before us was of a life conducted almost entirely in cyberspace. In these pages we reported the confident predictions, made in 2000, that, from a 0% market share in 1999, pure internet mortgage...

NATIONAL TREASURE? With stock markets still in turmoil, National Savings products have recently been experiencing a resurgence in popularity. But their rates are not always competitive. Catherine OLeary investigates why the Government backed scheme is now such an attractiv.
April 1, 2003... If you were to compare the reputation of savings and investment providers with that of car manufacturers, then National Savings & Investments (NS&I) would surely be considered the Ford Mondeo of the financial institutions. The Treasury-backed...

What goes up; When the average price of a UK property grew by almost a third over the 12 months to October 2002, it may have marked the peak of the housing boom. Will Hadfield looks at the scale of price increases around the country.
April 1, 2003... The family home should not be treated as an investment. Any gain in house prices cannot be fully realised without selling the property. With any other investment, this would not be a problem. But the home is different. It is part of peoples...

The true cost of those special deals; Most of the time, borrowers only look at the headline loan rate when trying to decide which mortgage deal to go for. But what may look like a good deal on the surface can turn out to be the opposite once fees and discounts are taken into account. What bor.
April 1, 2003... The annual percentage rate (APR) has become meaningless. It is supposed to show the total cost of borrowing by including any costs and fees incurred when arranging the loan within the borrowing rate. But as a way for consumers to understand...

Timetable for regulation; With six consultation papers from the FSA heralding a new regulatory framework for mortgages, Network Data managing director Richard Griffiths analyses the coming changes.
April 1, 2003... The past couple of years have seen a growing clamour for IFAs to extend the scope of their activities, otherwise in the new 1% world they are likely to struggle financially. The demise of the endowment market, the slow take up of...

What happens next? If house prices should fall, how will some of todays modern mortgage products cope? Jon Cudby investigates.
April 1, 2003... There is much uncertainty about what lies in store for the housing market, but even the most optimistic pundit would not dare to predict that house prices will continue to rise at the meteoric rates seen since 1995, when house prices fell by...

In search of profits; Although drastic bonus cuts have become commonplace throughout 2002 and 2003, Anna Bawden finds that some providers have withstood market shocks better than others.
April 1, 2003... With profits endowments are under threat as never before. Plummeting stock markets, misselling scandals and investor apathy have eroded inflows into policies to such an extent that many providers have either closed to new business or are at...

Location, Location, Location.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Taking advantage of the increasing popularity of property investment, three property funds have been launched, targeting SIPP and SSAS holders: Pinder, Fry & Benjamins Gold 5 and Gold 6 Property Income Portfolios and Teather & Greenwoods...

HEDGING YOUR BETS.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Man Investment Products has launched a new Bermuda domiciled capital guaranteed structured product, investing in bonds and multimanager hedge funds. Investors choose between two versions of the Multi Strategy Series 5: Series 5 Capital and...

Two launches.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Canada Life has launched two life and pension funds. Both will be available through the firms open architecture fund range, which offers a selection of Canada Life funds alongside external links to 10 other providers. The Income fund has...

Multiplied growth.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Yet more hybrid structured products offering geared upside but no capital guarantee have entered the market. The first is from HSBC. The Accelerated Recovery Plan offers 300% of the growth in the FTSE 100 over five and a half years, subject...

Scottish Mutual jumps on Sandler bandwagon.
April 1, 2003... Scottish Mutual is poised to become the next life office to launch a Sandler-friendly with profits alternative. It joins Scottish Widows and Scottish Equitable which, like Scottish Mutual, have with profits funds that are closed to new business...

LETTER OF THE MONTH: Staring them in the face.(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2003... I applaud the sentiments in your comment in February. I entirely concur with your view of the FSA and those other governmental bodies that are so enthusiastically meddling in the financial services market and making it less and less easy for...

PII ASAP or IFAs RIP.(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2003... Whilst the article by Debbie Harrison in the February issue (page 49) was most interesting, the author fails to state the most obvious point which is for the FSA to write a revised rule that the members can comply with. What is the point of...

Who is representing whom?(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Imagine if the UK legal system started allowing prisons throughout the country to (a) purchase substantial equity stakes in barristers chambers, (b) remunerate defence counsels only for successful convictions, (c) offer additional...

News in brief.
April 1, 2003... B&CE gets SMPIs The 185,000 contributors to construction workers pension provider B&CE will receive SMPIs in their annual statements from 6 April, thanks to a deal with software house Aqera. As well as providing the statutory pension...

Top 101 pensions IFAs.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Due to an oversight IN the data provided by Matrix, last months feature on the UKs Top 100 pensions IFAs did not include a fairly large company that should have appeared in the top 10. Heath Lambert Consulting is an IFA firm that employs...

March issue - Individual pensions supplement; Revised edition.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... After the March issue OF Money Management had gone to press, Skandia Life discovered that it had provided us with incorrect figures for all of its five year performances, resulting in an overstatement of results. Unfortunately, the information...

Stakeholder could be VATable; Management fees of Sandler products may be liable says HMCE.
April 1, 2003... The management of new stakeholder suite of products could be liable to VAT, according to HM Customs and Excise. Current rules specify that for there to be exemption from VAT liability, there must be intermediation between the provider and...

FSA plans fact find replacement.(Financial Services Authority)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... The Treasury and the FSA are preparing a simple questionnaire that would provide anyone who completed it with generic financial advice. The health check was unveiled at a meeting hosted by the financial secretary to the Treasury, Ruth...

E-business gets serious; Up to 19 networks to make online new business compulsory.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... Transacting new business electronically is the holy grail of life offices and IFAs that are seeking to cut costs and improve productivity. But it has proved elusive until now. From late April, the 19 different networks that use quotes...

Yet more regulation.
April 1, 2003... The FSA has published its plans for the regulation of insurance and mortgage intermediaries in CP174:Prudential and other requirements for mortgage firms and insurance intermediaries. It aims to regulate insurance mortgage intermediaries in...

Punctured profits.
April 1, 2003... 15 life offices pay out less on 25 year with profits endowments held to maturity than if that policy had been surrendered one year early, even after surrender penalties are taken into account, according to the latest Money Management survey....

IFAs in firing line; Ombudsman underestimates complaints.(Independent Financial Advisers)
April 1, 2003... The Financial Ombudsman SERVICE is to up its high income bond complaints budget to allow for 1,000 more than originally expected. The resources increase will be contained in the ombudsmans soon-to-be-published 2003/2004 budget. Several...

Profits of doom; More life offices lower expectations on endowments.
April 1, 2003... The application of MVRs to projected values of with profits funds is widespread practice throughout life offices Money Management has discovered. We reported last month that Standard Life was applying surrender penalties to projections...

OPRA relaxes requirements.(Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2003... OPRA has finally bowed to pressure from the actuarial profession and will permit trustees to delay the calculation and payment of cash equivalent transfer values (CETVs) in pensions. The move is a bid to protect existing members of final...

New mortgage stats!(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2003... From this months issue onwards, Money Management has added mortgage data to its statistical coverage (see page 167). Rather than just show lists of rates, we decided to give true cost figures, which shows the actual outlay, over five years, of...

COMMENT: You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off....
April 1, 2003... This classically understated observation, delivered by the actor Michael Caine in the cult sixties movie The Italian Job was recently voted the best one liner from any film ever, and it is easy to see why. It was directed, in a deadpan...