The best and worst: Unit-Linked Personal Pensions
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.ANYBODY who took out a unit-linked personal pension that had any investment in property over the past five years would now be suffering from the catastrophic effects of the slump in the sector.
The pounds 50m property fund run by Merchant Investors Assurance has done particularly badly - over the past five years, investors would have lost money.
Merchant Investors was part of the MI Group, which used to sell life and pension policies through a hard-sell direct sales force.
Chris Jones, head of investments, said that most of the loss had been sustained because of joint property deals made with the MI Property Company, another group subsidiary, when the group was headed by Trevor Deaves.
Mr Jones said: 'We are in the process of restructuring the fund. We had to write off losses against the fund. We have largely cleared that out.' He said that nearly half its other funds were in the top quartile of performance.
Gregor Logan, MGM investment director, said: 'The special situations fund suffered from being heavily invested in small stocks during a recession which went on for far longer than everyone expected.'
Skandia Assurance farms the management of its clients' money out to other fund managers. Peter Jordan, pensions products marketing manager, said: 'We have been particularly pleased with fund performance from Perpetual.'
If one particular fund manager's performance begins to fall off, the personal pension policy-holder can switch to another with ease.
----------------------------------------------------------------- UNIT LINKED PERSONAL PENSIONS ----------------------------------------------------------------- The best pounds 1 Mercury - Far Eastern. . . . . . . . . . . . . 24,463 2 Providence Capitol - Hong Kong. . . . . . . . .24,371 3 Skandia - Perpetual Far East. . . . . . . . . .22,545 4 Skandia - Gartmore Far East. . . . . . . . . . 22,212 5 Skandia - Perpetual International. . . . . . . 21,225 The worst 580 MGM Property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11,565 581 Scottish Mutual Property. . . . . . . . . . .11,385 582 M&G Property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11,211 583 Merchant Investors Property. . . . . . . . . 11,006 584 MGM Special Situations. . . . . . . . . . . . 9,356 ----------------------------------------------------------------- The table shows the value of a pounds 200 per month pension invested over the five years to 1 July 1994. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Source: Money Management -----------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments