I hear struggling football clubs in big cities in the next big thing to buy into. Just make sure you have access to a stream of unproven Conference-level players you can bring in to give the impression you're investing in playing talent.
There are differences in investing on a supermarket platform and direct with the underlying managers but there is a price to pay.
Fund managers effectively have to pay to get into a supermarket so there is an additional layer of charges that have to be borne and recovered somewhere. For example I know that a modest institutional investor could access passive funds directly from someone like L&G for less than 0.06%. If HL can deliver bulk funds to a manager they will get them at a discount even below these levels. Anything you are paying for a passive fund above the wholesale price the manager gives, is profit to the platform. So a cheap 1% fund through HL is likely to be 20 times more than the cost to the platform. A fund offered by a retail platform like HL should always be cheaper if you go direct to the manager. Problem is, the manager may only offer retail business through a platform below a certain level. The retail customer is very poorly served and pays a high price for accessing many products and supermarket platforms are designed to serve mainly the interests of the industry, not the customer.
HL will be receiving money or services from fund managers which the investor is bearing but are not visible. All of these hidden charges drag the returns of your investments. Passive funds do not offer the opportunity to make the juicy margins as the returns have to match the market returns, so there is no scope for charges that risk suppressing returns. What happens is that you are constantly fed the idea you need performing active funds and HL will give you access and the services. Switching is encouraged because every time your money moves some of it is skimmed off the top.
Reducing the charges you pay for an investment is the only thing that guarantees a higher return. Paying a higher charge in expectation of a higher return is a risk that is not rewarded other than by chance.
Every manager's fund is a dog at some time in the cycle. The only funds that can't be dogs are passive funds because they deliver market returns. If you think a passive fund is a dog you didn't think why you chose that market.
As passive funds are around a tenth of the cost of active funds, choosing an active manager fund means he has to out-perform the market to cover the charges by some margin just to get to break even. Adding on the HL type platform fees only makes it doubly unlikely that value is obtained.
The return outcome (positive/negative) from an investment is 90% down to the choice of asset class selected, 5% is down to manager skill (positive/negative) and 5% is chance. Why do people keep chasing manager skill instead of accepting that markets will deliver what they deliver and the key is choosing the right asset class to match your return objectives? Only good reason is that it is a hobby, like horse racing, which is fine. I would rather take Peanuts view on odds on the races than a manager's view of odds on the market. There is so much more uncertainty and potential for things like political events and even the weather to blast a hole in any logical prior analysis.
The likes of HL try and convey the idea that investment skill and tracking markets and stocks will help improve returns. All it does is justify higher fees for a claimed superior, but valueless service accruing additional profits to the platform.
Investment principles are actually quite simple if you understand what is a feasible objective. The industry in general just wants to ensure that simple low cost strategies are not understood, it would destroy their profit making opportunities.
I agree with you Dippenhall. I've never invested in a managed Fund, as I don't believe, that they generally, outperform passive funds, when the additional charges are taken into consideration.
Thanks for sharing all that @dippenhall. I need to get my brain around it more, and will probably have some inane further questions, but I appreciate that you are passing on advice that can be of significant value to the rest of us. Another example of why CL is so much more than a footie fan site
OK so let me ask using fairly simple practical examples of what I'v actually done. Please tell me why this has not worked as well as I suppose
- Just for once I was alert to a market dip, so last October via Hargreaves Lansdowne I bought into two new funds:
Woodford Equity Income and Lindsell Train Global Equity.
Right now, the Woodford fund is up 13.6%, and the Lindsell Train fund is up 19.2%.
So my questions are
@Covered End , surely these two funds at least have outperformed passive funds over that period (esp the Lindsell Train)?
@Dippenhall, did I, will I, lose any money by buying (and selling) these two funds via H-L rather than directly from the fund managers? I cannot work out where and when that would happen. I can see that the fund managers may make less money from me because I may pay less in charges and this money may be going to H-L. But that simply means that H-L are "doing an Amazon" (without sending me an invoice from Luxembourg).
Whether they outperformed, say the FTSE 100 would depend on the day of purchase. See the graph linked. It varied from about 6200 to 6800. So, yes I'd say they have. Well done. My point is over the medium to long term, they possibly do not. Todays hero fund is next years dog fund etc.
OK so let me ask using fairly simple practical examples of what I'v actually done. Please tell me why this has not worked as well as I suppose
- Just for once I was alert to a market dip, so last October via Hargreaves Lansdowne I bought into two new funds:
Woodford Equity Income and Lindsell Train Global Equity.
Right now, the Woodford fund is up 13.6%, and the Lindsell Train fund is up 19.2%.
So my questions are
@Covered End , surely these two funds at least have outperformed passive funds over that period (esp the Lindsell Train)?
@Dippenhall, did I, will I, lose any money by buying (and selling) these two funds via H-L rather than directly from the fund managers? I cannot work out where and when that would happen. I can see that the fund managers may make less money from me because I may pay less in charges and this money may be going to H-L. But that simply means that H-L are "doing an Amazon" (without sending me an invoice from Luxembourg).
Thanks in advance guys.
Woodford Fund is run by well rated manager who takes risks to beat the market, but year to date return is 6.7% which is up on the market by 0.11%. These managers rarely keep it up over more than one economic cycle. If you had bought the UK Equity market in a passive fund more than 0.11% cheaper you will have had a lower gross return but a higher net return, you would have a bigger fund.
Global Equity funds normally bear higher charges because of higher cost of overseas dealings etc. UK managers do not know overseas markets as well as domestic and if I wanted global equity exposure I would definitely only use a passive fund. They do not have to trade as much, don't have the same charges and requires no manager skill so no market or manager risk. The manager risk in choosing Global equity managers is high, good chance some will fail spectacularly. This means they often act more like a passive fund to avoid getting it very wrong but charge 10 times for the same gross performance, resulting in lower net return than passive investment.
There is so much variation and different risks taken to try and give high performance figures that results of Global Fund active managers are very patchy. Professionals would for example use perhaps 10 different managers with specialism in the different global sectors knowing no one UK manager can know the world's whole range of markets.
The most important factor when choosing an active fund is unlikely to be explained on these sites, but every fund has a rating that shows the statistical probability of returns being above or below the market to which it is exposed. For example two funds invest with the same benchmark of market returns + 2%. One might use a strategy with a risk of once in every three years of being 12% below the market and one an 8% chance of being below the market. That is what determines choice of fund, the target return that reflects your risk appetite with the lowest level of risk. It is called investing at the efficient frontier. Investing for an absolute return based on past performance is like driving with a blindfold. These sites do not even make it easy to understand what benchmark you should use to judge performance, they ask you to choose the benchmark you would like to use for comparison. That is as useful as testing a BMW against a Ford Mondeo to confirm a BMW gives the best performance, then testing against a Ferrari and deciding a Ferrari is better.
Many funds now used for pension savings are going for absolute returns. That means say 3%/4% above bank base rate. Long term, if inflation is around 3% and interest rates follow historic trends, a gross average return of 7%/8% p.a compound might be expected. This is virtually long term equity returns. So why suffer swinging volatility chasing equity returns if the same return can be obtained without that volatility.
So you need to think about what you want to achieve, and what risks you want to avoid, before you can make any logical investment decision. The least relevant factor is gross returns of a fund. The first decision is want benchmark return you want to track. Secondly who can potentially deliver the return at lowest risk and thirdly how far is performance going to be dragged down by charges.
I've long held what is no doubt a deeply flawed view about fund managers.
It's this: no one but fund managers buy or sell shares in quantities great enough to affect the indices. Therefore, once fees are stripped out, it is inevitable that an ordinary every day nincompoop could outperform your average fund manager merely by choosing a selection of shares almost at random. You can tell they are a bunch of sheep by going on to a site like morningstar and seeing that the top 5 holdings for most funds are so, so similar. Here's the list for the Artemis Income Fund (chosen at random, other funds are available): HSBC Holdings PLC 4.70% Royal Dutch Shell PLC Class B 4.36% BP PLC 4.31% Imperial Tobacco Group PLC 4.19% Novartis AG 3.89%
Wow, they REALLY had to put in a lot of hard work picking those babies didn't they?
That said, where the fund mangers do score, is in their immediate access to data and news which allows them to re-act more quickly than those of us who prefer to while away the hours on Charlton Life.
So, being a lazy git, despite having a low regard for them I do still invest via funds!
That said, where the fund mangers do score, is in their immediate access to data and news which allows them to re-act more quickly than those of us who prefer to while away the hours on Charlton Life.
There's plenty of decent software that can even do that for you now. Set your limits and let the IT do all your trading without charging any management fees.
so if you had an equity based pension fund and you satisfied the age criteria ...would you take as much cash out now or let it devalue when the market recedes which i am almost certain it will do ,if not now in next 12 months ?
so if you had an equity based pension fund and you satisfied the age criteria ...would you take as much cash out now or let it devalue when the market recedes which i am almost certain it will do ,if not now in next 12 months ?
You shouldn't take financial advice from here, but personally I'd be looking into withdrawing some. You also need to look at the tax implications. There's no point making an extra 10% due to stock market levels if you get punished with 20% or 40% tax.
Personally, I'm very surprised the UK market is rising as I thought it would start to fall with the election uncertainty.
I still think it will, especially the stronger Labour look.
However, you can never be sure. Sometimes it's a good idea to hedge your bets.
That said, where the fund mangers do score, is in their immediate access to data and news which allows them to re-act more quickly than those of us who prefer to while away the hours on Charlton Life.
There's plenty of decent software that can even do that for you now. Set your limits and let the IT do all your trading without charging any management fees.
Got any examples to share? Surprised that as punters could get our hands on such software.
Can somebody (probably @Dippenhall but he's already given away for free a lot of valuable pro advice) help me understand the whole business model behind funds, their charges, and where the funds supermarkets cream off their cut?
As an example I bought the Lindsell Train fund using the H-L supermarket. There is no bid- offer spread - I wouldn't buy a fund that still has that rip-off. So the price of the fund on the day was almost exactly £1 (100.41). The contract note says that the amount I put in brought me units exactly corresponding to the price. No charges or commissions deducted. Then it looks that they add units (I think I selected that to reflect the income earned by the fund holdings). As a result it is currently showing me a profit of 19.47%, being a combo of the increase in the fund price plus the small number of extra units. I understand that if I sell today, I will get back the number of units x the price (£1.197)
So where exactly are H-L taking their cut? Are they taking their cut from the income generated? And what about the funds themselves, their charges? Where do they get levied, are they hidden in the unit price?
In the Lindsell Train example they are making an annual charge of 0.84% of the fund's value. Some of that will go to HL as the "introducer" and, if you like, the annual costs associated with acting as your nominee. BUT they do discount that by 0.21%. (Unlike some funds there is not an add-on "performance fee" in the event that they stuck the tail on the right donkey. That's something I really dislike.) Here's HL's take on the whole topic. file:///C:/Users/Anne%20and%20Paul/Downloads/The_HL_Guide_to_Fund_Prices,_Savings_and_Yields.pdf
A very simple question, but I just want to make sure I understand this correctly. What is the difference between an active fund and a passive one? Thanks.
A very simple question, but I just want to make sure I understand this correctly. What is the difference between an active fund and a passive one? Thanks.
An active fund manager will try to beat their relevant benchmark (eg. FTSE 100) by under or over-weighting specific sectors and companies.
A passive fund manager will simply try to track the benchmark by owning positions in the same weightings as the index, and rebalanced appropriately.
Unsurprisingly the former is much more expensive (and better paid) than the latter - the key to this whole discussion is whether those fees are worth paying or not.
Can somebody (probably @Dippenhall but he's already given away for free a lot of valuable pro advice) help me understand the whole business model behind funds, their charges, and where the funds supermarkets cream off their cut?
As an example I bought the Lindsell Train fund using the H-L supermarket. There is no bid- offer spread - I wouldn't buy a fund that still has that rip-off. So the price of the fund on the day was almost exactly £1 (100.41). The contract note says that the amount I put in brought me units exactly corresponding to the price. No charges or commissions deducted. Then it looks that they add units (I think I selected that to reflect the income earned by the fund holdings). As a result it is currently showing me a profit of 19.47%, being a combo of the increase in the fund price plus the small number of extra units. I understand that if I sell today, I will get back the number of units x the price (£1.197)
So where exactly are H-L taking their cut? Are they taking their cut from the income generated? And what about the funds themselves, their charges? Where do they get levied, are they hidden in the unit price?
Don't quote me on this, but their business model is a combination of:
- rebates of fees paid by investors (like you) from funds (effectively a fee-sharing agreement in return for the marketing/distribution - however these are being phased out); - annual fees on the amounts investors have in their HL accounts; - asset management (HL have their own inhouse multi-manager funds); - interest on funds which investors hold as cash.
so if you had an equity based pension fund and you satisfied the age criteria ...would you take as much cash out now or let it devalue when the market recedes which i am almost certain it will do ,if not now in next 12 months ?
You shouldn't take financial advice from here, but personally I'd be looking into withdrawing some. You also need to look at the tax implications. There's no point making an extra 10% due to stock market levels if you get punished with 20% or 40% tax.
Personally, I'm very surprised the UK market is rising as I thought it would start to fall with the election uncertainty.
I still think it will, especially the stronger Labour look.
However, you can never be sure. Sometimes it's a good idea to hedge your bets.
yeah thanks appreciate this site isnt FCA regulated ! probably take out the money and buy some magic beans with half of it to hedge my bets !
Can somebody (probably @Dippenhall but he's already given away for free a lot of valuable pro advice) help me understand the whole business model behind funds, their charges, and where the funds supermarkets cream off their cut?
As an example I bought the Lindsell Train fund using the H-L supermarket. There is no bid- offer spread - I wouldn't buy a fund that still has that rip-off. So the price of the fund on the day was almost exactly £1 (100.41). The contract note says that the amount I put in brought me units exactly corresponding to the price. No charges or commissions deducted. Then it looks that they add units (I think I selected that to reflect the income earned by the fund holdings). As a result it is currently showing me a profit of 19.47%, being a combo of the increase in the fund price plus the small number of extra units. I understand that if I sell today, I will get back the number of units x the price (£1.197)
So where exactly are H-L taking their cut? Are they taking their cut from the income generated? And what about the funds themselves, their charges? Where do they get levied, are they hidden in the unit price?
Don't quote me on this, but their business model is a combination of:
- rebates of fees paid by investors (like you) from funds (effectively a fee-sharing agreement in return for the marketing/distribution - however these are being phased out); - annual fees on the amounts investors have in their HL accounts; - asset management (HL have their own inhouse multi-manager funds); - interest on funds which investors hold as cash.
Thanks.
Overall, I think H-L are offering me a service that has some value. I certainly don't pay more than if I tried to buy and sell funds myself - and perhaps pay less. But the key thing is the convenience they offer me (for no extra charge). All my holdings in one place, with backup benchmark data; easy to print tax documents (no need to keep paper docs); and best of all, fast and convenient trading. Quite unlike the cumbersome Aberdeen experience which I described and which sparked off this particular conversation. I remain a bit puzzled why @Dippenhall mades such a sharp comment about them, but maybe he was talking about the company overall whereas I was thinking only of the fund supermarket.
As an aside, you need to have a UK bank account and address for these fund supermarkets. My English mate in Prague doesn't have that, so he's constantly at the mercy of unregulated "financial advisors". Anyone planning to go abroad for a stint, it's well worth keeping your UK footprint, maybe get a friend or relative to maintain your "home" address.
so if you had an equity based pension fund and you satisfied the age criteria ...would you take as much cash out now or let it devalue when the market recedes which i am almost certain it will do ,if not now in next 12 months ?
You shouldn't take financial advice from here, but personally I'd be looking into withdrawing some. You also need to look at the tax implications. There's no point making an extra 10% due to stock market levels if you get punished with 20% or 40% tax.
Personally, I'm very surprised the UK market is rising as I thought it would start to fall with the election uncertainty.
I still think it will, especially the stronger Labour look.
However, you can never be sure. Sometimes it's a good idea to hedge your bets.
yeah thanks appreciate this site isnt FCA regulated ! probably take out the money and buy some magic beans with half of it to hedge my bets !
The FTSE 100 has indeed risen a lot (as have all developed equity markets) but it remains relatively 'underowned' by institutional investors and is one of the cheapest markets in the world.
This of course does not constitute investment advice.
Comments
For some reason, they haven't been a popular investment since 1637 but surely they must be due a comeback?
Fund managers effectively have to pay to get into a supermarket so there is an additional layer of charges that have to be borne and recovered somewhere. For example I know that a modest institutional investor could access passive funds directly from someone like L&G for less than 0.06%. If HL can deliver bulk funds to a manager they will get them at a discount even below these levels. Anything you are paying for a passive fund above the wholesale price the manager gives, is profit to the platform. So a cheap 1% fund through HL is likely to be 20 times more than the cost to the platform. A fund offered by a retail platform like HL should always be cheaper if you go direct to the manager. Problem is, the manager may only offer retail business through a platform below a certain level. The retail customer is very poorly served and pays a high price for accessing many products and supermarket platforms are designed to serve mainly the interests of the industry, not the customer.
HL will be receiving money or services from fund managers which the investor is bearing but are not visible. All of these hidden charges drag the returns of your investments. Passive funds do not offer the opportunity to make the juicy margins as the returns have to match the market returns, so there is no scope for charges that risk suppressing returns. What happens is that you are constantly fed the idea you need performing active funds and HL will give you access and the services. Switching is encouraged because every time your money moves some of it is skimmed off the top.
Reducing the charges you pay for an investment is the only thing that guarantees a higher return. Paying a higher charge in expectation of a higher return is a risk that is not rewarded other than by chance.
Every manager's fund is a dog at some time in the cycle. The only funds that can't be dogs are passive funds because they deliver market returns. If you think a passive fund is a dog you didn't think why you chose that market.
As passive funds are around a tenth of the cost of active funds, choosing an active manager fund means he has to out-perform the market to cover the charges by some margin just to get to break even. Adding on the HL type platform fees only makes it doubly unlikely that value is obtained.
The return outcome (positive/negative) from an investment is 90% down to the choice of asset class selected, 5% is down to manager skill (positive/negative) and 5% is chance. Why do people keep chasing manager skill instead of accepting that markets will deliver what they deliver and the key is choosing the right asset class to match your return objectives? Only good reason is that it is a hobby, like horse racing, which is fine. I would rather take Peanuts view on odds on the races than a manager's view of odds on the market. There is so much more uncertainty and potential for things like political events and even the weather to blast a hole in any logical prior analysis.
The likes of HL try and convey the idea that investment skill and tracking markets and stocks will help improve returns. All it does is justify higher fees for a claimed superior, but valueless service accruing additional profits to the platform.
Investment principles are actually quite simple if you understand what is a feasible objective. The industry in general just wants to ensure that simple low cost strategies are not understood, it would destroy their profit making opportunities.
- Just for once I was alert to a market dip, so last October via Hargreaves Lansdowne I bought into two new funds:
Woodford Equity Income and Lindsell Train Global Equity.
Right now, the Woodford fund is up 13.6%, and the Lindsell Train fund is up 19.2%.
So my questions are
@Covered End , surely these two funds at least have outperformed passive funds over that period (esp the Lindsell Train)?
@Dippenhall, did I, will I, lose any money by buying (and selling) these two funds via H-L rather than directly from the fund managers? I cannot work out where and when that would happen. I can see that the fund managers may make less money from me because I may pay less in charges and this money may be going to H-L. But that simply means that H-L are "doing an Amazon" (without sending me an invoice from Luxembourg).
Thanks in advance guys.
My point is over the medium to long term, they possibly do not.
Todays hero fund is next years dog fund etc.
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/indexdetails/fi-151.10.UKX
Global Equity funds normally bear higher charges because of higher cost of overseas dealings etc. UK managers do not know overseas markets as well as domestic and if I wanted global equity exposure I would definitely only use a passive fund. They do not have to trade as much, don't have the same charges and requires no manager skill so no market or manager risk. The manager risk in choosing Global equity managers is high, good chance some will fail spectacularly. This means they often act more like a passive fund to avoid getting it very wrong but charge 10 times for the same gross performance, resulting in lower net return than passive investment.
There is so much variation and different risks taken to try and give high performance figures that results of Global Fund active managers are very patchy. Professionals would for example use perhaps 10 different managers with specialism in the different global sectors knowing no one UK manager can know the world's whole range of markets.
The most important factor when choosing an active fund is unlikely to be explained on these sites, but every fund has a rating that shows the statistical probability of returns being above or below the market to which it is exposed. For example two funds invest with the same benchmark of market returns + 2%. One might use a strategy with a risk of once in every three years of being 12% below the market and one an 8% chance of being below the market. That is what determines choice of fund, the target return that reflects your risk appetite with the lowest level of risk. It is called investing at the efficient frontier. Investing for an absolute return based on past performance is like driving with a blindfold. These sites do not even make it easy to understand what benchmark you should use to judge performance, they ask you to choose the benchmark you would like to use for comparison. That is as useful as testing a BMW against a Ford Mondeo to confirm a BMW gives the best performance, then testing against a Ferrari and deciding a Ferrari is better.
Many funds now used for pension savings are going for absolute returns. That means say 3%/4% above bank base rate. Long term, if inflation is around 3% and interest rates follow historic trends, a gross average return of 7%/8% p.a compound might be expected. This is virtually long term equity returns. So why suffer swinging volatility chasing equity returns if the same return can be obtained without that volatility.
So you need to think about what you want to achieve, and what risks you want to avoid, before you can make any logical investment decision. The least relevant factor is gross returns of a fund. The first decision is want benchmark return you want to track. Secondly who can potentially deliver the return at lowest risk and thirdly how far is performance going to be dragged down by charges.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27064695
So, two reasons not to do likewise then.
It's this: no one but fund managers buy or sell shares in quantities great enough to affect the indices. Therefore, once fees are stripped out, it is inevitable that an ordinary every day nincompoop could outperform your average fund manager merely by choosing a selection of shares almost at random.
You can tell they are a bunch of sheep by going on to a site like morningstar and seeing that the top 5 holdings for most funds are so, so similar.
Here's the list for the Artemis Income Fund (chosen at random, other funds are available):
HSBC Holdings PLC 4.70%
Royal Dutch Shell PLC Class B 4.36%
BP PLC 4.31%
Imperial Tobacco Group PLC 4.19%
Novartis AG 3.89%
Wow, they REALLY had to put in a lot of hard work picking those babies didn't they?
That said, where the fund mangers do score, is in their immediate access to data and news which allows them to re-act more quickly than those of us who prefer to while away the hours on Charlton Life.
So, being a lazy git, despite having a low regard for them I do still invest via funds!
You also need to look at the tax implications. There's no point making an extra 10% due to stock market levels if you get punished with 20% or 40% tax.
Personally, I'm very surprised the UK market is rising as I thought it would start to fall with the election uncertainty.
I still think it will, especially the stronger Labour look.
However, you can never be sure. Sometimes it's a good idea to hedge your bets.
As an example I bought the Lindsell Train fund using the H-L supermarket. There is no bid- offer spread - I wouldn't buy a fund that still has that rip-off. So the price of the fund on the day was almost exactly £1 (100.41). The contract note says that the amount I put in brought me units exactly corresponding to the price. No charges or commissions deducted. Then it looks that they add units (I think I selected that to reflect the income earned by the fund holdings). As a result it is currently showing me a profit of 19.47%, being a combo of the increase in the fund price plus the small number of extra units. I understand that if I sell today, I will get back the number of units x the price (£1.197)
So where exactly are H-L taking their cut? Are they taking their cut from the income generated? And what about the funds themselves, their charges? Where do they get levied, are they hidden in the unit price?
Here's HL's take on the whole topic. file:///C:/Users/Anne%20and%20Paul/Downloads/The_HL_Guide_to_Fund_Prices,_Savings_and_Yields.pdf
A passive fund manager will simply try to track the benchmark by owning positions in the same weightings as the index, and rebalanced appropriately.
Unsurprisingly the former is much more expensive (and better paid) than the latter - the key to this whole discussion is whether those fees are worth paying or not.
- rebates of fees paid by investors (like you) from funds (effectively a fee-sharing agreement in return for the marketing/distribution - however these are being phased out);
- annual fees on the amounts investors have in their HL accounts;
- asset management (HL have their own inhouse multi-manager funds);
- interest on funds which investors hold as cash.
Overall, I think H-L are offering me a service that has some value. I certainly don't pay more than if I tried to buy and sell funds myself - and perhaps pay less. But the key thing is the convenience they offer me (for no extra charge). All my holdings in one place, with backup benchmark data; easy to print tax documents (no need to keep paper docs); and best of all, fast and convenient trading. Quite unlike the cumbersome Aberdeen experience which I described and which sparked off this particular conversation. I remain a bit puzzled why @Dippenhall mades such a sharp comment about them, but maybe he was talking about the company overall whereas I was thinking only of the fund supermarket.
As an aside, you need to have a UK bank account and address for these fund supermarkets. My English mate in Prague doesn't have that, so he's constantly at the mercy of unregulated "financial advisors". Anyone planning to go abroad for a stint, it's well worth keeping your UK footprint, maybe get a friend or relative to maintain your "home" address.
This of course does not constitute investment advice.