Industry knees always start knocking at this time of year, when Bestinvest announce their latest fund performance analysis which leads to their well-established “Dog Funds” chart. To qualify for inclusion a fund has to have underperformed against the market for three consecutive years and also to have underperformed by 5% or more over that period.
The analysis over a three-year period means that these funds have been in the “doghouse” for a long time, it excludes funds who might be subject to short term falls. So, these really are the bad ones.
So, who makes the list?
JP Morgan’s US Equity fund was number one in terms of size, with almost £4 billion invested and underperforming the comparable market by a massive 32%. That really is a dog with fleas!
Three companies had six funds in the “Doghouse”, they were Abrdn, Jupiter and SJP.
SJP had the most assets invested in their funds with almost £3.9 billion invested. That’s from one of the more expensive and largest advice firms in the UK. I wonder if their performance features heavily in their advertising. You may have noticed that two of the three, SJP and Abrdn have announced recent slick re-branding exercises, in SJP’s case to become more “inclusive” as we reported in the News Round Up.
In their defence SJP have said that they have already changed their fund managers last year and expect performance to recover. They also say that over a 10-year period their customers have experienced an average annual growth of over 7%. I imagine that doesn’t include those invested in the dog funds. Other providers refused to comment.
It’d interesting that Pension Minister Guy Oppenheimer has recently criticised the industry for not creating its own pensions dashboard earlier to help consumers to compare charges ad performance. Perhaps this is why. Firms don’t want the general public to be able to see performance and charges at a glance. Can you imagine trying to “advise” on a fund selection that was top of the most expensive and worst performing fund lists? How would you possibly attract £3.9 billion investments if that comparison data was available for all to see?
We’ll keep you advised when the next Best Invest list is published.