Sun life Stocks and Shares ISA

A question about : Sun life Stocks and Shares ISA

Good afternoon all

In the last few weeks I signed up for the above. One of the main reasons was due to the flat 1.5% yearly fee. I have since been reading a few reviews and am now a little worried. I was looking at using standard life as I have my pension with them but didnt really understand the fees (I emailed them and heard nothing back). I understand Scottish Friendly run the above ISA and just really wanted some reviews/help.

David

Best answers:

• You don't need to be worried, by that I mean they are not going to run off with your money - Scottish Friendly and Sun Life have been going for years.
  However, it doesn't mean that the fund will perform particularly well. It is a with-profits fund and 'bonuses' will be added from time to time depending on investment performance. But from time to time it would be worth less than you paid for it, if the fund didn't do very well. If you hold it for long enough, after year 10, you can get your money out without them applying a market value deduction and the amount of money you get back will be at least what you put in. It might not be any more than you put in, which would be a very poor return for a 10 year lock up, but the actual value depends on the actual performance of what they invest in, which will hopefully be higher. They make no predictions on that.
  What they invest in is not particularly transparent and the fee at 1.5% is higher than most investment ISA options that people talk about on this forum. Personally I wouldn't use it, I would pick my own investment fund (or funds) within a DIY wrapper, because I prefer to invest in things where the returns aren't artificially smoothed, where I can see the track record of what the manager has achieved with similar mixes of investment going back in history over different timescales, and where the fees are not as high as 1.5%.
  I don't think the "flat yearly fee" is a particular reason to use these guys as nobody is really higher than 1.5%. The reason to use it would be if you were unconvinced about the merits of investing and you really really wanted to get your money back in year 10 without loss (apart from loss due to inflation eating away your money).
  However, if you didn't really want to be able to access the true investment returns of the stock market you might do rather better than that by splitting your money into some cash-based savings and some other conventional S&S investment fund that holds a conservative mix of stocks and bonds and property etc.