Need advice on Zurich Vista savings plan

Hi Folks,

A few years ago, I made the mistake of listening to one of those independent financial advisor and invested in a Zurich Vista savings plan.

The performance of the funds in my Vista plan have been, sad to say, rather poor. Needless to say, the financial advisor that sold me the product has ignored me and conveniently give me all kinds of excuses of failing to return my calls.

I do not want to take a huge hit and terminate the plan and I certainly do not want to go back to the same financial advisor that sold me the product.

What I have decided to do is to take control of the investment decisions on my plan and I will like to ask whether are there any forums out there for people to discuss about the different funds in the Zurich Vista. Sort of like an open discussion on which funds are they invested in and which funds to be avoided.

Will appreciate if anyone can share with me their own fund selections and experiences.

No independent financial advisors advice please.... Sorry, still recovering from my first experience..

Thank you.

Hedge Funds are a Joke (and they pick your pocket)

http://hongkong.asiaxpat.com/forums/eds-must-reads/threads/a3bd598c-fe4c-4424-b6b4-fa0763cea141/hedge+funds+are+a+joke+%28and+they+pick+your+pocket%29/

Check out index funds....

I was in a similar circumstance years ago and bought into a 10 year investment linked policy. My policy annual returns are abysmal and I was also thinking of cutting my loss. I too, did not want to cough out with the high withdrawal charge if I were to cancel my policy.

In the end, I decided to educate and learn more about the mutual funds universe and construct my own portfolio. That way, I have a better control of my own investments rather than letting a so called ''financial advisor'', who in my opinion is not motivated to monitor my investments once they have received their commissions from selling the product to the investor. There are tons of educational information on mutual funds online

I select the funds in my portfolio by starting with a strategic asset allocation point of view. I will start to shortlist the type of funds based on my risk return appetite and my investment horizon and being a balanced type of investor with a medium to long term horizon, I decided to allocate 45% in equities, 40% in fixed income, 10% in alternatives and 5% in money market. My selection of the funds to be included in each asset class will depend on the macroeconomic views I picked out from my own research.The final choice of which funds that I ultimately select will be based on the peer comparison of that fund with other similar ones in the same universe. I will look at a variety of factors such as the volatility, the historical performance, the risk adjusted return, the outperformance against its benchmark, the maximum drawdown of the fund etc. These can be usually found on the factsheet under Standard Deviation, Sharpe ratio, Alpha, Beta etc.. You can educate yourself more on www.investopedia.com. Do not be overly focused on the returns only. The fund manager could be taking on excessive risk or leverage to achieve those returns. A better measure will be looking at the risk-adjusted return. The other significant factor in my selection is the cost. Some funds management fees are high or have many layers of fee structures chipping away your returns. A small percent compounded over the whole duration of your investment period will amount to a significant figure. Another important point that have served me well is to be disciplined and do a portfolio re-balancing every now and then. I use a free software service that sends me my monthly portfolio statement and gives me an overview of my portfolio performance on a month-to-date basis and how it measures against industry benchmarks. When i see that I am sitting on a decent profit on any particular fund, I will take some profits off and do a tactical rebalancing of my portfolio if neccessary.

My advice to the author of the thread is do not be too disheartened about the performance of your policy now. The reason I took out the policy in the first place is because I wanted to start a regular savings plan and benefit from diversification by investing in mutual funds and also the dollar cost averaging benefit of a regular fixed investment. Dollar cost averaging is a long term strategy you can benefit by continuing to invest in when the markets are down and reap the returns when the markets recover. Terminating your policy now will realise an immediate huge loss. Take control of your own investments and make the best of the situation. It is after all your own wealth. I am glad I did.

Thanks for your much appreciated inputs Oraclematrix !

What is the name of the free software service that you use?

Have PM you the info..

Cheers

DTSH88, you're doing the right thing in wanting to educate yourself. I was in a similar situation before I decided to take control of my portfolio.

I also use an asset allocation approach like Oraclematrix and I recommend you read "Asset Allocation Balancing Financial Risk" by Roger Gibson. You can pick a copy up from the library - library code is 332.6 GIB. There's several editions as it's been updated over the years so get the latest one available.

If you're interested I run an investment club. It's free to join and there's no central pot of money i.e. you make your own decisions on investing your own money.

Main focus: Long-term investing
Purpose: Learn to make money through investing
Method: By learning and sharing experience, opinions and knowledge

For more details: http://investinginhongkong.icyboards.net/showthread.php?tid=7

Message me if you're interested in coming along to a meeting.

Oraclematrix, could you PM me the name of the free software service as well please?

Hi chris_in_hk,

Thanks for the information.

Is there any seminars for members who are discussing only about Vista plans? I am just interested to know what other people who owns a Vista plan is keeping in their plan.

Sorry no. I don't know of any seminars discussing only Vista plans.