UK Pension / Investing
 

Hi, i have transferred my UK pension into my over 55 SMSF and have it sitting in my Aussie bank SMSF in a foreign currency account in GBP. I was wondering if anyone had experience of investing or getting advice on investing, from a foreign currency account? I would be looking to transfer to AUD once the exchange rate gets more favourable.
Cheers
Rob

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

What makes you think that is a certainty?

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

Nothing to suggest it's likely to in the short to medium term...


S

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

If all the doomsdayers are correct (which I suspect they are not correct) the pound is likely to suffer for the rest of this century.

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

Nothing in life is a certainty, but considering the current rate is 0.61 to the dollar, and the 10 year average is 0.55 and the 15 year average is 0.50 the chance that some point in the future it will be more favourable. This is why i asked the question, because i want to invest my super using GBP, rather than exchanging now when the rate is towards the lower end from my point of view.

Then there is this in today's Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/...nce-back-year/

Not that i take much notice of so called experts.

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

The exchange rate improving will depend mainly on the result of Brexit negotiations and from what I'm hearing they are going downhill fast. You might end up with an even worse exchange rate in a couple of years if the Brexit goes pear shaped.
You will also be loosing out on the growth in the Ozzie market whilst paying large commissions to invest your pounds in pound denominated investments, unless you park it in Sterling deposit accounts which pay Zilch.

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

As a general and conservative statement, one's savings should be invested in the same currency as their likely expenditure. Anything else is a gamble ("speculation"), not an investment. Nothing wrong with a bit of a gamble, of course: we all do that. But recognise it for what it is.

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

Hi Rob.

I'll send a PM to you with a name and contact details.

Best regards.

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

How did you manage to transfer your UK pension over?, do you mean it gets paid into your bank in small sums or were you able to withdraw it all somehow?

Thanks

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

Set up an over 55 SMSF and got it QROPS accredited then transfered the whole amount.

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

In the last 2 weeks it has gone from 1.602 (Aud to GBP) up to 1.667

4 years ago, in April 2013, it was around 1.44 AUD to the GBP, but by the end of that year it was 1.82

But its all a gamble..

Back in 2001, I left a couple of thousand pounds in the UK, hoping the rate got even better... But I left it too late, it went up, from 2.9 to 3.03, but then dropped again, and kept dropping !

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

Hi Rob. So I have done the exact same as you. My Fin Advisor is pretty smart. He's as a Pom working in Aus and he advised me that letting money sit as GBP could yield up to 20% on currency exchange rates alone without investing it anywhere. Problem for me is finding the required UK Independent Financial advisor willing to simply provide me with bare bones required advice to allow my Fund Manager to free up the cash. I wondered if you might be able to point me in the direction of whoever helped you? I have been smart and set up my own QROPS Scheme so don't need help with this (I was quoted somewhere near $16K all up to have this done for me by a financial firm whereas I managed to do this myself for around $400) Any Help would be great. Thanks, Muddy

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

Muddy,

In the interests of transparency, I am a UK IFA.

Giving advice on DB transfers is fraught with risk for advisers. Last weeks updated rules require personalized recommendations based specifically on the members oberjectives and personal circumstance. While a member living in Australia has completely different motivations and objectives such as tax considerations, currency concerns, the FCA (regulator) insists on the member being treated as a UK resident for the purposes of consumer protection. While in theory that makes a lot of sense and goes a long way towards protecting consumers, on a practical level it creates a lot of risk for an advisor offering advice, simply because your reasons for transferring may not be deemed appropriate by the FCA. There is always the insistent client route, though that in itself is also fraught with risk for the adviser.

While the new rules in theory should reduce the risk for advisers, based on the advice being highly personalized, the FCA are offering no such assurances to the adviser community.

The cost of providing the advice will, and rightly should be based on the amount of work involved and also the risk an adviser carries. Transactional DB advice, with no long term relationship or revenue potential for an adviser, will probanly result in a cautious approach.

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

Your approach is 100% wrong. Currency movements are most likely not going to make or lose you a significant amount of money. What is going to make you money is being invested in quality companies.

I highly recommend you look at Terry Smith's Fundsmith Fund.
https://www.fundsmith.co.uk/

You are unlikely to find a better home for your money....but you will easily find a worse one with higher fees

Re: UK Pension / Investing
 

Thanks Cranston, but i have to disagree somewhat, if i had exchanged to AUD at the time my fund would be around 25,000 AUD less than if i transferred it now, even though my GBP investment has pretty well flat lined from when my investment started 7 months ago. ( this doesn't bother me as it is a long term investment). As when i was looking to bring my UK pension over the exchange rate was historically low,so wanted to keep it in GBP.