Reducing the risk of acquiring wealth

If you require your money to provide the potential for capital growth or income, or a combination of both, provided you are willing to accept an element of risk pooled investments could just be the solution you are looking for. A pooled investment allows you to invest in a large, professionally managed portfolio of assets with many other investors. As a result of this, the risk is reduced due to the wider spread of investments in the portfolio. 

Various funds available are based on:

Income or growth needs, such as: –

income funds providing high dividends
capital growth funds
balanced funds which aim to achieve a mix of both

Geographical allocation, such as:

UK funds

international or specific regional funds (e.g. Far East)

Specialist funds which invest in a specific type of company, such as a property or technology fund.

The main vehicles for pooled investments are:

unit trusts
open-ended investment companies (OEICS)
investment trusts
insurance company funds

Pooled investments are also sometimes called ‘collective investments’. The fund manager will choose a broad spread of instruments in which to invest, depending on their investment remit. The main asset classes available to invest in are shares, bonds, gilts, property and other specialist areas such as hedge funds or ‘guaranteed funds’.

Benefits of pooled investments include:

Professional expertise – you arrange for an investment expert to pick investments for you, to watch those investments daily and judge when to sell them.

Spreading your risk – even if you have small amounts to invest, you can spread your money across a wide range of investments. You reduce the impact on your investment if, say, one company performs badly. Pooled investments will invest in one or more asset class.

Reduced dealing costs – if you want to buy a range of different investments directly, you would probably only be able to invest a small sum in each. This means dealing costs could reduce your profits significantly. By pooling your money, you make savings because of bulk buying.

Less administration – the fund manager handles the buying, selling and collecting of dividends and income for you. They also deal with foreign stock exchanges and brokers.

Choice – there is a very wide choice of funds so that you can pick one – or many – that suit you individually.

Most pooled investment funds are actively managed. The fund manager researches the market and buys and sells assets with the aim of providing a good return for investors.

Trackers, on the other hand, are passively managed, aiming to track the market in which they are invested. For example, a FTSE100 tracker would aim to replicate the movement of the FTSE100 (the index of the largest 100 UK companies). They might do this by buying the equivalent proportion of all the shares in the index. For technical reasons the return is rarely identical to the index, in particular because charges need to be deducted.

Trackers tend to have lower charges than actively managed funds. This is because a fund manager running an actively managed fund is paid to invest so as to do better than the index (beat the market) or to generate a steadier return for investors than tracking the index would achieve. However, active management does not guarantee that the fund will outperform the market or a tracker fund.

The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up and you may not get back your original investment. Past performance is not an indication to future performance. Tax benefits may vary as a result of statutory change and their value will depend on individual circumstances. Thresholds, percentage rates and tax legislation may change in subsequent finance acts.