| Product: |
Virgin Direct |
| Date: |
13/01/01 (464 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Cheap & Simple
Disadvantages: Range of funds small
Virgin Direct are a typical Branson company. They offer a simple, good value product - i.e. a cheap tracker mortgage.
With this product you know exactly what you are getting and how much you are paying. Of course you do not know performance as that depends on the UK market which it tracks, but you can be fairly comfortable with the fact that you will probably get similar performance to most fund managers, without paying the usual high charges associated with pensions.
Customer services are slick as you would expect.
Many people have concerns with Branson, and would be reluctant to trust him with something as important as a pension. However Virgin Direct is 50% owned by AMP, one of the worlds largest insurers. Furthermore the fund management is controlled by Henderson Investors, one of the UK's leading fund managers (many people believe trackers are easy to administer - this is not true at all and fund managers are still required, although the work they put in is minimal comared to normal funds!). Customers can take comfort at the quality of the business partners that Branson chose for this, and AMP manage the business carefully.
The main drawback, in my view, is that this is a mass market product. However Pensions are a specialist area in which individuals need specific advice. As one grows older the risk associated with ones pension fund should decrease. A normal (expensive) pension company will advise on this and offer a wide range of funds to cover this. Virgin does not.
So the sort of person who should consider vigin would be a young professional capable of wacthing the markets and assessing risk. However that person may have to transfer funds to a different company as they get older.
Its a difficult choice. One of the best alternatives was the Equitable Life, but they are now closed to new business.
Summary:
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