Standard Life Live Discussion

Mike in Horwich 10 Aug 2016

Re: Re:Endownments, Results & Trades Thankyou eadwig: that saying in your head prompted me to sell half my recent purchase and cement some profit to offset my US dollar costs for upcoming holiday. Oh, the wife was also nagging me

Spain Fund 10 Aug 2016

Financial Times´s Lex column The reaction in shares of Legal&General and Standard Life following their most recent set of figures may signal that the latter are set to start outperforming, the Financial Times´s Lex column said.After the release of its latest financials stock in the former dropped, while Standard Life´s gained, yet they both unveiled double-digit increases in operating profits and increased dividends.So what´s going on? Tuesday´s disparate reaction was because Legal & General cut its full-year free cash flow estimates, after having decided to hold more cash in the run-up to Brexit, Lex explained. That, however, may mean imperil its dividend. A lower growth trajectory for the British economy may also hit annuity business, which accounts for nearly half its profits, for example.Standard Life, on the other hand, is more like an asset manager than your typical traditional insurer, Lex said.More than 90% of its revenues orginate from (recurring) management fees, which should make its dividend safer.Standard Life´s share have underperformed those of its rival by 26% over the past three years, which seems “excessive”, the tipster said.“If it can boost inflows, it should outperform its rival in the year ahead.”

batteryman15 10 Aug 2016

Re: Endownment policy payouts? Hi sound money.My policy is a straight forward "with profits" (hopefully) endowment. When I took it out back in the early 80's it was targeted to pay off at least £52K with "hopefully more for a good holiday or a new car" - so I was told. All for £69.36 per month over twenty five years, including life insuranceNever mind, I reckon on it paying back around £36K (i.e around 67% of target). Hopefully it will be a bit more from recent posting, plus I have had my free shares and scrip dividends etc.I will post the actual final amount next year so others can use it for ref.

Eadwig 10 Aug 2016

Re:Endownments, Results & Trades soundmoney et alMine was 'with profits', but its all over now so don't need any help, thanks. batteryman and others may well be pleased to have questions answered, and I'll certainly be looking on with interest.Decent results from SL, better than analyst expectations, which is important. L&G came in under expectations which is unfortunate, because we'd have seen a larger lift here with the whole sector boosted if they had performed along with SL, and the good Aviva results previously.Can't decide whether to sell my most recent tranche bought @300p before Brexit, or keep them for the longer term and the 6%+ yield. I bought them as a trade, and with a FTSE 100 company,. I always reckon 10% in 3 months or less is very reasonable and should be taken.I keep hearing the saying in my head "Never turn a trade into an investment, it is one of the top 3 amateur mistakes" ... About 12.5% up at the moment and I still have about 1000 shares left from 'de-mutualisation' from two with profits policies (endowment and pension) and a few years of scrip divis. It just seems SL are still over sold and they do indeed have a lot of foreign earnings as was mentioned by another poster....I'll probably sell soon. It wouldn't surprise me if there aren't some further brexit shocks still to come which may give another low buying opportunity... I was kicking myself the day after the brexit vote for not having taken my 10% profit the day before.Tricksy decision ... and the chart I just added looks like SL might be about to break upwards too ... doesn't make it any easier! Any technical analysts out there got a view?

Mike in Horwich 09 Aug 2016

Re: Target 421p-currently 306p +-divi 7% It appears the interim divident is 6.47 pence.I bought a couple of thousand punds worth of shares not long after Brexit. I did so as a hedge against the losses I expected on the Euro and Dollar with holidays in France (July) and the USA (soon). It's worked insofar as the growth has provided more than the loss on currency.I think there's a lesson in that somewhere. The S.L. makes money from all over the world and hence, when those profits are converted back into sterling will be larger than if the pound were strong. This is also true of large multi-nationals listed on the London stock exchange and accounts in the main for the upswing in the FTSE100 index.

Mike in Horwich 09 Aug 2016

With Profits Pension Terminal Bonus Drop Not wishing to complicate matters and appreciative that Pension With Profit policies are different from Endowment With Profit policies but I thought I'd inform you all that the S.L. have recently (about a week ago) cut the suggested Terminal Bonus.My pensions mature next May and I've kept a close eye on them for the past couple of years. The W.P. elements carry a Bonus - considered to be the Terminal Bonus. Whilst this is not at all guaranteed and the S.L. are always keen to remind me of that fact the amount has very steadily increased each month as I approach maturity. However, they cut about 35% from the value of this bonus at a stroke at the start of August. When I contacted them the explanation involved the actuary deciding that the bonus was unsustainable and hence was cut.These are old policies and carry a guaranteed 4% per annum growth on the W.P. elements and that is WRITTEN INTO THE POLICY so cannot be changed. Given the climate, I suspect the actuary decided it was this 4% that was likely to be expensive for the S.L. and hence by chopping the T.B. reduces the overall value of the policy at maturity and hence saves 4% of that per annum.Hope this doesn't cloud the issue.

sound money 09 Aug 2016

Re: Endownment policy payouts? High guys I can help here. Question are your endowments "with profits" or unitised ?M

Eadwig 09 Aug 2016

Re: Endownment policy payouts? Barretyman, "Not banking on it yet but your message seems good news?"No, don 't bank on anything except the minimum payout figure they give in your yearly statement. I don't think that can go down. They don't give any indication as to what the M.E.P. is in that statement, but when I rang them approaching maturity they were happy to give me a range over the phone and hint that "We have been paying towards the top of that range recently, but we can't guarantee anything, not even the lower end of the range, it could be zero."There are all sorts of other 'bonuses' involved also, but they are mostly zero. They did offer me a full statement with all the details but I said I didn't care. They would have told me them over the phone if I had asked to hear the details though.But yes, so far as it goes, it is hopeful news for you, I believe. If you look back at posts here I think you will see that others that have reported their endowment maturing have tended to receive less than I just have. I'm not sure, but I assume that my payout was higher than expected and that some others have received, due to the relatively good bull run in the markets the last few years. With your policy not maturing until late next year, IF that is the case and this post Brexit surge continues or doesn't reverse badly at least, you may find that your policy has had time to make back some more cash in percentage terms.I could be talking ballocks - I'm not sure that is how it works at all. Someone else may be better informed to pass comment. I never made any compensation claim or anything like that, I imagine if you have then outcomes will differ. Good luck with it anyway, post it up when you get the final figures, there are still a lot of people with open endowments who are monitoring what we're saying here, even if they're not commenting. Although we must be getting towards the end of 25 year with profits endowment policies that were miss-sold so badly now - I can't remember the date it was recognised it had all gone wrong' late nineties they had started sending shortfall warnings I believe. So maybe another 5 or 7 years of people with those endowments left.

batteryman15 09 Aug 2016

Re: Endownment policy payouts? Thanks for the update on your Endowment policy maturity. I have a £50K policy maturing late next year which I was reckoning would now give me around 65% of the target value. Not banking on it yet but your message seems good news?Thanks.Batteryman

batteryman15 09 Aug 2016

Re: Endownment policy payouts? Thanks for the update on your Endowment policy maturity. I have a £50K policy maturing late next year which I was reckoning would now give me around 65% of the target value. Not banking on it yet but your message seems good news?Thanks.Batteryman

Spain Fund 05 Aug 2016

Buy rating 433p [link] Life Plc (LON:SL)‘s stock had its “buy” rating restated by investment analysts at Panmure Gordon in a research note issued to investors on Wednesday. They presently have a GBX 433 ($5.72) target price on the stock. Panmure Gordon’s price target would indicate a potential upside of 45.35% from the stock’s previous close.

Eadwig 05 Aug 2016

Re: Target 421p-currently 306p +-divi 7% coldascheese,I've been in for a while at exactly @300p The day of the referendum vote I was showing approx 10% profit, I set a limit sell on Interactive Investor to take back my cash in the event the vote didn't go as expected. Sure enough, next day SL opens about 17% down. After a couple of hours I logged into my account and see my limit order still there (it should have gone in the queue at 80am and, despite the price I had set, I would have got a lot less by the time it executed). So, I cancelled it, was thankful ii was too overloaded to execute my order, and am now looking to sell 'again' if I can see a reasonable profit.I only ever bought this particular tranche as a trade after SL looked to be oversold, I hold shares on paper from the days of my 'with profits' endowment and pension plan, so will still be holding those for the longer term. I've been happy with the dividends paid over the years. If I hold long enough they may eventually make up the shortfall in my endowment!As for JPM's target price, SL manage a lot of property assets in the EU. So do many other companies that are outside the EU and they seem to do OK, but I think it will be a drag on the share price until the exact position is known for SL going forward.I think it will all be ok for asset managers such as SL, whatever else happens with specific trade deals in other sectors, so I think SL are under-priced right now. I'm not giving a BUY though because the rate cut yesterday isn't going to help them make money on mortgages in the UK, nor is any drop off in housing sales which some people are saying they are now seeing - I haven't noticed a drop off from my own observations, but the story may be different across the UK.

coldascheese 04 Aug 2016

Target 421p-currently 306p +-divi 7% Great results today from Aviva bodes well for Standard Life which reports next week on the 9th August.If results as good as Aviva share price will march up quickly to JPM's target price of 421p, thats a possible gain of 37% plus a great divi

Eadwig 03 Aug 2016

Re: Endownment policy payouts? " have a policy for £43k mortage maturing in July. My last statement in Feb predicted about £24k total payout, or around 56% of the mortage total"With all bonuses, or lack thereof, plus Mortgage Endowment Protection, which paid OVER the projected range of my last statement, I received just under £32k, which was just short of 75%. Better than I was expecting. Unfortunately, as I am committed to spending most of it in the EU, it has lost a large amount of its actual value to me in the last 5 weeks, and may well lose a lot more tomorrow (B of E rate decision).However, that isn't SL's fault. Ok, it isn't the *minimum* £43k I was verbally promised 25 years ago, or even close, but it wasn't a complete disaster in the end.

dokp 19 Jul 2016

Re: Share price I understand that all the insurers have been hit by concerns over financial instability in continental banks and elsewhere but why has SL been hit significantly harder than all others. Does it have some particular exposure that makes it vulnerable or is its balance sheet,capital ratios etc weaker than others?