The Lemon Fool

I have £8,500 invested in a “Janus Henderson UK Index Fund A Acc tracker”. I think the charges are 0.7% per year. I believe there is no surrender penalty. I have had the product for approximately 15 years and initially bought it thru First Direct.

I was thinking of selling the above and buying either a Vanguard FTSE 100 tracker or a Vanguard World tracker. The only reason for doing this is because the Vanguard charges are lower.
It seems difficult to compare the performances of “Janus Henderson UK Index Fund A Acc tracker” vs Vanguard FTSE tracker.

Does anyone see any disadvantages to this or perhaps suggest ways to buy the Vanguard product as a single one of purchase?

Knowing the ISIN for your fund,GB0032898404, and for the code for a vanguard ftse100 etf, vuke, can get you quite a way on http://morningstar.co.uk on OEIC / Unit Trusts -> fund compare.

TopOfDaMornin wrote:I have £8,500 invested in a “Janus Henderson UK Index Fund A Acc tracker”. I think the charges are 0.7% per year. I believe there is no surrender penalty. I have had the product for approximately 15 years and initially bought it thru First Direct.
I was thinking of selling the above and buying either a Vanguard FTSE 100 tracker or a Vanguard World tracker. The only reason for doing this is because the Vanguard charges are lower.
It seems difficult to compare the performances of “Janus Henderson UK Index Fund A Acc tracker” vs Vanguard FTSE tracker.
Does anyone see any disadvantages to this or perhaps suggest ways to buy the Vanguard product as a single one of purchase?

It is not clear if you invested £8500 in this fund 15 years ago, or if the current value of the fund is £8500.
If you invested £8500 15 years ago, then the sum will have increased substantially, and you may find that you are liable for Capital Gains tax on the sale, assuming it is not tax sheltered in a SIPP or ISA. The current Capital Gains annual allowance is £11700. So check your potential gain!
From a check on the Hargreaves Lansdown Site, the 5 year total return on the Henderson fund is 25.3%, and the Vanguard FTSE 100 ETF is 26.66%. The Vanguard FTSE All World tracker ETF is 73.78%.
Unlike your Henderson Fund, I don't believe the Vanguard ETFs are accumulators - so there will be dividends to handle - either by extracting them or reinvesting them.
And this takes us to charges. I don't know which platform currently holds your investment - so I don't know its annual charges - i.e. the charges over and above the fund management charges. Some platforms have annual percentage charges, some have transaction (buying and selling) charges and some have a mixture of both. If you are happy to restrict your investments to Vanguard, then the Vanguard platform may suit you. See http://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk for details of their charges.

Further to Scotia's comments, I looked at this on HL site and are seeing slightly different numbers. The Janus Tracker has a fair bit of tracking error, which tends to average out, on a five year basis it beats the Vanguard product but lags significantly on a three year view. When you look at individual years it deviates a fair bit each year and these tend to cancel out to some extent.

The improvement in returns on £8,500 will not be dramatic as result of the cost savings but worthwhile over time and Vanguard do track the index closely.

Whether you switch to a World Tracker is a more complex question, personally I'd get Brexit out of the way first.