Following on from the first post on RSA Retail Bonds, I received a reply from the communications manager at National Treasury who referred me to 2 more people and I finally received a 10 page summary on the bonds. The first section is titled “How to invest” and answers the questions we had but is unfortunately not available on the website (yet)!
Turns out though, that if you want to invest via the website you need to “register” and once you have completed the form online, you will be issued with bank account details so that you can make the payment.
We made the recommendation to them that the document is made available and that the “register” button is changed to “invest” or “invest online”…let’s see if anything changes.
While spending some time on their website it is also interesting to see the age profile of investors in the RSA Retail Bonds…±40% of investors are under 50 and almost 22% are under 40 years old.
While there is nothing wrong with investing into the RSA Retail Bond, it is hardly a suitable investment vehicle for a 25, 30 or even 40 year year old…but I guess that is one of the dangers of “cutting out the advice chain”
Investors may have got into the product without paying commission but a 25-40 year old investor sitting in the RSA Retail Bond is most probably in an inappropriate product…it is certainly not an emergency fund (you cant access it) and the majority of 25-40 year olds are not looking for income from an investment – it is capital growth that they need and for that, there are far more appropriate investment options (even if there are some fees to be paid to advisors).
A typical “balanced fund” unit trust has given returns of almost 15% per annum for the past 10 years. At that rate the money has doubled in value every 5 years while investors in the RSA Retail Bond will only see their funds doubling every 8 years…I know where I would rather be invested!
