Hi @imga Ações Portugal investors,
I am finalising my GV bank account opening with Millennium and am planning to invest in IMGA Ações Portugal fund. I understand that the bank would like to handle the investment for me, so I suppose they would then fulfil the role of custodian bank as well as retail bank. Simply I just wanted to ask you from your practical experience any dos and dont’s around this in order not to get hit with too many avoidable fees? I am a non UK resident based in Asia. Thanks for any ideas and hope to join the group with committed status soon!
I don’t want to throw a spanner in the works, but assuming you’re not a US citizen, have you considered BPI Portugal as an alternative to IMGA? It’s just that the fees are 1.195% pa rather than 2.175% pa, so on a EUR 500k investment that’s a saving of something like EUR 35k over your likely holding period. The portfolios are pretty similar; both kind-of track the PSI20.
Essentially with BPI it’s all in house, so they don’t pay half the management fee away to third parties.
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Hi Chris,
Many thanks for the suggestion, I will check it out. Am I correct in saying your bank account is also with BPI? As I applied with Millenium and am quite far down the line I am not sure how the process would be, I had heard that it may become complicated to close smoothly as then the retail bank would not get a fee…? if anyone had experience of this please let me know!
Yes, I have a BPI bank account… if I log into the BPI site, I see my current account balance in one tab and my investment holding in another. My only relationship is with BPI, there are no other parties involved.
I did all this around September 2021; at the time it was really straightforward - I opened the account, made the wire transfer, the fund units were purchased, and BPI issued the relevant declarations, all within about 2-3 weeks. I hear that since then, the account-opening process for all Portuguese banks has become more time-consuming, and in some cases people have had to go to Portugal to open accounts in person. So I don’t know what the process with BPI would be like now.
I think your timing was good both for bank account opening and investing in the market.
Thanks for your helpful advice.
Best regards,
Andrew
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FWIW - this just came across my email. Not sure what (if any) impact is on ARI/GV investments.
As part of a process to simplify and streamline the IMGA Ações Portugal fund, IMGA, as the Management Company, requested some changes from the national regulator (CMVM). The CMVM did not oppose the requested changes to the investment policy, which we have summarized:
- IMGA Ações Portugal Fund - the Fund will no longer take into account the performance of the PSI index and will include the possibility of investing up to 10% of its assets in other companies in the Euro Zone, allowing the manager greater freedom of diversification, while keeping the other Investment Policy for the Fund’s Assets unchanged.
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I received this email as well and am reaching out to Bison Bank and my attorneys to see what implications, if any, this change might have.
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This should be OK - the investment policy in the current prospectus requires the fund to have 85% of its net asset value in equities, and all those must currently be Portuguese. If 10% can be, say, Spanish, then at least 75% will still be Portuguese. The minimum for ARI purposes is 60%.
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That’s a relief… As long as it doesn’t mess with GV requirements, more diversification in the fund is something I welcome.
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