AGEST digests a massive surge in cash

“So a lot of it wasn’t switching, in fact a lot of it was new money coming into the fund, people simply saying: ‘I’m transferring money in, I’m not so sure where I want to put it, so I’ll put it into cash for the time being,” he said.

“A lot of people who are salary sacrificing into the fund have changed their profile to sacrifice into cash for the time being. Half of our rollovers go into the cash option at the moment, and that’s mainly the pension area. The cash option will continue to fall, but I don’t think it will ever get back to what it was, I think a lot of people have been once bitten, twice shy by the global financial crisis.”

Seton warned it was “dangerous” to give members’ advice around switching, since they had varied investment horizons and “we don’t have crystal balls”.

“I think all you can say, and what we have been saying, is if you put your money into cash you can’t get capital appreciation, whereas shares can get capital appreciation and capital loss as well,” he said.

“If people want to switch into cash, if it’s their money and they understand what they’re doing then I don’t have a problem with it, we just need to make sure we can manage it accordingly and that’s what we’ve done.”

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