Independent Financial Advisor and Co-Founder of Affari Miei
February 20, 2024
You have most likely heard about the new mutual fund BancoPosta Universo Startone of the many products offered to investors by Italian post.
If you are interested in investments and want to know more, know that you are in the right place because today in this article you will find all the characteristics of the fund analyzed, we will see later advantages e disadvantages and at the end I will also provide you with mine opinions.
Enjoy the reading!
This article talks about:
A few words about Poste Italiane
Let’s see which institute offers the product. It’s about Italian postone of the most solid and famous institutes in Italy.
The management company offering the product is BancoPosta Fondi SpA SGRwhich belongs to the Poste Italiane group and is precisely the savings company that carries out both the establishment activities and the organization of the funds, the administration of relationships with participants and the activities connected to the management of the funds’ assets.
Poste Italiane has a network of over 12,700 post offices, 125 thousand employees and 35 million customers. It is an integral part of the economic, social and productive fabric of our country, and for this reason it is also a unique reality in Italy both in terms of size and recognition and trust on the part of customers.
In 2015 it was listed on the Milan Stock Exchangeand is 29.3% owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), 35% by Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), in turn controlled by the MEF, and the remainder by institutional investors and retail.
The values underlying its success are primarily customer satisfaction, trust and integration.
The fund and its characteristics
This is a bond fund which aims to benefit from the current yield of short-term euro government and corporate bonds
This is a product suitable for diversification the portfolio efficiently, relying on a professional manager who can take care of your investments.
The fund seeks to achieve positive returns in short termtrying to capture the return potential currently offered by the European bond market.
What he invests in
The fund invests primarily (at least 70%) in bond and monetary instrumentsdenominated in euro, of government and supranational issuers and can also invest up to a maximum of 30% in financial instruments of a bond nature of corporate and government issuers belonging to the emerging countries.
So if you are looking for a bond fund this could be a suitable solution for you.
Benchmark
Let’s now see what the reference index this fund refers to.
It compares management choices and results with a index or a reference basket composed as follows:
90% Short-term European government bonds (ICE BofAML Euro Treasury Bill Index – Ex Transaction Costs); 10% Short-medium term Euro corporate bonds (ICE BofAML 1-3 Years Euro Large Cap Corporate Index – Ex Transaction Costs).
However, the fund does not aim to replicate the composition of the index, and the degree of deviation compared to the benchmark is limited.
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How to subscribe
To subscribe to the fund you must go to or post Office and subscribe to the fund with the help of an advisor or online by accessing your personal area if you have a BancoPosta current account or a smart passbook.
As regards the investment methods, there are two and they are different from each other.
You can choose to make one-off payments (PIC) with a minimum initial amount of €5,000 and then you can continue to contribute with subsequent payments of €500.
You can also choose another path, namely that of the accumulation plan (PAC). You will make an initial payment of €50 with a periodic monthly, bimonthly, quarterly or half-yearly installment according to your needs, and then you can continue to pay another €50 or multiples for a minimum period of 1 year and a maximum of 12 years.
Risk profile of BancoPosta Universo Smart
The fund is classified in category 1 on a scale ranging from 1 to 7: we are at the lowest risk, mainly due to the fact that the fund invests mainly in bonds and also that it aims to obtain short-term returns.
Costs
We have arrived at perhaps the most important part of the entire fund analysis, the one that must always and above all be considered with great attention.
I costs not commissions that you will have to bear when you choose to invest in this fund will be those that will impact your investment and above all they will be those that will somehow determine the result and your returns.
I entry costs they are 2 euros to tell you fixed, as well as the exit costs from the investment.
The management fees instead they amount to 0.55%, and are the ones that are taken from your investment per year.
I transaction costs instead they are equal to 0.10% of the value of the investment per year.
I invite you to consult the KID reference in order to have a more in-depth overview of the costs and to be able to weigh them in the best possible way before making any investment decision.
Historical returns
I attach it below graphic taken directly from the official website with the overview and performance of the fund compared to the benchmark.
As you can see the bottom stands slightly underperforming the benchmark, but since January 2024 (our reference period) it has been growing and to date has achieved a performance of 0.3%.
I also remind you that past returns are not indicative of future ones and serve to give us an overview and to be able to get an idea about the investment and its performance over time.
Is it worth investing in BancoPosta Universo Start?
Now that we have reached the end of our review we can discuss the bond fund briefly together to better understand the various aspects of the fund and above all to understand whether it could be a good investment solution or not.
Before starting I would like to make a small introduction: I don’t know you or your financial situation so what I’m about to tell you is not the absolute truth and above all it is not investment advice.
I’ll just try to try to make you think as best I can and above all I’ll try to give you some advice.
If you have already had the opportunity to read my other contributions about similar products, perhaps you already know my opinion: I consider mutual funds to be instruments with many advantages critical issueswith many disadvantages and few advantages, especially if we look at the costs.
I must admit that in this case i management costs they are however limited because I have seen other mutual funds perform worse and above all at much higher costs.
Having said that, however, I believe that there are other better and more efficient and effective methods for investing. I am referring for example to ETF, passively managed funds that simply replicate a reference index and therefore do not have to bear such high costs. This could already be a first point in favor, as i costs they are really the ones that impact returns and therefore it could be a good starting point to reduce them by choosing a tool capable of responding to this need.
These are mine opinions about an investment of this type: I could advise you to reflect for a long time and to look for other solutions.
If you are interested in a mutual fund because it allows you to invest with the help of a manager and you don’t feel capable of doing it alone because you don’t think you have enough skills, then this could be the right solution. to you.
However, it is a bond fund with a very low riskso I only recommend it if you are actually looking for this: capital protection and certain returns that are not exciting. Otherwise perhaps it would be better to look elsewhere.
Before saying goodbye I would like to leave you some resources useful for starting your investment journey:
Happy reading and see you soon!
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