John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

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meowcat
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Re: John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

Post by meowcat »

leonard wrote:Meowcat - you don't understand - if you do the calculation that Dale is describing AND your fund is returning to you the Index minus expenses - there are no more fees. You would be getting precisely the return you should with no hidden fees. Understand?

EDIT: BTW - of course - Dale's calculation will tell you also if there ARE hidden fees - which seems to be your goal to find. Either way - just do the calculation and you will be better prepared to talk to the rep.
Gathering this data is more difficult that it seems.
First, trying to get an accurate picture of what the S&P has done YTD is virtually impossible. I'm getting numbers all over the chart. Morningstar has the S&P 500 index at 28.46% YTD as of 11/15/2013. MSN has the index at 22.96% YTD as of 11/15/2013. John Hancock only offers a YTD up to 10/31/2013.

Second, the ticker, JHVIT and JFIVX (John Hancock S&P 500 index fund) doesn't exist on most financial sites. On MSN, if I type JFIVX then JHVIT will come up but searching directly for JHVIT will result in no funds found??

It appears that I could be paying anywhere from 0% to 5.5%.

Does anyone know where I can get an accurate picture of returns on John Hancock funds as well as the S&P 500 YTD, or is there a better way to calculate this?
What the bold print givith, the fine print taketh away. | -meowcat
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Artsdoctor
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Re: John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

Post by Artsdoctor »

You can always log on to the S&P website: http://us.spindices.com/indices/equity/sp-500

The Hancock fund is a subclass that is managed in-house. You can log on to your account and go to the end and see the return (for example, you'll see the 2012 return). You can play with the S&P website and put in dates, and then you can compare it to your Hancock fund.

If you are interested, you can do your own calculations as well. You can keep two ledgers: one will be your real 401k with your S&P 500 additions, and then you can keep a dummy account with the same additions to the Vanguard S&P 500 Admiral fund. At the end of the end, taking into account distributions in the Vanguard, you'll find the difference in return. Roughly, it will be the difference in ER. I've done this in the past in order to assure myself that I wasn't being sold something completely different than was being advertised, and it did work out to be pretty close. It's a lot of work but if you're going to contribute the maximum over several years, you may as well become familiar with the product.
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hoppy08520
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Re: John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

Post by hoppy08520 »

meowcat wrote:Does anyone know where I can get an accurate picture of returns on John Hancock funds as well as the S&P 500 YTD, or is there a better way to calculate this?
Meowcat, a good set of step-by-step instructions in how to do this is in Uncover The Hidden Fees In Your 401(k) Plan, a blog post from The Finance Buff, who is a frequent Boglehead poster. You'll need to be patient though -- it could take at least a quarter-year to get this answer for certain.

A few key points: you'll need to use a fund that you don't contribute to, to make it easier to calculate the gain and loss over a period of time. Therefore, don't use your 500-index fund, since you're contributing to it. Instead, just put $100 in, say, a money market fund that you do NOT contribute to. Do this on 1/1/2014. Check your balance on this fund on 3/31/2014. This assumes, by the way, that any admin fees are deducted at least quarterly.

Suppose the published return for the fund, for that quarter, is 0.1%. This return would include the fund ER, whatever that may be.

If you had no added fees, then your ending balance ought to be $100.025, which is:

=100 + 100 * ( (0.1/100)/4 )

But suppose your ending return is $99.90 on 3/31/2014. This would imply a fee drag on your returns. To compute this drag, do the following:

=100 + 100 * ( ( (0.1 - x)/100)/4 )

x is the additional fee, if any, expressed as a percentage. In this case, it is -0.5%, and plugging that number into the variable x in this formula would generate 99.90, which is the ending balance.

To compute this drag, you'd plug this into a spreadsheet:

=100 * ((((EndingBalance/StartingBalance) - 1 ) * 4 - FundReturn))

The 4 represents that you are trying to multiply this by 4, to annualize the return based on one quarter of the year. Plugging in the numbers for this particular example:

=100 * ((((99.9/100)-1) * 4 - 0.1%))

This formula returns -0.5, which is the additional fee percentage that you might or might not be paying. This would mean that someone is skimming 0.5% off your returns as a AUM fee that is on top of whatever fund expense ratio you are paying.

Suppose you are paying no fees beyond what is in the published fund expense ratios. In this case, your ending balance would have been $100.025 and you'd have the following calculation:

=100 * ((((100.025/100)-1) * 4 - 0.1%))

which is 0.

I put all this into a Google spreadsheet: Uncover The Hidden Fees In Your 401(k) Plan worksheet that you are welcome to use.

I'd love to see you go do this on Jan 1, and report back to us in April 2014. Let's hope that you have no additional fees beyond the fund expense ratios.
grog
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Re: John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

Post by grog »

Hmm. I was browsing that brightscope page you mentioned and in order to land in "highest" fee category a plan has to have costs over 1.18% (which is the worst 15% of plans). The cost ratio is defined as total fees/total plan assets. That would seem to suggest there at least 27 basis points lurking somewhere, but I imagine some expenses get paid by your employer, not directly by you.

https://d28wdra5vrkblv.cloudfront.net/m ... cb7cde.pdf
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Dale_G
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Re: John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

Post by Dale_G »

meowcat: When did you start contributing to this plan? Give me the name of one fund (hopefully an index fund) that you own - and tell me the NAV as of Friday, 11/15/2013. And if you have been in the plan for at least two quarters, do you either have the quarterly reports or know how to find them on the JH website?

Dale
Volatility is my friend
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meowcat
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Re: John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

Post by meowcat »

Dale_G wrote:meowcat: When did you start contributing to this plan? Give me the name of one fund (hopefully an index fund) that you own - and tell me the NAV as of Friday, 11/15/2013. And if you have been in the plan for at least two quarters, do you either have the quarterly reports or know how to find them on the JH website?

Dale
I've been in the plan for eight years. The largest percentage of my portfolio with JH is in their index 500 fund. Because assets in the plan are wrapped into a group annuity contract, I'm not invested directly in the index. The plan invests in the index while participant’s assets are held in sub accounts that have a unit value. If it helps, the unit value as of November 15th is 17.24.

The ticker is just as confusing. According to JH's website, the ticker for their 500 index fund is: (Ticker Symbol+: JFIVX)
I don't know what that format means but JH also has this ticker listed for the same fund:
(Investing solely in JHVIT - 500 Index Trust B (Class 1) Sub-advised by John Hancock Asset Management.)

Even if I transfer a fixed dollar amount, say $100 to another fund in the plan an leave it there, untouched, for an entire quarter, what info will that give me? In other words, what would I compare the information to if the info of the fund is cloudy to begin with?
What the bold print givith, the fine print taketh away. | -meowcat
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Dale_G
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Re: John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

Post by Dale_G »

meowcat, we are going to find the performance of your S&P 500 fund and whether you are paying any hidden fees. It will be easy if you have signed up to access the JH website at https://www.jhancockpensions.com/do/home_page/pu_0 ?

Do you have access to your account? If not, you should be able to register on that same webpage by clicking on the orange register button under "first visit?" The JH website has a lot more information than is contained in your quarterly statements.

The quarterly statements do show the performance of the S&P 500 fund, but do not "prove" that you are not paying some hidden fee. You JH online account shows the activity every pay period. By checking the transactions you can prove to yourself whether or not there are any hidden fees.

Since we are down to little details, we can do this via PM if you wish.

Dale
Volatility is my friend
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SkierMom
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Re: John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

Post by SkierMom »

staythecourse wrote: I am still waiting for that one lawsuit that will change the whole industry on the common Man suing due to lack of fudiciary responsiblity by HR and/ or the plan sponsors.
LOVE THAT +1. Where do I sign up for the Class Action?

Seems like too many HR folks simply do not understand fees. Why, why, why are so many companies still offering 401(k) plans from big insurance?

Reminds me of that Dirty Harry line when he was transferred into Personnel....."Personnel? Personnel is for idiots."
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meowcat
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Re: John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

Post by meowcat »

Dale_G wrote:meowcat, we are going to find the performance of your S&P 500 fund and whether you are paying any hidden fees. It will be easy if you have signed up to access the JH website at https://www.jhancockpensions.com/do/home_page/pu_0 ?

Do you have access to your account? If not, you should be able to register on that same webpage by clicking on the orange register button under "first visit?" The JH website has a lot more information than is contained in your quarterly statements.

The quarterly statements do show the performance of the S&P 500 fund, but do not "prove" that you are not paying some hidden fee. You JH online account shows the activity every pay period. By checking the transactions you can prove to yourself whether or not there are any hidden fees.

Since we are down to little details, we can do this via PM if you wish.

Dale
PM sent.
What the bold print givith, the fine print taketh away. | -meowcat
pkcrafter
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Re: John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

Post by pkcrafter »

SkierMom wrote:
staythecourse wrote: I am still waiting for that one lawsuit that will change the whole industry on the common Man suing due to lack of fudiciary responsiblity by HR and/ or the plan sponsors.
LOVE THAT +1. Where do I sign up for the Class Action?

Seems like too many HR folks simply do not understand fees. Why, why, why are so many companies still offering 401(k) plans from big insurance?

Reminds me of that Dirty Harry line when he was transferred into Personnel....."Personnel? Personnel is for idiots."
It's happening...

Of particular interest to the OP

http://erisafile.com/blog/2012/04/18/40 ... ill-go-on/

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/encore/201 ... -own-plan/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/ ... 8G20131105


http://www.riabiz.com/a/16910818/what-a ... orry-about
When times are good, investors tend to forget about risk and focus on opportunity. When times are bad, investors tend to forget about opportunity and focus on risk.
simpleton
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Re: John Hancock Rep. Refuses to be Honest!

Post by simpleton »

In bizzaro insurance-salesman world, the reason 401(k) lawsuits happen is because too many plans lack high-priced insurance salesman watching over them to manage the details.



Google: "John Hancock" 401(k) lawsuit "not for distribution"
https://www.google.com/search?q="John+H ... stribution"

The first link is a wonderful little document called: "2013 Year of the Fiduciary? Common fiduciary mistakes clients make and how you can help"
http://www.julyservices.com/wp-content/ ... ockopt.pdf

It contains gems as:
Bad guy situations?
No.
The majority of the violations generally come
from oversight, errors and omissions by
plan sponsors*
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