Combining the advantages of the stock savings plan (PEA) with the performance potential and diversification provided by international stocks: a combination too good to be true? Not for BlackRock: the asset manager made a big splash by launching the iShares MSCI World Swap PEA UCITS ETF support at the beginning of April.
This is a listed index fund, eligible for the PEA, whose aim is to faithfully reproduce the global equity index, the MSCI World, made up of approximately 1,500 securities from 23 developed countries. Accessible from 5 euros, it also supports very limited management fees of 0.25% per year. Until now, only Amundi offered an ETF of this type, slightly more expensive, with 0.38% fees per year. Welcome competition, which should benefit the final saver by driving prices down.
“Within PEA, direct participations in European equities represent half of the amounts invested, while only 20% of ETFs eligible for PEA offer exposure to international equities,” indicates the management company. This envelope is a true tax oasis: capital gains are exempt from tax after five years of the plan and are only subject to social security contributions (17.2%).
To circumvent the regulatory constraints of the PEA – it is reserved for European equities – these funds use a financial mechanism consisting of exchanging the performance of their physical portfolio, invested locally, against that of a given index.