Should I diversify further?

Albion have said that they expect to have an offer this year, starting around November. They have been helpful on the phone whenever I've called and if you want to know the exact timing that should get it for you. One thing they have done in past years is have their first allocation of shares at the end of January. More later of course. That makes it a bit of a guess, do you think they will be oversubscribed and have your money sitting in their bank account until then? Or do you wait until near to the end and maybe miss it if the one(s) you want become full? I suggest fairly early.

Three others that are open already are:

Foresight VCT - not looked much yet. Min £3k. Raised £23m of £30m target so far.
ProVen Growth & Income allocations on 9 Nov 2016, 31 Jan 2017, 3 March 2017, 5 April 2017. Buyback 5%. Min £5k. Raised £4m of £30m target so far.
Octopus Titan allocations on 16 Dec 2016 and presumably others, last on 5 April 2017. Buyback 5%.
Min £3k. Raised £14.2m of £70m target so far.

Not so much in the way of asset backing though and they invest earlier in the company growth cycle than Albion, there's a picture here (PDF) to illustrate. I've listed them with later stage first, then early stage, so Foresight is later stage and hence likely to be safer than the other two, while Octopus Titan has mostly relatively early stage.

Albion have historically had a minimum £6k total buy across all of their VCTs with minimum £1k in any one of them but have said to me on the phone that they would be flexible at their discretion, particularly for existing investors. Flexibility is more likely early on when less busy and not close to full, I suspect.

Foresight have an extra 0.5% initial discount on charges for existing investors, ProVen G&I and Octopus Titan 1%, if I recall correctly Albion it's 0.5%. The discounts from brokers reduce 5.5% or so initial charges down by 3-4.5% depending on whether you're an existing investor in the VCT or not, those numbers include the early bird discounts.

I suggest AAVC first if you want relative stability and asset backing but if you want or need move diversification those might be worth considering.

How do people work out the return on their VCT's?

There is the offset tax, is this simply just the amount of tax saved divided by 5yrs?

Also the dividends, are these yearly?

I believe their very illiquid, so selling can be difficult without a big discount for the loss of tax relief. I understand some companies buy back the shares, but again at a discount. So I'm guessing you would need to factor the discount to sell into the overall return? 
Or would the best strategy be to keep them after the 5yrs? If so, how do you work out the return?

Thanks

 

Sorry, how are you saying it differs, that seems to be exactly what I said?