Broker comparison: cheap investment platforms UK

I am always glad sticks have only two ends as I have a talent for grasping the wrong one. However, I wonder why when I read the main article it shows 193 comments and truncates there, but if I click the comparison table link at the end of the article it shows all the comments?
It is, however, a very useful article and I can only wonder at the altruism of the author.
On the topic of customer service, I am facing having to select a provider for a transfer out of a DB scheme. I have ISAs with Halifax, Alliance, HL and II and haven’t had any trouble with any of them. A SIPP is entirely more complex however. I have seen negative comments abounding for II, and a fair few for Alliance. Unfortunately they have to my mind a better selection of investments compared to Halifax and, as was commented, the iweb/Halifax SIPP sits on top of AJB so is the pricing model secure.
All this thinking for myself isn’t easy, but no IFA I have spoken to recently has any experience outside their own little platforms or big hitters like Fidelity.
This is costing me a fortune in wine assisted indecision!

Horses for courses. If one platform was perfect for everything there wouldn’t be much competition.

I use CSD to hold a six figure IT based, income oriented portfolio and a single monthly deal costing £138 a year alongside full use of the flexible ISA for dividend payouts and their subsequent reinvestment makes it an ideal platform for the style I’ve chosen. Hand’s off it is not though.

Changes to TDDI and III charges are looming, scheduled for December. Fixed at £22.50 quarterly with the same facility to cover any commission charges up to this value each quarter or carry and extend that quarterly credit up to a £90 cap.

Their £1 regular investment/dividend offer would be very attractive were it not for the odious (imo) fixed quarterly on top.

This is an extract from a letter received from Fidelity this week, may be of interest to people with small portfolios.

A simple way to cut your charges
We want to encourage our customers to think about making regular investments, as we believe they are a great
way to build up long-term savings.
Therefore, we have reduced our service fee for customers who hold less than £7,500 with Fidelity Personal
Investing, where they have a monthly savings plan set up.
Instead of paying our flat-rate £45 annual fee, these customers are now on our standard 0.35% charge. This can
lead to a pretty big saving, as our example of a customer who holds £5,000 with us shows.
* New charging structure with a monthly savings plan: The customer pays £17.50 a year (a reduction of
£27.50)
* Charging structure without a monthly savings plan: The customer still pays £45 a year in service fees
You donët have a monthly savings plan, so you are not currently benefiting from this reduced charge. However, it’s
really easy to set one up and you can start investing from as little as £50 a month for ISAs, SIPPs and Investment
Accounts.

Thanks for publishing and updating this table, super helpful!

I can’t find Nutmeg anywhere in the list above. What do you think about nutmeg as an index fund?

I agree with Jimmy H. I note TD Direct whom II has recently taken over/merged with has a £nil charge per line item on transfers out. I wonder if TDDs clients are getting a free ‘out’ from the merged entity if that is their wish? Same old crap it seems to me – we the punters get to pay the bill for M &As. Merger savings and synergies! give me a break! Had a recent exchange with II about accessibility to a flexible S & S ISA. Whilst I was pretty pushy their ( uncharacteristically ) swift written response displayed an unbelievably crass ( and crap ) attitude. I will be moving my ( six figure ) account elsewhere at a time of my choosing and will probably cash out all investments before I do so as the market is on a highish plateau going nowhere – but slowly. I suppose when you’ve got ‘enough’ being in the market isn’t such a big deal.

I have messaged iii to ask them to confirm that they will allow fee-free exits. (TDD customers have been offered no exit fees for the next year.)

@Jeff Beranek
Thanks, very helpful! Will read that guide about robo-advisors.

Robo Advisors info sources …
> https://www.boringmoney.co.uk/best-buys/robo-adviser/
> http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/investing/article-4577798/How-best-robo-adviser-invest-with.html
> https://pensioncraft.com/cheapest-robo-advisor-uk/

None are recommendations, just for info

@Valery, it would be cheaper and very easy to buy a vanguard lifestrategy fund via one of the low cost brokers recommended. You need to decide what proportion of bonds (ie how risky you want your portfolio, which you’d need to decide with nutmeg as well) but then it’s a set and forget strategy. There are monevator articles about this which you could search and read.

Count me in as another one disappointed at the announcement of the new fee structure at TD/II. The reason I chose TD in the first place was that there were no account fees on ISAs over £5,000. I have a number of long-term investments in mine, meaning that I very rarely trade and will therefore be much worse off under the new fee structure. Allowing for a couple of trades for year, my fee has essentially risen from £23 a year to £90. I need to do some research on other providers now, as at least they are offering free transfers out until October 2018. Hopefully I can find one that will offer what I’m looking for.

Anyone can run the rule over IG Platform vs IWeb?? I am another one looking to transfer away from TD Direct with an all ETF portfolio. It seems IG is primarily a spread betting shop which may indicate more intrinsic risk in itself?? Cost of holding is nil for both. Trading fees are £8 vs £5. There is a one off opening fee of £25 for Iweb. Also IG has a bonus of up to £250 if you do a transfer in.

Anyone see pitfalls either way?

Thanks
-FIREplanter

@Susan, your comment regarding IG that they were “v cheap/free if you do one spread bet per month” made me go back and check their T&Cs. From my reading there is no requirement to conduct one spread bet per month. Have I missed something?

They do charge inactivity fee as follows, but it seems very easy to avoid. “Inactivity fee: £12 per month, charged if you have no activity across any IG account for 24 consecutive months. Dividend payments count as activity.”

Hi, thanks for the blog, I learn a lot.

However, according to the PRA website, IWeb (www.iwebsharedealing.co.uk) is no longer authorized since 2009:

IWeb (UK) Limited Status: No longer authorised (Reference number: 116179) This is a firm that can no longer provide regulated products and services, but was previously authorised by the PRA and/or FCA
https://register.fca.org.uk/ShPo_FirmDetailsPage?id=001b000000MfECRAA3

Yet it seems yourself and several commentators still use this platform in 2017.
Please explain where I got it wrong.

Please forget about my message.

The current Registry Number for IWeb is 183332, exactly the same as for Halifax Share Dealing Limited, which is authorized.

If you look under Trading Names for Halifax Share Dealing you will find: Bank of Scotland Share Dealing, IWeb Share Dealing and Lloyds Bank Direct Investments.

HSBC UK Bank Plc is listed also, reference number 765112.

@GRG
All working fine with my existing TD Direct details at the moment.

If I am not mistaken, it seems that II have reduced the charges for transfers in of SIPPs. Transfers in are now free (previously £60).

Every cloud…

Clearly I spoke too soon about TD Direct’s website, which came up with an inactivity logout screen within a minute of me logging in as I was funding my ISA account.

Not too fussed, as it is hopefully the last interaction I’ll have with them in the near future given that I’ve initiated a transfer in to another broker (I don’t trade enough to use the £90 a year credits and the free transfer out was the reason I put the ISA there in the first place, which ii have set the 1 year clock ticking on).

Unlike Youinvest, at least ii’s actions have been reasonable (so they’ll stay on the list of brokers I’ll consider in future).

@Bastiat has there been any confirmation that II will waive exit/transfer fees out? I saw someone earlier mention TD Direct were waiving them, but couldn’t find anything on the II website that said the same.

Just realised, I made my first deposit for the year in my II ISA account 4 days before I got the email confirming these changes :-/

Does anyone know if I can open and transfer to another provider this year, or will I need to wait until next year?

ii have a new fee structure as of 30th October.
http://www.iii.co.uk/our-services/our-accounts/charges

Still flat fee but a bit more expensive: £100+VAT for the SIPP, plus £22.50 per quarter. Higher fees for very large trades.

However, they no longer have any transfer in fees. Which is great, as I’m just about to switch to them from HL.

Hi. Love the website! I’ve been reading up on passive investing and keeping charges low. I’m considering transferring my existing S&S Isa (value around £30,000) to iWeb to reduce costs. On their fund list, they have the Vanguard LS 80/20 fund as an option with the standard charge of 0.22%. Am I correct to say that if I transfer my existing S&S Isa to iWeb, then bought the Vanguard fund with the entire balance, all it would cost me would be the £25 account opening charge, plus £5 for the trade, plus the 0.22%? What would happen if I wanted to make monthly payments into the iWeb Isa (starting April 2018) and buy more (?) of the same fund, would I pay the £5 every time I did this?

iWeb compares pretty favourably with Vanguard’s own Isa which would be 0.37% to hold the same fund, although it would give more flexibility to have multiple funds if I wanted to do that further down the line.

Have I got this badly wrong?

@Jonny

That would be nice wouldn’t it but based on the below response received today they’re not willing to waive transfer out fees for anyone who’s been with them longer than 12 months.

My situation is that my family have 4 accounts across the platform, so fees are going from £90 to £360 a year. 2 of the accounts don’t trade at all, the others are fire and forget at ISA top-up time so no accounts will use £90 worth of trading credit.

III’s response…

Thank you for your secure message.

I am afraid If you do want to transfer away from ii our usual exit fees will apply, these are:
-£0 for up to 10 lines of stock if the customer joined us in the prior 12 months, or
-£15 per line of stock if not.
We are reducing our transfer out fees from December, these will change to
-£0 if the customer joined us in the prior 12 months, or
-£10 per line of stock, min £30 max £250

Should you have any further enquiries, please do not hesitate to get in touch again. Our response time to secure message or email is usually 1 working day, although in times of high volumes we may take up to 5 working days.

Yours sincerely
Chris Harnish

Customer Services Executive
Interactive Investor.

For information to @Bastiat above. Never, ever, trust a response from II unless it is in writing -and then think about potential unstated ‘get outs’ they may have (like unstated time limits). I gave up ‘phoning them a long time ago. It was one o of the worst decisions I ever made to ship out to II when leaving Barclays Wealth and HL even though, IMHO, both were in different ways ripping me off – with nice smiles and charming staff – Barclays especially with their unexplained ‘administrative’ charges on top of their IPO commissions ( I’m a LTB&H investor). One of my best and oldest friends started up and still runs an independent financial advice business and she told me ‘this industry is full of masters in the arts of industrialised legal theft and double speak’. Invest at your peril and don’t give 99% of them an inch ( or even a centimetre!). Luckily, I’ve now got ‘enough’ but it has taken a long time and by being fortunate enough to never having to need to have touched a penny of my stash during the accumulation phase – and thank goodness for my two rather handsome CPI linked pensions and years spent in specialist financial fraud investigation to be able to dismiss the outpourings of marketing drivel this industry spews out. We will never achieve a sustainable pensions saving culture in this country until we stop the money industry from skimming off a minimum of upward of 25% to 50% of returns ( including capital gains). A fair and reasonable return for them – Yes. But unfortunately both the industry and their friends in government have their hooks deeply embedded into our dosh, their taxes and profits – and at no risk to themselves.

@ Chesk

Yes you are correct. It would cost you £25 to open an iWeb account and then £5 for the trade. The 0.22% is the ongoing charge for the fund which goes to Vanguard.

Monthly payments would cost £5 per transaction.

I use iWeb and I’m happy with them so far. I buy once a year at the start of the new ISA year so it costs me peanuts.

@Chesk It looks like Halifax may be cheaper (though I don’t know if they have Vanguard or not). They seem to just charge £12.50 per annum, plus 12.50 per trade (or £2 per trade if you set them up for every month).

Halifax would cost £25 for the first year (£12.50 to open + £12.50 to make a trade) – as opposed to iWeb’s £30 (£25 to open + £5 to trade). Halifax would also be cheaper in subsequent years to (at just £12.50 per year), and if you’re setting up regular monthly trades, they’d be £2 per month (where iWeb would cost £5 for each).

@jonny there is no annual fee for iWeb, just the opening fee. The break even point with Halifax will depend on how many trades you do and whether you can use the Halifax regular dealing rate.

Very infrequent trades, and happy to use the regular investment option when necessary.

I was considering switching to the Vanguard platform, but will start saving immediately with Halifax. I can’t believe I’ve missed iWeb and Halifax all this time (though I have been utilising II’s shared family incentives up to now – so not too bad)

For reasons of platform diversification, I have holdings through both iii and Halifax Share Dealing. To save on costs, I’d considered exiting iii in favour of iWeb, however, is my understanding correct that Halifax own (or at least underpin) iWeb, and I’d therefore lose any diversification benefits (e.g. in the event of some sort of platform collapse, IT catastrophe, etc.) ?

I don’t understand why there isn’t much discussion about HL. At a max annual fee of £45 for a shares ISA (assuming no funds) and a decent cash back on opening, it seems a good choice. Am I missing something? I agree that iweb is cheaper, but the website looks very rudimentary (I guess you get what you pay for).

Evening All,

Any experiences – good or bad – with the X-O.co.uk SIPP?

It seems to be a rebadged SIPP product of “Gaudi Regulated Services Limited” / “Gaudi Trustees Limited” who are FCA authorised 488015.

I’m looking into transferring an Aviva stakeholder pension (~100k of passive funds) to a new home. Current&Planned investment strategy is passive with occasional rebalancing. Happy with either funds or (non-synthetic) ETFs, preferably UK domiciled.

Anybody used X-O ‘s SIPP like this?

I’m looking to transfer an ISA with ETF’s inside from TD Direct (well ii now) to X-O.co.uk. Is there any difference in transferring the ETF’s within the ISA compared with cash within the ISA.?

For the cash within ISA option I would sell my ETF’s with TD Direct/ii first, then transfer ISA to X-O.co.uk as cash and then buy the the same ETF’s again with X-O.co.uk.

Obviously it would cost me more in transaction fees but would it make the transfer less complex / smoother?

Thanks for any help.

As above, plus it’s worth checking whether your new provider offers the particular ETFs you currently hold prior to initiating transfer, if you haven’t already.

@Robbo

Dunno if X-O ISA t&c is similar to sipp but if you do tell them its ‘cash transfer’ then make sure the cash is ready. See extract below from X-O sipp t&cs..

“Where you request the Administration Company to
apply for a cash transfer from an existing SIPP you take
responsibility for arranging dis-investment of any assets held
within that SIPP. We will not give dis-investment instructions
to the existing SIPP provider and accept no liability for
delays in concluding the transfer as a result of dis-investment
instructions not having been received or actioned by the
transferring SIPP provider.”

Interactive Investor have confirmed, after initially suggesting/saying otherwise, that where you have linked accounts (which previously didn’t have to pay quarterly fees, but will from December), they *can* transfer out without charge. The primary account still has to pay, reduced to £10 per investment (from Dec).

There’s also HSBC InvestDirect (Plus) sharedealing. This is only for UK shares (including ETFs, but excluding Exchange Traded Commodities such as iShares Physical Gold), US shares (but not US ETFs) and UK government bonds. There’s a flat quarterly fee of £10.50 and trades cost £10.50 each. There are no additional annual charges to add an ISA trading account. You need to have an HSBC bank account. You can launch the trading website from your bank account, but it’s a separate site. The trading site is very basic, just: stock code + quantity + limit price. However, trades are fast and dividends arrive on the scheduled pay date without fail. Oh yes, gilt trades cost a whopping £39.95 – so only for very large trades on a buy-and-hold basis. If you are an ex-pat and are interested in HSBC Premier accounts in multiple countries (good foreign exchange / transfer service) then the amount you have in your InvestDirect account counts towards the eligibility criteria for Premier, i.e. you need at least £50,000 held with HSBC in UK). If you satisfy the criteria for HSBC Premier in another country then you can open one in the UK automatically.

I have just seen the cashback offer. Whilst it’s quite nice, HL’s dealing charges are high, the 0.45% funds fee is very high and at £25 per stock for exiting later it makes the whole exercise rather fruitless. There’s also a £45 charge for etfs per year. I think it might be more prudent to go with someone like IG where you can hold an etf portfolio for free, literally, and there would also be no exit charges if ever wanted to leave. Also, dealing charges are £8 which is the lowest I’ve seen of any mainstream platform, or indeed any platform that offers ISAs. Degiro charge around £2 for dealing but they don’t have an ISA option. iii is another alternative as for a flat rate amounting to £90 per year you get 9 trades included at no extra charge and there are no other fees as they waive all exit fees until October next year. Although much of this also depends on the size of a portfolio, as per the broker table above. It’s not possible to do a like for like comparison as all the procing structures vary so much. So much depends on individual way of running the account and number of trades, and whether it’s an etf only portfolio or a funds based portfolio or a mixture of the two.

@Rob- iweb dealing fees are £5, no platform fees, just £25 opening fee. Pretty low cost for a large fund based portfolio with low churn.

Regarding ETFs on HSBC InvestDirect. Good question, I had assumed that all the ETFs I can search for are available to buy. My dad has an account, but only holds individual shares, so I don’t have actual experience of buying ETFs. He doesn’t want to be holding any kind of fund as he’s a US citizen living in UK so it’s not good from a tax point of view. Might be a good idea to check with HSBC first if you plan to be use then for ETFs.

IG are very basic imho. Their account detail is very minimal and retrieval facilities are pathetic. They’re very much about charts, timing, lots of screens and lots of trading.
The account portal itself reminds me very much of FXCM, they’re certainly not a natural home for the LTBH investor. That said, their cash incentive to transfer is a welcome stop gap post TD and the platform is usable if limited.

http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/comment-page-37/#comment-843727

III clarification and offer for family linked accounts
Quarterly fee payments – how they work

We recently wrote to you to explain about the new Terms and rates and charges that will apply from 11th December 2017, when your account moves to our new platform.

We’€re getting in touch today because some customers who currently operate an account like yours, which has previously been excluded from quarterly fee payments, have been in touch with us to understand more about the quarterly payment which will apply in future.

At ii we are committed to providing great value for investors, through a quality investing experience with simple, fair and competitive charges. We strive to make our charges fair for all customers, which is why we will be asking all our customers to make a quarterly payment of £22.50.

In return for your quarterly payment we€’ll look after your assets safely and we’€ll also give you £22.50 of trading credits, which you can use to pay for your trading commissions, including regular investing and dividend reinvestment commissions.

If you’€re an investor who trades infrequently then, even though you may not use all your trading credits, the fixed quarterly payment may still be good value when compared to the account or custody fees you may pay with other providers.

We appreciate that, as you have not previously made quarterly payments, this is a change to your service. So if you wish to close your account with us or wish to transfer to another provider please let us know before the 10th of December 2017 and we will waive any transfer out fees that would ordinarily apply.

Remember, you can find full information about our pricing on our website, including a short animation that explains how the quarterly payment and trading credits work.

Kind regards

Richard Wilson

CEO Interactive Investor

I hadn’t previously realised that HL’s annual fees for holding ETFs, ITs and shares only apply within an ISA. If you hold them in a trading account, there is no annual fee, just dealing fees.

A member of my family has, until now, had an ISA and dealing account with iii and paid no annual fees due to the family linking. She will now have to pay £90 per year. Her portfolios are solely ITs, so she could shift to HL and pay only £45 for the ISA, plus 2x£12 dealing fees, to sell £20k of ITs in the trading account and purchase the same in the ISA. Saving: £21 per year, which isn’t really worth it on its own. But with £500 cash back from HL, tempting. Only real downside is HL’s exit fees…

Interactive Investors – SIPP holders transfer offer

Do I have to transfer to the new SIPP?

The existing SIPP scheme operated by Lifetime is closing and will be wound up, so it will not be possible to stay in that scheme. As the new SIPP scheme offers equivalent (or better) overall terms, all members will be transferred to the new arrangement. However, if you wish to transfer to an alternative scheme of your choice, you may do so, without any transfer-out charge. You will need to let us know, and provide details of where your SIPP account is to be transferred to, by 30 November 2017 if this is your intention.

@ Tom – Great stuff, thank you for that tip off. I’ll take a look at Sharedeal in the upcoming update.

@ Allan and Jeffrey – Looks like HSBC’s service has changed since last I checked it. Will take another look. Cheers.

Re: bulk traders – these platforms are designed for trading and speculation. I’ll always list a few of them in the sharedealing section but they’re roughly as good for most investors as McDonalds is for your fitness, so we’ll never do anything comprehensive. At least while there’s breath in my body and The Investor charges me with the maintenance of this table.

Any one else having issues with buying or selling with iWeb, as some others here report? I ask as I’ve considered moving from II to iWeb due to former’s introduction of quarterly charges. But if iWeb can be more unreliable, I’ll consider other options, including staying put. Thanks.

I can also say I’ve never had a problem buying or selling with iWeb.

@Jeffrey Beranek

I’ve just been researching a move to X-O! Mind if I ask why you left them?

I had no problems with X-O but I had to leave because they no longer allow US citizens. I was able to convince them to waive the transfer out fees. I’m a dual UK/US citizen living in th UK and iWeb has no problem with that.

Never had any issue with iWeb but then I only trade once a year when it’s ISA time and only trade index funds. If your are day trading then this is probably not the right platform (nor is monevator the right website for advice).

I agree with Mr Optimistic, I have a Halifax SIPP where the annual charges have reached the cap and my trading volumes are low so the charges seem good. This may go against the grain for this site but personally I don’t chase low cost over everything: I’ve worked in the collective investment industry and I know that they have costs to cover, if the charges drop too low then the level of service will suffer. What I don’t like are platforms that take a percentage fee with no cap (or a very high one). Their cost of supporting my account is almost completely divorced from the actual value of my account.

Just a note of caution regarding the X-O.co.uk SIPP. An annual fee of £118.80 is taken from your account to pay the SIPP administrator (Gaudi) and subsequently refunded back to your account. Last year the refund took approximately two months but this year I’ve been waiting a couple of days short of 3 months. Make of that what you will.

K, you have to learn by your own mistakes I suppose.

What is it about Interactive Investor that attracts you to them specifically? Many former TD clients are currently ditching them.

My opinion, iWeb, ditch the idea of seven and simply choose VWRL, IWDP and a global bond index ETF in the proportions you desire then rebalance annually with new money if able. At £50K and a further £20K+ annually this will reduce ongoing platform costs to a pittance.

Thanks John,

I’d heard that iii was one of the cheapest that offered a flat fee charge and also had one of the best range of funds available but I’ve had a look at iWeb and they seem to have a similar fund list but lower charges so I may reconsider and go with iWeb for both the ISA and the SIPP now. If I just rebalance annually as you suggest then from what I can tell I’d be paying next to nothing in charges (just £5 per fund deal and an extra £25 in year one) vs a minimum £120 a year with iii.

Thanks for your advise about the 3 fund option, I’ll take a look at them in more detail when I get a moment.

iWeb – IvanK
Book cost can be adjusted by phoning them (or probably via web chat)

Z

I’m not sure why you are worried about the automatic logout period on X-O and iWeb, which are there for security reasons. Are you using it for day trading? You can monitor live prices on Google finance, whereas prices on the broker sites are usually 15 mins delayed unless you request a quote.
If you are really worried about it, there are web browser plugins that can automatically reload a page every x mins, but I wouldn’t advise using them for security reasons.

I’m afraid I don’t know what the timeout times are on X-O and iWeb (although I have an account with both). There is no easy way to determine this, without repeatedly waiting for longer and longer times to to interact with the site. If you’re concerned, I would suggest calling them to ask.

John (in reply 1908) mentioned VWRL which was new to me, so I looked it up and it seems almost identical to HMWO which I do hold.

VWRL: OCR = 0.24%, Yield = 1.86% , 5yr gain = 86%
HMWO: OCR = 0.15%, Yield = 2.09%, 5yr gain = 87%

So it looks to me as if HMWO is slighly cheaper but just as good? although the differences are probably too small to be significant.

Back to the topic I have isas with HL and IWeb and shares with X-O. HL is best for information and support – If you only want one platform then I would highly recommend that HL should be the one to go for. IWEB is the one I currently pay into, because its cheaper. X-O is also cheap but I would say that IWEB has the edge over it.

Hi Mike, looking at VWRL on AJ Bell (courtesy of Morningstar’s data)…

Fund Benchmark = FTSE All World NR USD
Morningstar® Benchmark = MSCI World NR USD

Morningstar measure the ETF against the wrong benchmark. So the benchmark comparison data is pointless. Morningstar do this a lot.
It’s highly unlikely that any normal ETF would survive if it was undershooting its benchmark by 3% a year. Investors would abandon ship.
Re: using free data – there’s often a mismatch between time periods used (e.g. benchmark and ETF) which renders comparisons inaccurate too. Tax treatments, dividend treatments, you name it. It’s a minefield.

@Elef
If the pound has become weaker against the dollar (which it has), wouldn’t that mean the returns in sterling terms are higher than in dollar terms? Five years ago, a pound bought 1.62 dollars, so if the index in dollars was 162, that would have been GBP100. If the index had stayed at USD162, at today’s FX rate of 1.33 that would be GBP122. That’s a 22% outperformance, or about 4% a year.

Elef, TA, Ivanopinion
Thanks for the comments in response to my enquiry. I’m still sure I’ve not got a proper understanding. If we look at HMWO on Morningstar, the index (MSCI World) and the index the ETF aims to track appear to be the same ( unlike VWRL which aims to track an FTSE index). But there’s still a lot of apparent and consistent underperformance and as TA suggests the discrepancy is just too large to be credible. Is currency conversion part of the explanation? I’d expect currency gains / losses of USD vs GBP to come through as part of the index return when converted to GBP, which I think is Ivanopinion’s point. But the apparent performance seems miles away from that. Or is some odd USD / GBP currency hedging affecting the GBP ‘index’ returns? Or is the index on a total return basis (ie with dividends rolled up) being compared with a capital price return without dividends (surely not)? Maybe the Morningstar data is just unreliable?

@Kraggash
FX should have generated 20% outperformance over the last five years, so it can’t be the explanation for a significant level of underperformance. Unless HSBC is doing the currency translations by using one of those booths at the airport…

On Just ETF, you can view the growth with or without dividends. Comparing this with Morningstar, I think they are excluding divs from HMWO, but including it in the index. That’s poor.
https://www.justetf.com/uk/etf-profile.html?isin=IE00B4X9L533&tab=chart

I recently tried to transfer my stocks and shares isa to iweb in specie. I finally received a response from iWeb telling me that they can’t receive all my investments/ etfs as they don’t have all of them on their platform and asked me to liquidate these and transfer as cash. I contacted them and said I don’t want to liquidate any of my holdings because that was my portfolio and I wish to keep it as it is. They said they would therefore be unable to accept my ISA transfer to them. For example, the etf SGLP, source gold, is one that they said is one they are unable to have on their platform. Seems to me iWeb has some limitations as to what they can have on their platform. Seems very strange to me but I’m back to square one and need to look around again for another platform to transfer to and start the transfer process from scratch all over again, simply because iweb cannot hold all of my current etfs. Has anyone else had this experience with iweb or with the etf I mentioned? And why is this even happening with mainstream etfs? Seems very odd I think.

@Rob
Yes they sometimes do not have funds that I want: usually I can find an alternative. In your example, would SGLD do? (same fund, but in $)

When I have queried one or two in the past, iWeb said it was because the fund was not approved by iWeb as it did not meet their (legal, financial or construction) requirements. Maybe BS, I dont know. iWeb use A J Bell trading facility, and A J Bell themselves (via Youinvest) did trade the funds I wanted.

On the whole, I would much rather have the savings and maybe not EXACTLY the fund I wanted.

As PA says, it is common that not all platforms trade all equities – Fidelity being a major example – so it is best to check all your holdings are traded on the the platform to which you plan to move ahead of time. Then find alternatives in needed, and possible.

K

@Neverland: I don’t think you’ll find a low cost UK broker for Euronext Expert Market. These appear to be the only brokers operating there: https://www.euronext.com/sites/www.euronext.com/files/euronext_expert_market_specialist_list_11_03_2015.pdf

@Rob

Having been on iweb a while I think their underlying platform is pretty old (they changed the appearance a bit recently but I think that was more a facelift than surgery)

I would rather have a platform charge of GBP nil and GBP 5 dealing with some restrictions on what I can get hold of than pay GBP 100 platform fees and GBP 10 dealing to be able to buy almost anything

Fidelity have just changed share dealing fees (this affects Cavendish Online as well): instead of 0.1%, it is now £10 per deal. Funds are still free to deal.

I’ve just found out that the new “upgraded platform” for iii has thrown security completely out of the window. They’ve actually reduced the security level that was available on their previous platform. Passwords are now a MAXIMUM of 12 characters and can ONLY consist of letters and numbers.

This is completely shocking, so now I’m looking to switch out ASAFP. Please look at adding a column for “security level” so people can make an informed decision about which morons they choose to hold their money.

Note that ISA and trading accounts normally have separate account numbers and obviously need to be kept separate for tax reasons. Most platforms charge for the trading account and say the ISA account is free, but in this case you can’t open the ISA without also opening the trading account. Good point though about the exit fees. I don’t know how different platforms deal with transferring multiple accounts out. I guess you would need to check the fine print…

@PA – Unfortunately, 2 weak passwords are still nowhere near as strong as a single strong password, since the time taken to crack weak passwords grows less by the day.

I work in software dev so I know what I’m talking about here – there should have been NO rollout until security had been upgraded to at least a parity of the old system. Frankly, it’s embarrassing and I would hope that the Devs involved are mortified.

Regardless, I’ll be shifting my assets to a new provider as I obviously can’t trust iii with my largest asset holding.

Just got an email from IG saying that they’re replacing they’re inactivity charge with a £24 quarterly custody fee from spring next year.

Can’t find info on their website at present, but their email finishes:
“Final terms of the start date and application of the fee will be announced shortly.”

Rumoured elsewhere at three trades a quarter to avoid the fee. If true, no longer rock bottom pricing for buy and hold and a calculator required for those who make a handful of trades a year if pricing is their main consideration.

Re; post 1937 above : http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/#comment-850682
Just when I thought I’d nailed it! Been round the houses a bit but ended up with transferring to IG. Transfer already in pipeline and too late to stop, and I just dsicover from comment above that they are introducing new quarterly fees of £24 from next Spring. It was for the reason of new quarterly fees that I left TD, but now I’ve ended up somewhere just the same so all that hassle for nothing as it won’t make any difference now. (Seems to me that the introduction of flat account fees is the general trend and wouldn’t be surprised if more platforms head this way. Couldn’t go with Iweb for reasons in earlier comment so there are now no more platforms that don’t charge account fees. (We’ll probably need to start making comparisons on other factors now when choosing.)

Interactive Investor migration to their new system now requires a mobile number as a two step security however if this was not stored on the old system you have to phone them (and hold for 10 minutes), go through security (you need your account number) and they will arrange to send out a temporary password … by post which they estimate will take 4-5 working days to arrive. Great timing given the Christmas post. Could have been avoided if they had run a scan of accounts with missing mobile numbers and posted out a password in advance of the migration. Just a thought but epitomises my dealing with this company when things of their own making go wrong.
Offering reduced rate dealing (at the frequent rate) for remainder of December as compensation.
Also been notified that dividend reinvestment is no longer available for funds or shares listed on international exchanges.
Documents from April 2017 onwards i.e. the most likely to be needed, are still being migrated.
Linked accounts (where family member Isa & trading accounts were free) have been discontinued.
The SIPP ‘no trading credit fee’ option has been discontinued so will be moved on to base account fee + Sipp fee
Trading – looking through the trades which go through at the time I place a trade, invariably the price I get from II is the worst of the bunch i.e I seem to pay the highest price when buying and get the lowest price when selling. I have also tested against HL and X-O trying to place trades at the same time and their quotes are always seem tighter than I get offered by II. On penny shares this can be a big spread or on big trades this can result in up to a hundred pounds of additional cost, negating any savings on a seemingly attractive platform charge.
Fortunately there are now a greater selection of fixed fee providers and have been very impressed with X-O and especially their Sipp admin (gaudi). No funds but suits me.

@Sally Morris (1952) – II migration mobile issue
II sent out 2 secure messages BEFORE migration stating in detail what to do pre-migration. Steps followed and no problems encountered, very smooth. Not much more they could have done IMHO

I’ve noticed that IG now operates in the UK, and offers ISAs and SIPPS: https://www.ig.com/uk/investments/isa

The SIPP has an annual fee of £195, bit the ISA comes with no running charges at all, fixed or percentage (like iWeb) and a fixed per deal cost of £8: https://www.ig.com/uk/investments/share-dealing/costs-fees

I still don’t see how they would really “win” for anyone; they don’t have access to funds, they don’t have a regular investing option, they don’t let you buy anything fixed interest (it really is share dealing only), their SIPP offering is no cheaper than the average, and for all that iWeb are cheaper and more established anyway (and give you funds), Cavendish are great for smaller portfolios, and Interactive Investor cover pretty much everyone else with larger portfolios.

But nevertheless, they might be worth adding to the “share dealing” section at the bottom the next time the table is due to a full refresh.

Additional: I should say that before considering IG I would be wanting to know more about their rates on share deals over £25,000 – I have one or two holdings above or close to that and I’d want to make sure that “agreed by negotiation” isn’t shorthand for “a pain to trade and we’ll stiff you on the commission rate”.

Any other II customers less than impressed with the new platform? I mean yes, it’s got a few new bells and whistles etc but whilst the old one was rather dull at least it seemed solid enough. Since the upgrade i seem to get occasionally logged out for no reason at all, and more worryingly a fund purchase order i made on Wednesday night (usually then actioned on the Thursday) is still sat there at time of writing! (Friday morning). I mean sure I’m not trading in the sense it acutely matters when it happens, but I’m not entirely sure this upgrade has been a good idea.

Will see what their response is to this and consider my options if no improvements seem forthcoming …

@mikamola – very much less than impressed. I don’t know what the bells and whistles are, but I’m getting very irritated with their stop/loss system. I used to be able to stack them up (is just add a new, higher one when the stock rose). Now I can’t have more than one s/l on any stock and I have to cancel it before setting up the new one. It’s also incredibly slow getting them set up. Also not impressed with having only to put in three digits to get into my account – it really doens’t feel very secure.

@Dawn : in the interim while you are considering options for leaving Aviva, you might look at a transfer *within* Aviva to a cheaper product. I’ve got an Aviva Stakeholder. If I had 63k in it, the cost would be 0.5%pa all in. I was talking the Aviva today on a similar matter and they confirmed that transfers between Aviva pension products, &within Aviva, are free.

For what its worth, my plan is to wait for Vanguard to reveal its SIPP product (promised for 2018) and then jump (somewhere) from Aviva. (So if you come up with anything, don’t forget to report back here!)

Would appreciate some advice on my savings plan. I have Santander 123 account with 10K+ gaining 1.5% up to 20k. 2k in vanguards ls 80 acc ss isa (UK). It’s on about 3% average. Is there anything else I could do to maximise my savings?

Hi jeffery thanks for response. Yes your thoughts are the same as mine have been . I expect there would be growth in the fund over 15 yrs. Also id reduce my US exposure and increase EM .ive made enquires regarding the drawdown costs on both again theres still a saving if i moved to bestinvest .aviva said id be out the market (in cash)during the transfer which worries me and best invest said the move can take weeks but i could move in specie so im getting conflicting info. I like what tom has explained to me above. Ill see about moving within aviva to get my costs to 0.5%.rFirst.

@Dawn: I wouldn’t worry about being ‘out of the market’ for a short while. You are probably changing your underlying funds, so you’ll anyway suffer a small buy/sell spread. The market is just as likely to go down as up during the transfer.

@Todd: Don’t mix up ‘savings’ with ‘investments’. If you might need to spend the cash at short notice in the next 3-5 year’s, leave it in cash. For such small amounts you could open 1 or 2 interest paying current accounts (e.g. Nationwide FlexDirect) or a couple Regular Savers (Santander and Nationwide). Also, dividends from diversified trackers may be fairly steady, the capital value is not. It could drop in value just when you need it.

@tom. Been in touch with Aviva and i can move my personal pension into their stake holder pension where i can sell my existing funds and rebuy blackrock tracker funds for a total cost of 0.55 % pa .draw down sounds ok as well at no extra cost up 6 free withdrawels ad hoc pa. So looking like i might take that root. Thats saves me 0.33% pa in charges over 15 yrs.

I switched my Aviva personal pension into Cavendish a long time ago and it worked pretty much as described. In the end I switched out to an AJ Bell SIPP for even lower charges and a wider choice of funds. There’s not much in it, but I have very low trading needs, wanted access to a few esoteric funds and have quite a large balance, so AJ Bell suited me better. Having had a number of company and personal pensions over the years (Sun Life, Standard Life, Aviva, Halifax) and being fleeced on charges, I don’t ever want to have anything to do with them again. I think the charges you pay are directly proportional to the amount of junk they send you in the post! They do everything they can to hide what your actual overall charges/costs are. It’s very difficult to track what you are actually paying and how you are performing, especially when you switch between funds. The gumpf tells you how much your portfolio has “grown” by including your contributions, but you have to explicitly write to them to get a full list of priced transactions. However, these days you can get Blackrock, Vanguard and in-house cheap tracker funds, so it’s harder to justify switching out. I’m not sure if they offer physical gold ETFs/funds. You could always open a BullionVault account outside your SIPP, as you’re unlikely to ever need to sell enough in one go to trigger capital gain tax, (note that you wouldn’t get tax relief this way – or “deferred tax” as I prefer to call it).

@tom .also im sure somewhere in my notes cavendish on line dont offer drawdown. As thats my intention in 3 to 5 yrs time.

Regarding Cavendish not offering drawdown, I don’t believe that’s true. For example if you hold an Aviva Stakeholder pension through Cavendish, they (Cavendish) are just acting as a low-cost execution-only broker in place of a tied broker or IFA. So you still get all the normal features of the Aviva pension. Note also, that really when you come to actually accessing your pension you should do a whole of market review to check which platform suits you best. The platform during accumulation is not necessarily the best for drawdown, even if it might mean paying a charge to switch.

@Jeffery. mmm i think there’s not alot between the whole bunch of SH ,sipps etc and 0.5% in fees is ok. But as Tom says vanguard might shake the whole market up when they release their sipp this year.

In case anyone else missed it, I see that Fidelity now offer a regular investment option:
https://www.fidelity.co.uk/investing/fees
“Regular savings or reinvestment are charged at £1.50*.”

Anyone know if this applies only to new contributions or if this can be used to invest cash already on account? The mention of “reinvestment” makes me optimistic.

Sam…wise yes you can transfer your existing HL ISA to a new provider.

Actually, that’s not quite right. Check the ISA rules carefully, they are fully explained on any ISA provider’s website. You can only contribute to ‘this year’s current ISA’ up the allowed amount. You can transfer that ISA entirely to a new provider and continue to contribute if you wish, within the limit, in the same year. You can also transfer previous year’s ISA money, but in practice everything is usually all in one big pot so it’s easier just to transfer everything in one go. Just make sure you don’t try to add money to more than one ISA in one year while they are both still open.

Probably my comment that “You still can’t pay “new money” into any S&S ISA other than your Vanguard one during the current tax year” is technically incorrect in the general case – I was assuming Sam would leave that with Vanguard for remainder of current tax year.

It’s hard to boil the ISA rules down to short comments, but I agree with what Jeffrey wrote. Subscriptions from the current tax year (“new money”) must stick together in one place (although can move around as Jeffrey said). Subscriptions from previous tax years can be split via transfers as Sam wanted to do.

Thanks Chaps.

I was indeed intending to leave my current ISA (Vanguard) where it is and only move my “old” (HL) ISA.

The only concern is Jeffery’s comment regarding an ISA split. One of the funds in the HL ISA is a HL specific fund. I was thinking of leaving this particular fund with HL and move the rest. Reason being, I wouldn’t have to close the account and I wouldn’t have to reinvest the money from the HL specific fund. I thought that this would be most convenient although it seems maybe it is not!

Maybe for now I will simply leave the old ISA all with HL. I’d only be saving about £10/year with a move at this time.

I personally don’t like the incentive to trade more. At iWeb it costs £25 to open the account. Thereafter trades cost £5 and there are no other fees. I have 20+ dividend paying shares and at the moment I’m mostly just withdrawing the natural yield, for a total annual cost of zero.

For the record, I left II due to concerns about administrative competence. I’m with iWeb, which has been fine for my needs, which are rather undemanding. I only buy funds with them. I don’t check distributions for lateness or accuracy (perhaps I should?!) and I can’t recall any major problems. Or any minor ones either.

Does anyone happen to know if the following is permissible under the ISA rules if you have two S&S ISAs open:
1) use ISA1 for all funding and investing between April and the following February
2) around February/March, stop funding ISA1, and do a full in-specie transfer of everything held in ISA1 to ISA2
3) wait till year end
4) repeat steps 1-3 in each financial year. I.e., fund ISA1 year-round, and then transfer fully to ISA2 just before end of year.

In other words, ISA1 is for regular purchasing every month (% fee platform – £0 cost usually), whilst ISA2 is essentially just for holding your investments (on a fixed fee platform).

Is one allowed to do that?

@UXR – following on from Charlie’s second point, it’s my belief also (although haven’t searched on the rules to be 100% sure) that when you do the transfer you would be effectively closing ISA2, so your strategy would work only if in the new tax year you opened ISA3, and the next tax year opened ISA4, etc. all the while keeping ISA1 as the one you transfer in to.

Advice please. I am looking for a home for a stocks & shares ISA, investing a monthly amount.
In the table above, does a ‘dash’ under ‘regular investing’ mean that the broker accepts regular investments but does not charge for them (in every case)? Does anyone already do this & think they have a good deal? I am thinking of investing in a couple of tracker funds and an investment trust.