Broker comparison: cheap investment platforms UK

Looks like IB *have* scrapped inactivity fees. As well as the stuff on Reddit there is now:

https://www.interactivebrokers.co.uk/en/index.php?f=38234

Surprised they don’t make more of a song and dance about it.

I don’t think you need to be worried about the different spreads across different platforms. It’s generally best to trade ETFs when the markets are open in the countries that the ETF covers. You shouldn’t have any problems with any of the large ETFs. It can be a bit worrying with some of the very small ETFs, e.g. specific country funds, or obscure thematic/fundamental funds, where it might go a few days with no trades occurring at all. However, even with these there is always a price available (check Google Finance or the London Stock Exchange page for the ETF ticker) so if the price you are offered at the time of purchase is “way off” then just cancel the order before it executes. I prefer to stick to “market price” orders, but check the price before you execute. I can’t remember, but I don’t think x-o even offered limit order types. Personally, if I plan to owe the share for decades I couldn’t care less about tiny fluctuations in the daily value of a simple contribution.

Is anyone aware of a decent SIPP provider (besides HL) who accept salary sacrifice contributions paid in by an employer?

I can only assume it makes life much harder on the admin side because virtually no one on the table accepts such contributions, unless i can pursuade HR to set up a direct debit to my pension…

I was formally a fairly happy EQI customer who’s now been dumped into a crummy ‘pension trading account’ at II where I have the privellege of paying the same as a SIPP customer but without the free regular investing service and trustee fees on top.

Unless anyone has a hidden gem of a SIPP I’m feeling like transferring what i’ve got to vanguard and crawling back to work’s noddy stakeholder scheme!

@ ahick- thank you! That info used to be on there but must have got accidentally deleted in the last update. TI must have been drunk again. Cheers for letting us know.

Hi. Ive been reading this blog for several years and as I am now nearing retiring early, (another 4 years at work), I ams looking to get my pensions sorted out. Currently I have an old RBS pension which is defined so carnet do anything with at the moment, but I also have a SIPP. The SIPP is with HL which isn’t the best but this is what my employer has our scheme within. They put all the funds into an under forming Blackrock account which I then transfer into various ETF and Index fund pots over the months, however this is now attracting larger fees (£446pa at the last count). I have set up a Vanguard SIPP which I pay into when I have spare cash. My question is – should I transfer part of my HL SIPP balance (if I can even do this) into the Vanguard SIPP on say a monthly basis to reduce the fees or shall I just leave it where it is for the time being rather than pay 2 separate fee structures. I guess there might be transfer costs with this.

Many thanks Chris B. I didn’t look at Fidelity as Vanguard seems to be quoted by everyone as the easy platform. I suspect if I do partial transfers over from HL I will just have to factor in the transfer cost each time I do this so that it doesn’t outstrip any overall savings I’m trying to achieve by splitting it between SIPPS

@Tony 2605, Yes Fidelity do salary sacrifice, see https://help.fidelity.co.uk/site/managing-your-account/salary-sacrifice-payments

@Chris B, wonderful, really appreciate the information, I’ll give Fidelity a look.

@TA et al, thanks again for the site, hard work and mutual support!

hi all,

it seems I am in the same boat as @Shazspun …. 2x forgotten work-pensions (tot ~40K) from previous employers with Aviva on a % base charge ….. I believe my best option is ETF only at Fidelity to reduce charges….

Would you guys keep your SIPP with a different provider (e.g. Vanguard 0.15% charge) just for the sake of not consolidating everything in one provider??

Could anyone advise the best platform for someone new to investing – their goal is individual shares within an ISA, rare trading, sounds like all in on one stock strategy.

I used to advise iWeb but this was before fee changes and I normally point people to vanguard index funds.

Sounds like they’re putting in upwards of 10k and they’re going to be unable to add to it much and just hoping for some luck on their research

@Pikolo
Bank of Scotland’s Sharebuilder is set up for monthly direct debits. So less frequent “regular investing” would almost certainly require some active management (i.e. suspending the regular investment and resuming when you want the next regular investment to happen).

Anyone know of an ISA provider(s) that allow a bitcoin based ETF/ETC? I thought I had a candidate in DE000A27Z304 (btcetc-etc-group-physical-bitcoin.pdf) but Hargreaves, iWeb etc. won’t stock it. Thanks for any thoughts.

Charles Schwab have a $25,000 minimum requirement . They are commission free for stocks and ETFs on US exchanges. For UK stocks they are £9 / trade. Also FX conversion looks to be 1% fee when converting less than $100k which isn’t great. IBKR is better if you want an account in USD. They convert at spot rate for $2 fee and no £25k minimum.

I’ve just joined II to avoid eggs and basket.Their one free trade per month with is allocated when they collect their monthly fee, can be saved for 90 days.

@ Jon – yes, Barclays looks very expensive. AJ Bell are fine. I’ve been with them for years though I’m not in drawdown.

@ Ben McLobbins – I don’t put every broker in because we get a fair bit of feedback that suggests the table is pretty daunting as it is. So if a platform looks uncompetitive versus rivals I tend to leave it out.

That said, I put household names in because otherwise people would have to search for them to find out they’re not that competitive!

I think of Schwab as a huge brand in America but over here, not so much. They don’t offer US ETFs to UK investors otherwise they’d be straight in. They offer European ETFs due to regulatory hurdles that brought the shutters down on US-domiciled ETFs over here a couple of years ago.

Anyway, that was a bit rambly but just wanted to explain my thinking. Happy to hear from anyone who thinks I should be doing something different.

I realise I’m missing some fundamental point here but I don’t understand some of the footnotes to the table.
e.g looking at the iWeb SIPP info, it says it’s good for “Unrestricted fund portfolios above £102k” then points me to footnote 3, which says “£169k vs Vanguard”. What is that saying? £102k isn’t £169k.

@ IanH – the 0.25% is for Managed Portfolios whilst Do It Yourself Portfolio is free

https://investengine.com/costs/

Where is Trading 212?

@ Ian S – I forgot to mention the tipping points are heavily influenced by the amount of trading you do. In other words, moving to a flat fee broker is likely to be less lucrative for someone who makes 10 fund trades a month and pays £0 for that service with their percentage fee broker.

My tipping point assumptions are: one purchase per month and four sales per year, and that you take advantage of lower priced regular investment schemes when available.

I see that Interactive Investor now has a Friends and Family plan, under which one account holder pays an extra £5 pm and can nominate up to 5 other people to get their accounts with no monthly charges. (Apologies if this has already been posted and I missed it.)

The big catch is that it only applies up to £30k in each of the free accounts and does not include SIPP.

Could be a big saving for small investment pots. Six people would previously pay £120×6=£720 pa. In this plan they would now pay £180.

Can’t thank you enough for the effort that has been put into this resource and the Monevator complete blog.

I have tried to interpret this table on probably 8 different occasions and I must admit I come away every time with “analysis paralysis”, so in a somewhat desperate move I’m going to ask in the comments!!

I’m in accumulation phase with a 25 year horizon, everything is in FTSE Global All Cap, through Vanguard platform. £50k SIPP, £65k ISA. SIPP gets one purchase a year, ISA 4 or 5 times a month. No selling so far, none planned.

Assuming status quo, I think I need to leave the SIPP where it is, ISA should go to iWeb – is that correct?

@Andrew

I’ve made an error there, I meant Interactive Investor, not iWeb, I don’t think I can edit my original comment now unfortunately. Thanks for coming back to me though.

I take the point about having access to other funds, my thoughts are keeping it as simple as possible, so global all cap works for me unless someone can show me something better (subjective definition I know)…

@Dan

> everything is in FTSE Global All Cap, through Vanguard platform. £50k SIPP, £65k ISA. SIPP gets one purchase a year, ISA 4 or 5 times a month.

One good option option is £45 a year for both ISA and SIPP on Fidelity. Do regular investments to Fidelity Index World Fund P-Acc, but put your long term holdings in Vanguard FTSE All-World ETF (VWRP). Periodically (e.g. once a year) switch your built up regular investment pot to VWRP. Fidelity don’t charge for trades on OEIC funds, and the platform charge for ETFs is capped at £45 a year. The only extra charges will be a share trade fee for your periodic switch to VWRP, plus the annual 0.35% on your regular savings pot (but this should be very low, because you periodically empty it to keep it low).

Hi, the relevant sections are:

“The portion of the fee you pay on exchange-traded investments (shares, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), etc.) within an ISA or SIPP is capped at £45.” – https://www.fidelity.co.uk/stocks-and-shares-isa/fees-and-charges/

“We don’t charge anything for buying, selling or switching funds, however there is a £10 charge for online deals on shares, exchange-traded funds and investment trusts” – https://www.fidelity.co.uk/services/charges-fees/

“In instances where a Customer holds Brokerage Assets in their Investment Account, along with other accounts such as ISA and / or SIPP and the Service Fee accrued on the ISA and / or SIPP reaches our Charging Limit of £3.75 per month for these assets across your accounts (£45 a year), we will pro-rata the amount due across all the customer accounts, including the Investment Account. This means that even though there is no Service Fee accrued on the Brokerage Assets in an Investment Account, the £3.75 is spread at a Customer level across the accounts held. So, a small portion of this £3.75 charge may be deducted from the Investment Account.” – https://www.fidelity.co.uk/canonical/1538726539/770/

On £115k pot you pay £172 at 0.15% platform fee with Vanguard, and this will rise as your pot increases to £375 before it’s capped. With Fidelity, using regular investments to a fund but holding long term in VWRP, you’d pay about £60 a year. Buying an ETF is no different from buying units of a fund, except you can’t buy fractional units, i.e. a VWRP share is £85, so you have to buy multiples of that. It’s a good deal, yes slightly more complex, but maybe worth it to save a few hundred £ a year?

One last link – https://www2.trustnet.com/Tools/Charting.aspx?typeCode=FNGLY,FG2HB – this is the performance of the Vanguard FTSE All World versus Vanguard Global All Cap Acc. It’s almost identical, so the only reason to prefer one over the other is the fees charged by the platform and the convenience of being able to buy fractional units for a fund.

Hi Eruman, “Restricted ETF portfolios” just means that the portfolio can only use shares/ETFs for the fees to be capped. No OEIC funds.

> whenever I tried to search for anything on the Fidelity platform the “Exchange-traded” tab seems to always respond with “Your search did not match any investments.”

That is odd, are you adding any extra filters? The default search result should show 378 ETFs, try https://www.fidelity.co.uk/planning-guidance/investment-finder/#?investmentType=exchangeTradedFunds

You can also just search for the ticker you want using the little magnifying glass icon in the top right of Fidelity’s site. ETFs are definitely there, e.g. Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF USD Accumulation (VWRP): https://www.fidelity.co.uk/factsheet-data/factsheet/IE00BK5BQT80-vanguard-funds-plc/key-statistics

I am currently waiting a response from Fidelity to a secure message that should have been answered by now. But in any event I will move to another platform. To sum up, a bit like the Co-op fifty years ago.

If they were on the ball, they wouldn’t have to Financially Tout for business.

@Eruman, I think you can only switch between OEIC funds? In which case, you’d need to first sell the OEIC fund and then buy the ETF with the resulting cash.

Interactive Brokers just launched an ISA https://www.interactivebrokers.co.uk/en/index.php?f=50549

Incredibly big news. 0.03% FX, £3/mo inactivity fee, SIPC insurance instead of FSCS so 500k USD vs 85k USD.

Wow this is brilliant news on the IBKR ISA! I was waiting for this day as the FX fees are killing me too. 0.03% fee is great!

If you’re only buying funds then you’re right there is not much benefit, but there is if you want to buy US stocks.

Looking at @Dan ‘s comment 2643
> everything is in FTSE Global All Cap, through Vanguard platform. £50k SIPP, £65k ISA. SIPP gets one purchase a year, ISA 4 or 5 times a month.

Isn’t the cheapest option that is still simple (i.e. just have one fund in an ISA, rather than cool but maybe more complicated Fidelity swap-between-different-investments optioned that @C suggested) Lloyds Dealing Shares ISA? £40 ISA fee, plus £1.50 48–60 times a year, gives £112 to £130. Interactive Investor was suggested, but I think it’s more expensive when trading more than once a month because their free ‘regular investment’ system only allows monthly trades?

I’d be interested in what other folks think about this example, in case I’ve made a silly mistake?

Does anyone know if Interactive Brokers ISA can buy into open ended funds? It seems they have a list of open ended funds with no fee to buy/sell, but I didn’t see mutual funds/open ended funds being listed in their ISA FAQ

Following are listed by IBUK as allowed investments under ISA:
Shares
Securities issued by Companies
Recognised UCITS
Depository Receipts, American Depository Receipts and American Depository Shares

If they do permit buying mutual funds without fees then it seems like a really good deal at £3 a month with good fx fees to buy into US shares if I want to. £36 a year if I do I trade a month.

Can anyone help with better alternative? Interactive Investors would be my second choice as their fees would cost £120 a year for same transactions

@Charlie Interactive Brokers only offer US based mutual funds, none of which you can actually buy in the UK. This is true outside of ISAs too.

You can’t actually buy any of those listed for some reason, try and do so and you get told they’re for professional investors only.

> Limited to Professional Investors Only. Prior approval from Vanguard Asset Management Ltd. is required to trade these funds. If you are an institutional investor, please contact distributor_management@vanguard.co.uk to request approval. No trading from retail investors will be accepted. Please note Vanguard’s UK domiciled funds are only available to UK tax residents located in the UK.

@The Accumulator and Adam

Thanks a lot for the information especially the mutual fund search tool. I’m interested in mutual funds mainly because I want to invest in Fundsmith, I see both T class and I class are available in the fund search tool with region set to the UK, worst case I guess I can still buy the T class with no transaction fee. Given this is managed by UK fund house I’m guessing that’s wouldn’t be an issue? I’m planning to buy Vanguard ETFs listed on LSE so not being able to buy US dom mutual funds is not a concern for me.

I vaguely remember it’s better to hold Irish domiciled funds anyway for non-US person, could anyone help me with advantages of holding US dom funds compared to what we normally have in the UK (Irish dom or Lux dom)?

The ii deal (SIPP + ISA for £240 a year with 1 free monthly trade and free regular investing) is my second best favourite as IB does not offer direct SIPP, but won’t be able to buy US shares due to the 1 % fx fee which is a shame. Would be great if someone knows better alternatives?

Would be grateful if someone knows where to find how a typical IB ISA US stock trade looks like as ISA can’t hold USD.

I suppose if you’re going for a high cost fund like Fundsmith (1% OCF) then you definitely don’t want to be giving your broker another x%

@Andrew: When I started my investing journey around 2012, I made the usual mistakes: bought what the pension funds were buying including Shell, Unilever and also decided to have a punt with Fundsmith. The others fell by the wayside but Fundsmith seemed to deliver life-changing amounts. When I decided that I wanted a simple all-passive portfolio I sold most of them but hung onto what I call my Freebies — funds where I kept a portion equivalent to less than my profits on them.
It costs nothing to hold with iWeb, so Terry Smith is getting his 0.95%, for my I-class fund but I don’t feel the pain.
There is of course an opportunity cost: compared to a simple S&P500 accumulating tracker like CSP1, Fundsmith has fallen behind over the last three years.
But I am hanging onto it for the most childish of reasons: its mutual fund ID code is FUQUIT.

@Barney – not even “nearly”, only around half passive, but it depends on your definition of passive. In the literal sense of not reacting to what happens, then I’m fairly passive (or lazy) depending on your point of view.
I have two general platforms (HL & Jarvis) and two constrained platforms (Vanguard and Fundsmith). No platform fees paid anywhere as I only use the general platforms for direct share holdings or ETFs. For Vanguard, I was an early investor in the U.K. when it required paper forms and cheques, and so I don’t pay the ‘new’ platform charge.

@Adam

Thanks a lot for that. I do see you are trying to invest in the I class which has a minimum of 5 million, would there be any luck with T class which is the retail class on IBUK ISA? Thank you!

Reason why I don’t use Fundsmith website for that is because I want to diversify within ISA in a single year. Like Onedrew said Fundsmith’s performance has been lagging CSP1 in the last 3 years but I do like Terry’s investment philosophy and their performance post fee is still better than most active managers I know so want to keep my allocation.

@Charlie
Huh you’re right, I don’t get the warning with the T class – could’ve sworn I tried that before. Haven’t actually tried to execute, but it doesn’t throw the error instantly like it does with the I class. These minimum limits normally apply to the broker, surprised IBKR don’t hold 5m, every other broker I’ve purchased Fundsmith with do. Also why’re they assuming I’ve not got 5m and fobbing off with professional classification.

Hi,

Close brothers have started a £150+vat yearly admin fee for their SIPP.

https://www.closebrothersam.com/investing-online/self-invested-personal-pension/

@Thomas, I was with Bestinvest for isas and negotiated a 5p discount for a small investment, having presented them with “I’ll move otherwise”. It may be worth a try with your Sipp. After a while I moved anyway.

Can you explain what you mean by the term ‘Unrestricted Portfolios’?

@TA @Rosario: Does iWeb not knocked AJ Bell into a cocked hat for ETF buyers within an ISA at £5 a trade and no platform fee v £9.95 a trade and £42pa platform fee? It doesn’t take long for iWeb’s one-off £100 entry fee to amortise itself away. The ability to set tradeplans free of charge for rebalancing/buying dips is brilliant. I do use Vanguard to spread the protection, though.

@Rosario. You’re right and this underscores TA’s point that the outcome can be very different depending on the individual. I’m at the spending rather than investing phase, so the only new income for my investments is dividends and I cannot take advantage of the £1.50 regular investment fee.

@TA: I think, expressed rather clumsily, I am saying that even if you trade quite a lot – say 15+ times a year – there isn’t a cheaper way than iWeb’s to do so using a tradeplan to set the buy/sell price. So quite nice, but niche.

Thanks for the effort you put into maintaining this, its an invaluable resource which I point people to on an almost daily basis. One key thing I think its missing is FX charges, specifically for ISAs where you’re trapped to doing FX on both ends of the trade. Have you considered adding?

Has anyone opened an ISA with InvestEngine? Would you do the same knowing what you know now? It looks pretty good but I’m feeling risk averse today.

@Onedrew – Yes, I’ve opened an ISA with InvestEngine. It was easy to do, everything worked as expected so far, and I’d do it again. The only potential downsides I could see are that any ISA transfers in are done as a cash transfer, and it’s not a “flexible” ISA (which means that if you put cash in and then withdraw it you’ve used up some of your annual allowance).

@Marc There’s no real risk using the same broker, no. If Fidelity went bust then you’d still own your shares. The only situation where you could lose out would be if there were some fraud at Fidelity, and your shares effectively got stolen, but that’s very unlikely. Many people have ISAs and SIPPs with the same broker and don’t worry about it.

Thanks @TheAccumulator @Martin Quinlan. Thanks for pointing out that HL / Fidelity regular investing don’t work with ETFs – I hadn’t realised that. Sounds like AJ Bell allows regular investing with ETFs, and as such AJ Bell wins over Fidelity / HL.

Can I get your thoughts on the best / cheapest platform to buy ETFs in a Trading account outside regular investing (i.e. buy when I want to / can vs. a regular schedule). Say you place 12X trades a year, I see it as:

AJ Bell: £42 + £9.95 X 12 = ~£160
II: ~£120
HL: £11.95 X 12 = ~£143
Fidelity = £10 X 12 = £120
iWeb = £100 (one off) + £5 X 12 = £160 in Y1, £60 thereafter

Does that sound right? Would you recommend one or the other?

InterActive Investor is being taken over by Abdn

https://www.abrdn.com/corporate/media-centre/media-centre-news-article/proposed-acquisition-of-interactive-investor

And I hear that Mafekin has been relieved too.

@Marc
If you are just swapping, the only issue is that you lose a little if the price goes up between when you sell the fund and buy the ETF. I tend to take the view that it is a flip of a coin whether the price goes up or down, so if I do the switches spread over several days I’ll probably have a few down days and a few up days.

The longer the gap between selling and buying, the greater the possible price movement. Bear in mind that a fund sale will not take place immediately whereas an ETF purchase is instant. Ideally, you should find out exactly what time of day they calculate the fund price and you should time the ETF purchase for the same time. But that only works if you have spare cash to make the purchase, because you won’t have cash available from the fund sale for a day or two.

@Chris B
Thanks. No doubt TI will go into this more in the imminent article, but very helpful to know that it is the dividends that are the issue.

The cost might be quite low, I imagine. If the ETF yields, say, 1% and the FX charge is, say, 1%, then the cost is 1 basis point. So, I might still be better off going for HMWO and HMEF, which are a few BP cheaper than the Vanguard accumulation ETFs.

Interactive Investor is £120 for their SIPP if you have another account with them. Same price as AJB, but with II the price applies whether you hold funds or ETFs.

Thanks @IvanOpinion and @The Accumulator

@TA what’s the main reason you don’t keep everything with a single platform?

@IvanOpinion, do I need an ISA with Interactive Investor to get the £120 fee or would it work with a dealing account that I would open just to fund the fees?

Thanks

Hi, I’m new to investing and looking to invest around 100GBP per month, and gradually increase. What is the best platform I should use? Intend to buy stocks and ISA.

@Kante. It’s called the “SIPP builder” plan and it’s £12.99/mo. To switch to it you need to close any general dealing or ISA you hold there.

Thank you Monevator for such an amazing website and comparision. I wanted to ask if anyone has lloyds share dealing and can share customer service experience. ? Mainly looking to invest in funds in ISAs. is there any private messaging service for help/queries or is it calling them everytime? Does it take very long to get through to them? Are customer service knowledgeable and helpful? Thanks

Thank you for such a wonderful article. I came across Monevator through a recommendation and the amount of information available to investors is amazing! I have £60k in a Stocks & Shares ISA with Fidelity at the moment, all of it invested in the Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Acc fund. Would it be wise to switch to another platform to save fees and which one would you recommend? Alternatively, would I be better off investing in ETFs with Fidelity and pay their fixed fee of £45? I am over 50 and plan to retire in around 12 years. Thanks

@The Accumulator Thanks for your quick reply. I mistakenly typed LifeStrategy 60, it’s actually LS 80. Might sound like a silly question, would I still need to invest in 2 ETFs instead of one and why? Meanwhile I will look at Lloyds. Who are using at the moment if I may ask?

@ Rajesh – Wot Chris B said. Though I’d caution that if you’re pound cost averaging into your investments every month then iWeb’s dealing fees get pretty expensive.

I’m in Fidelity and AJ Bell but that’s because I’ve got ETFs in SIPPs. If I was opening a stocks and shares ISA then I’d take a look at InvestEngine.

Sell for cash any funds that cannot be transferred in specie to your new platform and then ask it to contact Fidelity and arrange the transfer of all your remaining funds and cash between them. They will probably ask you to fill a form for them. Usually there is no charge for this work, and on the contrary most platforms pay you quite a lot to transfer to them. After all, their fees will come to a very significant amount in the end.

@Rajesh – Last time I looked Fidelity would only do a full transfer of an ISA to another platform, not a partial transfer.

Please which platform is the cheapest for UK investors who want to buy into Berkshire Hathaway B shares.
Thanks

Interesting to read they’re now going to engage in stock lending. Be interested in the Monevators thoughts on that, and how commonplace that is with other brokers?

Got an email tonight from them Adam with an update to their T&Cs that suggests they are starting with UK equities and looking to expand in the future.

“Hi Adam

Earlier this year, we announced our plans to start lending securities as part of our mission to build a sustainable business.

While we still plan to launch this in the future, the rollout is being postponed and we will not commence securities lending at this point in time.

We’ll update you and provide you with the relevant information and plenty of notice before introducing any changes in the future.

Best,

Robin”

Re: partial transfers – Fidelity only do full transfers to them. But isn’t it down to the receiving broker as to whether they will accept a partial transfer? In other words, if Freetrade facilitate partial transfers then it seems unlikely that Fidelity will object to retaining some of your assets.

I could be wrong but worth double-checking.

Thanks for the update Rajesh. It seems Fidelity are an all or nothing kind of partner 🙂

Yes. II reducing trade fees from £7.99 to £5.99 – good.
Reducing expiry of free trades from 90 days to 31 – bad.

Silly question but anyone knows if generally platforms have all funds available or not (with exception of platforms like Vanguard). For example, I was looking for “FTSE Developed World ex-U.K. Equity Index Fund” on Lloyds’ website and cant seem to find it. Thanks.

I’m looking at “small pot withdrawals” from a pension. As I understand it some SIPPs support multiple arrangements which means that, even with a SIPP of total value greater than £10k, a small pot withdrawal of up to £10k can be taken without contributing to your life time allowance. Does anyone know which SIPPs would support this?

Apologies if this is covered above, but what about withdrawals? I’m aware that Vanguard offer free SIPP withdrawals including the transaction fees associated with liquidating the asset(s), but I haven’t seen this with other platforms. For monthly withdrawals over a long retirement this could make quite a big difference.

Hi all

What’s best for a salary sacrifice sipp investing monthly with global all cap?

I already hold a SIPP with vanguard directly but they don’t allow salary sacrifice contributions

Saf – I use AJ Bell for this reason but am considering swapping out to Vanguard before retirement.

Accumulator – thanks and yes, this probably needs looking at. The advantage of monthly withdrawals is that you stay in the market, as I’m sure you’re aware, which can make a difference over the lifetime of pension withdrawals.

As you suggest, I’m consolidating down to a few key Vanguard funds for a possible in specie transfer to their platform. I may keep some of the others with AJB but that makes the rebalancing and whatnot more tricky.

If ive already paid into an S&S ISA this tax year can I open another one with another provider and transfer this into that?

Thanks Andrew.

@ Simon – There’s more fiddly wrinkles that cover edge cases. Here’s some extra info in case relevant:

https://monevator.com/dont-wait-to-open-your-stocks-and-shares-isa/

You can have as many stocks and shares ISAs as you like, so long as you don’t put new money into more than one per tax year.

You can split money across a stocks and shares ISA, lifetime ISA, cash ISA, and innovative finance ISA, provided you don’t put in more than £20,000 between them,2 nor open more than one of each type, in the same tax year.

You must transfer the whole balance if you’re transferring your current tax year’s stocks and shares ISA

You can transfer it into a different type of ISA – provided you haven’t already opened one of that type this tax year. In that instance, you can also open a new stocks and shares ISA later that tax year. This is an exception to the one-type-of-ISA-a-tax-year rule.

Looks like I am giving Interactive Investor £80 a year I don’t need to. I’ve been with II since the start of my investing journey and the costs have slowly crept up… often after they buy another company :-). The only positive move has been for free regular investing, which meant smaller monthly additions were a no-brainer (vs. a £1.50 fee on a £100 monthly investment = 1.5% ‘trading fee’, for example)… but regular investment is not on the cards for the foreseeable future so no need to ‘pay annually’ for that.

Is there anywhere comparing the features / customer service of the brokers (a search for Lloyds in these comments didn’t turn up much)? I don’t need ‘research’ features but seeing a pretty graph of my portfolio would be nice :-). Finding useful + impartial reviews via Google proved difficult. I also couldn’t find any the list of funds Lloyds support, to check for compatibility with my existing portfolio.

Finally, does anyone know if changing provide counts as a sale of the shares for capital gains purposes? BTW: I’m considering this might be a “pro”, if I can realise some gain that is within my tax-free allowance. Obviously doesn’t apply to ISA investments (where it would need to be transferred within it’s tax wrapper).

I am looking to consolidate my old pensions into a SIPP. I gather that pension transfers take a bit of time, the companies that hold the pensions Prudential, Legal and General and Aviva, all mention an origo system to speed things up. Does this ring a bell with anyone and do any of the platforms support this way of transferring. (I am thinking of using Interactive Brokers since there fx fees are cheap compared to others)

I’ve recently switched from iweb to interactive brokers aka IBKR (following a recommendation here from Finumus) – thanks Finumus! 🙂 IBKR has whopping advantages over iweb for buying foreign shares so I’m overall very happy I switched:

– Iweb’s FX fee is 750 times higher than IBKR’s. That’s not a typo! SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY!!!! (iweb=1.5%, IBKR=0.002%).
– Iweb pays ZERO interest on cash holdings. IBKR pays 3.33% on US$ & 2.1% on GBP (over $10k).
– Iweb has FSCS protection limit of £86,000. IBKR has equivalent US protection up to $0.5m ($0.25m for cash)
– Iweb has no referral program. If you get a referral to IBKR you can get 1% of your investment up to $1,000 if held for one year.
– Iweb’s trading costs are (generally) far higher than IBKR’s. Hard to compare but I did a test buy & sell of a twitter share and it cost me 25p, the same transaction on iweb would have been ~£6.50.

Main downside of IBKR is it’s aimed at businesses & experienced professionals, so is very (very!) complicated to learn compared to Iweb and it would be super easy to do a fat finger trade or to get sucked in and start gambling one’s savings on pork belly futures. I’m also a bit less thrilled dealing with a US company (although it is listed and FCA authorised) whereas iweb is wholly UK.

Couple of corrections to the wonderful table for IBKR above: (i) the chart says “no fx fee”, actually it is 0.002%. And (ii) the share trading cost summary of £4 is only for GBP shares, US shares are cheaper. Also (iii) I would mention the interest on cash savings (huge benefit!)

@TheAccumulator – thanks for the reply! I do think the table is incorrect for Interactive Brokers – it seems to have a dash in the column for “FX Fees” instead of the correct information which is “spot plus 0.002%”. Am I missing something? I also appreciate it’s extra difficult to compare FX rates given some brokers also charge a hidden FX commission via the spread (do they have to disclose this?).

Finally – why don’t you do referral links to brokers? Seems like you guys are missing out on an easy passive income stream (the dream!!) and some brokers will hand out gifts to both referrer & referee (e.g. Trading212 / IKBR / InvestEngine) that you simply miss out on by signing up directly. By way of comparison, Moneysavingexpert does referral links all over the place and no-one seems to object (they do explain why and that it never affects their editorial line, not sure I wholly believe that…but that’s another post)!

@TA thanks for the better link – I had found https://monevator.com/personal-finance-tools-and-calculators/ and your Morningstar recommend from 2015. I guess you’ve had time to find any weaknesses!

@Dawn,
No idea if they allow partial transfers, but I had a bad experience with them and moved investments elsewhere. Other people will have different experiences to report.
I believe that X-O, also featured in the table allow partiable transfers. Their ISA fees are zero (Saving £42p.a) and dealing fees are only £5.95. You can avoid the dealing fees altogether if you but accumulation versions of the ETFs.
Also, from what I can see AJB are offering £500 to cover exit fees. If you have no exit fees…..

Fidelity fees changing 1 Feb 2023
Most notable is the service fee cap on ETFs/ITs doubling from £45 to (a still competitive) £90
There is a link on this web page:
https://www.fidelity.co.uk/services/charges-fees/fees-more-detail/
It will be interesting to see what Hargreaves Lansdown does (I’ve always assumed their similar cap was in part a decision based on Fidelity’s cap).

Fidelity haven’t announced this price change to customers yet, I guess we can hope they’ve grandfathered us into the old – but probably not. It just silently appeared on their site.

@Andrew

Thanks for the heads up, with this cashback deal I’m thinking now is the time to transfer my Vanguard S&S ISA pot across but keep using Vanguard for my monthly contributions. I’m only 34 so a long way to go yet to decumulation.

Is this possible / within the rules / simple enough to achieve without either provider breaking anything in the process?! I don’t want to lump up the £100 to only find I’m then stuck with iWeb and their costly dealing fee (compared to Vanguard at least)

I guess given the other recent updates have been mentioned it is worth noting the HL transfer cashback offer returning.

I’m still in a Fidelity cashback 18 month lock-in period so will be missing out on the HL offer this time (even with the 3 month extension to the March 2023 closing date on request)

@Onion – Same letter from Fidelity here. A couple of extra details:
– If you DON’T have a regular savings plan set up the fee floor is moving from £45 to £90, and the threshold for that fee is moving from £7,500 to £25,000.
– If you DO have a regular savings plan set up the service fee will be 0.35% of the total for an investment of up to £250,000, capped at £90 per year.

I currently have about £100K across SIPP and ISS in Interactive Investor. I pay £19.99 a month. Thinking of switching to Freetrade to halve my costs to £9.99 a month. Anyone got any experience of them? And if I transfer my II accounts to Freetrade, can they do a specie transfer or will I need to sell all my holdings first? Thanks!