Broker comparison: cheap investment platforms UK

@David

re. ATS to iWeb transfer

Amazingly 1 day after I subjected ATS’ customer service manager to 15 mins of complaining and threatening to pull all our other accounts my ISA/dealing account transfers are magiclly completing

Funny how in 3 months they did nothing

Obviously this shows they are perfectly capable of doing it very quickly if they want to

However, I am still leaving as soon as I can find some other cheaper places to put the rest of the money

Interactive Brokers can’t be beat on price. Whilst I’ve not myself found a way to trade ISA’s through their platform you can trade a SIPP as long as one uses a Pension Trustee company to ensure compliance with HMRC rules. I trade large percentage of my SIPP on Interactive Brokers platform:
https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=/en/accounts/individuals/sippAdministrators.php&ib_entity=uk.

Also worth noting is the cost of FX conversion which is where Interactive Brokers really kills the above listed brokers. In comparison many of the aforementioned charge eye watering fees for FX conversion e.g. to get TD Direct lowest FX commission fee of 0.5% you need to be changing a minimum of £100,000. Ouch!

Having been involved in a SIPP and ISA transfer from Hargreaves Lansdown to Interactive Investor since February I was inspired to see the model letter of complaint on H-L’s exit charges. I have adapted it and am about to send it off. I have already paid the exit fees they demanded. I did ask to have them waived over the phone, but naturally I was refused and accepted it as I didn’t feel inclined to go further at the time.

Most infuriatingly, H-L also took it upon themselves to sell off some of my holdings to pay for new ongoing charges (the very ones causing me to leave in the first place) even after accepting my exit fees! When I phoned to complain, they did agree to refund me in cash. Has anyone else heard of this sort of behaviour from H-L or any other broker?

Have discovered that Liberty SIPP will charge a fixed flat rate SIPP charge of £150.00 + VAT per annum and will allow Vanguard Lifestrategy 60% Equity fund to be held with no additional fee for monthly contributions. Their online application appears straightforward. Also if a adult holds a SIPP account a Child SIPP is available with no annual fee until the child reaches the age of 16 when the annual fee is applied. Therefore, it appears that I can move from HL and their charging structure and still invest in my chosen Vanguard passive retirement vehicle. So a further three SIPP accounts will be exiting HL. I thought I would share this discovery with you all as Liberty SIPP have not been identified previously as a option on Monevator.

An excellent and very useful table that you’ve put together here, thanks very much.

Re: the Hargreaves Lansdown SIPP, it’s worth noting that the 0.45% fee is only capped at £200 for ETFs and shares; for funds there is no cap. However, the fee reduces if you have a larger portfolio of funds – see: http://www.hl.co.uk/pensions/sipp/charges-and-interest-rates. Might be worth updating your table as this confused me slightly.

Also worth noting that the exit fees for the HL SIPP from 2nd June are being brought in line with their standard exit fees. Therefore it will cost £25 per stock to transfer to a different SIPP provider from 2nd June.

There isn’at a Platform charge shown for Alliance Trust.

It is

£18.75 per quarter for ISA or dealing account
£155 per annum for SIPP

http://www.alliancetrustsavings.co.uk/forms-documents/fees-charges/Table-of-Charges.pdf

@Andy

The VAT inclusive figures are shown in the platform fee column for ATS.

@ The Accumulator – I phoned them and found them to be very helpful. Their £150.00 + VAT (£180.00) is a set annual fee which covers one standard investment. Certainly this covers Vanguard Tracker funds and Lifestrategy. If I wanted to hold a additional fund I believe it would incur a additional £25 + VAT annual fee. My understanding is that regular investments i.e. monthly do not incur any additional fee. Also a bank account is set up with Metro Bank where the annual fee is collected from along with monies to be invested in the SIPP. This account pays 1% interest on any monies deposited. Collecting annual fee once a year on anniversary of account opening and in advance for the first year from this account is much cleaner than the method HL have instigated. Over time the set fee is a fairer prospect for SIPP administration than paying HL a percentage of my fund value. This percentage route is what really grates with me. Fund growth is supposed to be for my benefit. A set charge for a set level of administration is open, transparent and fair.

A thought on transfer/exit-fees. If you are going to have to pay them to switch platform then maybe you would expect a certain level of service with respect to the money paid. For example, one metric may be timeliness. I have no been waiting for 3 months for HL to complete an in specie transfer. If I were paying their transfer fees I would be really annoyed and be demanding a refund.

I think if a fee is to be charged, it should be tied to some sort of expectation of the service received for that charge. As it stands the transfer process is a complete joke.

Never mind! I’d calculated 2.5% fee, not 0.25%. Doh.

I noticed by chance that iWeb is part of Halifax, as well as Motley Fool. Does this mean that if I have an account with iWeb and Halifax Sharedealing, the FCSC 80K cash and 50K Nominee guarantee is shared between them?

If so, it may be a good idea to indicate on the list if a dealing platform is owned by another.

Great work by the way!

Steve

Hi, my two cents

I have accounts currently with TD, Charles Stanley, Iweb, Best Invest and Canada Life Offshore.

I also recently closed my Cavendish/Fidelity account because the “fidelity lite” website (for me) was horrendous. Far too opaque and clunky for my liking with no proper account statement and cash balance available at all. I’m also in the process of closing down Best Invest and TD since the web portals and customer service there leave much to be desired in my experience of two years plus. (Best Invest first overcharging on exempt funds and then dragging their feet with a refund followed by delaying transfers out by an extraordinary amount while TD is just generally awful with frequent website failures and gremlins blamed on customers anti-virus software amongst other excuses.)

I’ve chosen Charles Stanley for Investment trusts (12 trades annually, used to rebalance with new money, costing £120 and nothing else to pay) along side an index tracking portfolio (costing 0.25% p.a.) whilst Iweb is used for share dealing at £5 a pop with no other fees.

I don’t know how people rate websites but in my experience the Charles Stanley website is head and shoulders above the others I’ve used, as is their customer service via secure message or telephone, and they’re constantly developing it too. I found the TD website horrendous to use for buying and selling with all sorts of gremlins around the buying and selling of funds whilst the Best invest website in my experience is painfully slow and clunky plus their accounting and statements leave much to be desired.

I hate to sound like a cheerleader for anyone but credit where it’s due.

Hi, I too have decided to leave HL (at least for my ISA) due to their annoying ad valorem charge structure and go to Interactive Investor instead. William correctly points out that growth in my portfolio should be for my benefit, not the platform. As its an in-specie transfer, i filled the forms for II approx two months ago and have just received their standard letter on how the timeline for transfer has not met their usual high standards etc. They also claim the fault is with the existing provider in their letter.

I completely agree with The Rhino that payment of a fee to exit should be matched by some basic level of service. Question is, is it really HL who are dragging their feet here? How can I tell in order to complain to the right people? Its HL that will be charging the exit fee (although i have had no communication at all from them on the transfer) so i can only complain to them if they are indeed the reason for the delay. Has anyone else any experience with this issue with these specific providers?

Jsc77,

My experience is that the performance of my investments is inversely proportional to the frequency with which I check them.
More frequent checking leads to more frequent action/charging. I would strongly recommend you don’t download an app – they’re the devil’s work don’t you know. Which fits with HL having the best!

Does anyone else use TQ (Torquil Clark)? Not sure if they completely fit a category. Would be interesting to see comparison.

II’s SIPP administrators are turning out to be their own worst enemies. Not only are they incredibly slow generally, but also incompetent and self-interested.
On II’s specific advice, I paid not only the SIPP transfer fee but the first year’s administration fee up front when applying for an II SIPP – specifically to ensure that my investments weren’t mulcted for administration fees. But when, as soon as the account was opened, I transferred the funds for my first lump sum investment – the £2,880 net that’s all a non-earner is allowed – the administrators deducted another administration fee from that.
Protesting to II got me apologies but they took 13 days after I’d transferred the funds, with a view to immediate investment, to refund the duplicate fee.

It’s a painful learning process, this necessary transfer to another broker, isn’t it? I’m a month or so behind you on timing but doing slightly better in terms of information – although no doubt II now hates me for all the secure messages I send them!
I’ve just learned from II that the reason that only my shares have reached my II ISA, not the fundholdings that disappeared from my HL ISA ten days ago (and which HL then listed in a message, with transfer dates, when I objected to the lack of record of where they’d gone), is that the fundholdings were treated (not clear whether by HL or II) as part of my SIPP valuation! Not that there’s been any movement of any of my SIPP holdings at all, so far….
It bothers me that, although HL say that they only de-list any transferred holding when they receive confirmation from the fund managers that it’s no longer registered with HL (and, from the dates they quoted, some of the confirmations appear to have taken weeks to reach HL), the new broker doesn’t immediately list it. Surely a fundholding held through a broker should be simultaneously de-registered from one broker and re-registered in the name of the new broker, not left hanging in limbo?

Jonny – You’re brave even contemplating re-starting this saga. I have lost count of the number of phone calls to both HL and II now. I don’t know what I would do if I suddenly needed this money that has gone into limbo.

Hi

I’m just starting out with a minimum investment monthly investment. What would be the best platform for £50 monthly recurring investment (which will increase next year and increase quite substantially following that) into Vanguard LifeStrategy 100%?

Similar to A James, I’m thinking of starting with the Vanguard Lifestrategy range. I’ll start with £2,000 ISA deposit and put £100/month into it thereafter. Does anyone have any recommendations on the best broker? Ideally I want something that’s low maintenance that I can forget about over the long term.

Also as I’m new to investing, can anyone tell me if it’s better to go with Lifestrategy 80 or 100? I’m 30 years old and do not mind taking on the risk.

I saw in another post on Monevator that opening two funds enables Lifestyling the investment (by re-allocating your contribution to a more low risk fund as you get older), http://monevator.com/lifestyle-vanguard-lifestrategy-funds/. So, should I open a Lifestrategy 100 and then a more bond heavy fund in a few years?

That said, I’ve read that “a few studies indicate that a 80%/20%, stock/bond mix will actually outperform, very slightly, 100% stocks” on http://jlcollinsnh.com/2012/05/12/stocks-part-vi-portfolio-ideas-to-build-and-keep-your-wealth/.

Thanks in advance, and apologies if my questions appear naive. I’m new to this, but keen to learn!

Thanks Peter. I’m in the process of switching (going on for ages now) so that’s worth knowing and keeping an eye on that. Anyone have the inside track?

@David – I’m with you on that one. I started in February, from H-L to II. I recently got the ISA funds appearing on II after 6 weeks in limbo and months of phoning, during which time one of the funds has undergone miraculous growth of several thousand percent…Now the fund where the bulk of my SIPP is has finally vanished from H-L with no sign of it on II. Looks like I could either end up rich beyond my wildest investment dreams or spending the rest of my life searching for lost funds..

In II you need to insert the correct original cost of each fund/share yourself, so the gain is calculated correctly.

Just stumbled over the latest kink in the process of transferring an ISA away from HL – unexpected late receipts.
HL’s online record of the ISA account disappeared completely several weeks ago, after they’d recorded the fund managers’ de-registration confirmations – but apparently that didn’t mean no further activity on the account.
Their half-yearly investment report (to 30th April) revealed that a series of UTI cash payments and tax credits had later been credited to the account, but mysteriously without triggering the restoration of the online account – which would have let me discover the new receipts in time to invest them for transfer in specie, rather than having the balance transferred in untrackable cash.
Then considerably more receipts apparently appeared – completely unrecorded – after 30th April, of which I’ve only become aware after talking to HL about other aspects of the report resulted in their checking the progress of the transfer of both ISA and SIPP accounts.
Transferors beware – to coin a phrase!

On the subject of CSD, might I suggest that their “good for” column could perhaps include a note of some sort about Shares, IT’s and ETF’s when using only the 12 trades annually (2 x 6) which caps their charges at £120 and makes them table topping when a similar number of trades are compared elsewhere and things like the exit fees are included.

I’ve seen a few tables and comparisons using 10 trades then 20 trades and CSD falls through the gap, when using their 12 x £10 trades annually with no other fees though, if you’re able to use this 6 trades 6 monthly as an imposed discipline, it makes them extremely competitive.

Admittedly iWeb is always going to be £60 cheaper at £5 a deal but for larger portfolios I’d suggest the CSD web site features, customer service and all round efficiency are well worth that premium.

Aron,

Amending an existing DD I’m not sure, the DD is setup via paper mandate form and has to be (free)posted, shame they can’t fully embrace digital electronic and allow this through e-documentation but it’s a minor inconvenience. I’ve only ever established and cancelled DD’s with them, never altered a live one.

The minimum investment levels are a little convoluted imho, ad-hoc initial purchases of a new holding are subjected to a £500 minimum investment, ad-hoc top up of an existing holding has a £100 minimum requirement, and then regular, scheduled monthly top ups into existing holdings have a £50 minimum threshold, presumably the lower amount being because it’s all done on a fixed day each month (the 10th) and everyone’s purchases pooled.

I’m not sure whether a regular monthly can be used to open new holdings of £50 each, I’m sure they’d explain if you called. I’ve always found them extremely helpful.

I’ve used both manual switching and employed their assistance, several times on different occasions, to switch from ACC to INC and they’ll do that for you via clear instructions made by secure message or by phone. It’s my understanding that switching unit type of the same fund is more efficient if they do it internally rather than manually selling, waiting for settlement, then repurchasing and waiting for settlement again.

Hope that helps.

Hi,
It says that some of the platforms are good for holding funds upto a certain amount.
I have about 100k in many different ISA funds mostly with fidelity, now being charged at 0.35% platform fee even for the trackers. Would I be better off paying a fixed annual fee for all my funds?
What would be the most cost efficient platform for me?
Thanks,

Steve, it’s a genuine fund that’s cropped up on a few different brokers. Quite often large scale brokers are able to provide their customers with access to institutional funds that are cheaper than the retail variants. That said, I noticed this fund was subsequently removed from a number of brokers too, so it would be interesting to hear from anyone who has actually tried to invest in it.

Either way, don’t let this put you off iWeb. They’re backed by Halifax and are a perfectly good broker. I’ve been using them for 4 years.

@Steve

I switched to iweb and i think they are as good as any other platform that charges annual fees and quite a bit better than some of them

They accommodated my portfolio of vanguard etfs and a few investment trusts without any trouble

Hi All,

I thought I’d share my own tale of switching fund platform…

Enlightened by months of reading this site I decided to switch from randomly picking active funds each year to a more planned passive approach. Since platform prices changed at the start of this year and the passive funds I want to buy are not on Fidelity’s platform I decided to switch to Interactive investor. And rather cleverly back in February Interactive Investor also offered a switch incentive of £10 per fund. This will eventually mean an extra £120 quid for me – well I hope it will!

Anyway, I instructed Interactive Investor to transfer in my funds in February and today, 4 months later, my funds have still not been switched. In fact worse still my funds actually left Fidelity’s portal quite quickly but have not yet appeared in the Interactive Investors portal, leaving me without any means to trade, sell or buy etc. I must say I feel quite exposed!

This certainly hasn’t been the 4 – 6 weeks I was led to believe at the start.

So please do be wary about switching platform since it doesn’t seem to as quick or as straight forward as the providers claim. At the moment I don’t know whether to expect my funds to appear within a day or two, or whether it will be more months since Interactive Investor seem unable to advise me.

Hopefully everything will get sorted and my active funds won’t have nosedived whilst I can’t trade them .

Cheers,
Darren.

@helfordpirate

Thank you for the information, but (un)fortunately I hold a fund in the trust that was bought in the 1970s with a large capital gain, so I cannot bring myself to sell it all. I will check out HL though.

Interactive Investor have published their revised SIPP terms. Details below:

http://www.iii.co.uk/sipp/existing-customers

II’s SIPP is managed by another company which will take the annual SIPP fee automatically from any lump sum that you invest into the SIPP – and they are liable to do so even if you’ve already paid that year’s fee when setting up the account, which is what happened to me. I had to make a complaint to II about double payment and either wait ten days for the refund to take effect or invest the main sum and the refund separately, with consequently doubled dealing fees.

II sends every customer a notification every quarter, warning you to put funds into your account to cover the next quarter’s fees. (They currently do this even to their SIPP customers, who just have to ignore it every time.) The small print in their terms and conditions will tell you which account they take it from but (from memory) I think that it’s the trading account that they go for initially, although presumably they’ll mulct an ISA if the trading account doesn’t have enough in it.

Don’t know how differently the system will operate after this fee change takes effect but they’ll probably make as little change as possible – so expect the SIPP fees to be taken from the SIPP investment and the II quarterly fee, from the trading account or, in default, your ISA.

on pensions (holding tracker funds) via cavendish online: below £15k, their stakeholders are cheaper – or you can get the same price (0.55%) directly with aviva. above £15k, a personal pension via cavendish is cheaper than a stakeholder (somewhere between 0.35% and 0.5%, depending on account size and provider). these are all combined costs for pension wrapper + tracker funds, making it difficult to say when a SIPP becomes cheaper.

to get a share certificate, it is perhaps cheapest to buy in a trading account and then make a certificated withdrawal.
with SVS securities, this costs £5.75 (dealing commission) + £15 (for certificated withdrawal) = £20.75
with X-O, it costs £5.95 (dealing) + £15 (or perhaps £18 if VAT is added?) (certificate) = £20.95 (or perhaps £23.95)

i don’t think you can get certificates for ETFs, however, so that is only relevant if you flirt with the “dark side” (active management) 🙂

Have to add mine and my wifes experience here…

My wife is now at 23 weeks and counting for a single Vanguard LS transfer from TDD to III, submitted paperwork in late Feb.

I find out today that the transfer was cancelled in late March by TDD as we forgot to update my partners salutation from Miss to Mrs at TDD after we were married. All other details are identical.

Neither broker informed us of the rejection until today and only after we chased things at both ends with the threat of complaining to FOS. Meanwhile we received an email from III in late April saying all was progressing, allbeit slowly and to sit tight.

On my side, I submitted paperwork at the same time and I’m still waiting for the last of my 6 Vanguard funds to come over from HL. The first fund came over about 3 months ago. Why such a gap between the transfers, nobody can shed any light on that either, so I can only put it down to complete incompetence on all sides.

All in all a completes dog’s breakfast and there needs to be a serious crackdown on S&S ISA transfer processes. Only until penalties are imposed for transfers that extend beyond a defined timescale will things improve. The current situation is just not acceptable in a day and age when you can send large sums of cash online in seconds.

I mean how hard can it be to transfer one fund.

@TA: What about Interactive Brokers? They seem to have a UK operation nowadays and even offer SIPPs, but their website is extremely confusing; it keeps redirecting me to their US site with US-relevant info and fees. They have a reputation over there for being very low cost, so it’d be nice to nail down what their prices if we use their UK arm… They seemingly give you access to a load of different markets, which may be handy for diversification.

Re comment from Tom about Fidelity SIPP: I have been looking at moving to Fidelity from HL (.35 vs .45 platform charge) for ISA and possibly SIPP but think reason there appears to be only .35% on a SIPP from Fidelity and no charge for anything else (ie when drawing as pension etc) is, I think, because the SIPP is administered by a third party and they will levy fees. So much as I resent paying HL a platform fee that is much, much higher than the percentage paid for the funds themselves (how can that be right?), the comparison is not straightforward. Maybe others here will know more. Another gripe that I am sure others will agree with is (even though does not affect me as all accumulation funds) the nerve of HL to charge to reinvest your dividends – what is the .45% paid for if not for things like that. Grrrh.

Steve – Not sure that’s actually the case. The first contribution to my SIPP by cheque from my limited company had the £144 (£120 +VAT) taken from it and the remainder was invested. I was not asked to pay the SIPP fees upfront on opening.

I don’t use the trading account and have never funded it so I’m not sure if that makes a difference.

I just called Interactive Investor and asked about this. The guy on the phone said that I had to pay the fee for the first year on my debit card but that in subsequent years it could be taken from cash in the SIPP. He said they had done this to increase transparency and avoid confusion; apparently in the past they did wait and take the fee once funds were added to the new SIPP but this caused some confusion. I’m not entriely sure I’m happy about this but it doesn’t seem totally unreasonable, and as a one-off I’m probably prepared to swallow it. Not actually going to go and pay it for a day or two while I mull it over though…

Great website and table. Have you thought about adding column to cover FX charges for when receiving foreign dividends?

note many of the comments. One thing – can you get Vanguard Index funds and life strategy funds on Interactive Investor ?

@newbie
£5 per fund is £5 per fund (so 6x£5). Iweb really works better for lump sum investments. If you really wanted to use it, some people prefer the option of investing in fewer funds every month and just switching between those investments each money to get their diversity (so, for example, 2 funds every month on rotation = 4 investments in each of the 6 funds over a year at one third of the cost). But that involves some work and is not for everyone.

On the second question, it really depends on how quickly your portfolio would get to the crossover point where percentage charge options become more expensive than transaction fee options. Within a few years, you may as a well pay a little more now with the future in mind and save having to transfer the account later. More than a few years and I would (subject to current transfer charges) consider staying with the “cheap now” option and re-evaluate when that becomes uncompetitive.

The Cavendish (0.3%pa) SIPP has now been launched

http://www.cavendishonline.co.uk/pensions/

Those who are registered with Trustnet should have got an offer email yesterday for 1 years no platform fees at Trustnet Direct. Don’t think a company has done this before?

Hi I am new to investing but am just about to start after finding this great site I have decided to go with vanguard life strategy with a lump sum but would like to drip feed a monthly amount but am confused which company to use lump sum will be transferred from a cash isa but I have used this years allowance thanks for any help

Thanks for your reply John 40k lump sum and £200 monthly for 9 years I will then 60 and ready for retirement

@David
If you are transferring cash from an ISA then you want to make sure that it stays within the ISA wrapper – you will need to open the stocks and shares ISA with a broker first and then make sure that you complete the ISA transfer form for the broker to manage the transfer of the cash in – then you can purchase the funds.
On no account withdraw the money from the ISA yourself, you will lose the tax advantages.

@David

As Phil says, iWeb are the cheapest option currently.

The first year will cost you £85, which includes the one off £25 account set up fee and assumes you will make all 12 monthly trades into your chosen Vanguard Lifestrategy fund that first year.

Year 2 the cost will be static at £60 p.a and each year thereafter until iWeb change their pricing.

This assumes a £5 purchase fee for each £200 credited monthly with no other chargeable transactions taking place.

I didn’t assume the £5 monthly dealing charge. So iWeb can become rather expense if you’re regularly investing in a number of funds?

I’ve jumped the gun anyway, it would appear that Halifax Share dealing is the cheapest option with a regular investment schedule setup.

That would be just £12.50p.a. and the £2 regular monthly investment fee, so only £36.50 p.a. which is much cheaper than iWeb.

David,

there won’t be a problem transferring the lump sum from a cash ISA to a stocks and shares ISA. A simple transfer form will be all that’s required in my experience, how long it takes can vary but there is no good reason it should take more than a week or two once they’ve received your instruction. The same can’t be said of transferring an existing stocks and shares ISA from one platform to another sadly but that’s another saga.

Obviously if you’ve already used this years allowance you won’t be able to add any more to the ISA this tax year.

If you really wanted to hammer the costs down, one option is to store the monthly contributions as cash in an interest bearing bank account (something like TSB paying 5% gross) and then make a quarterly, bi-annual or even one annual purchase of your chosen Lifestrategy fund with the money saved.

This way you could use iWeb and (not including their one off charge) be paying as little as £5 a year to hold and contribute to your Lifestrategy fund. It’s about what works best for you.

Looks like Vanguard funds have quietly become available on the Fidelity platform (and so I am guessing Cavendish also?).

https://www.fidelity.co.uk/investor/fund-supermarket/vanguard.page

Great news for many with low value SIPPs, who are looking for low overall charges and flexibility to move if required without exit charges, and access to the best passive investments (i.e. Vanguard)

@TonyP

These are the vanguard funds/ETFs on iweb when using the trading tool: http://i.imgur.com/DNvWznY.png It’s just names but hopefully give you an idea. The research centre website doesn’t seem very good at finding the Irish ones, well when I tried anyway.

Thanks!

@Accumulator

It would be a good idea to put a post in here when you update with what the update is, so it would easier to see if a cheaper option has suddenly arrived

I find IWEB one of the best, each to their own I guess

@Neverland – I really agree with that! I check iWeb account hardly ever!!

I transferred a SIPP from Ascentric to Interactive Investor. The transfer process was very long and drawn out, with Ascentric claiming they couldn’t get hold of Interactive Investor and II claiming they hadn’t heard from Ascentric. A few phone calls sorted that out and the funds were successfully transferred with the exception of one. This one was chased by Interactive Investor and soon was credited to my account with the correct number of units but the wrong fund name. This was followed by another fund which appeared and one which I’d never had before. Finally the correct fund turned up but only after I’d called them again. Currently my SIPP is bolstered by two holdings which aren’t even mine! I don’t get the impression that this incompetence affects the running of my SIPP, although I may regret that complacency, but is more to do with archaic and inefficient transfer processes

For various reasons I’m thinking of opening a hargreaves lansdowne share trading account to get rid of some certificated holdings I have

Against all my expectations HL are actually quite cheap for this since there is no annual charge on a trading account and no funds for them to level an annual fee on

They’ve even confirmed the lack of annual fees to me in an email

I feel that somewhere there must be a sting i the tail but we’ll see how it goes….

Neverland, the only potential stings i can think of are:
(a) make sure the account is set to “paperless”, otherwise you’ll be charged £24 per year for paper statements
(b) there is a £30 charge to close the account (if you ever do)

Great comparison table. I was surprised to see Interactive Brokers missing though, which I think has the lowest fees for sharedealing, is there a reason for that?

I’ve been transferring my wife’s stakeholder pension & Cash ISA to Interactive Investor (I use HL). It’s astonishing how slow they are at everything compared to HL. We paid some money into my wife’s SIPP from our bank account, 8 days ago, and it still hasn’t registered on the II website. The ISA transfer appeared as cash, but we weren’t able to use it to trade until 7-days later. It’s appalling. It’s making me stressed, as I feel this quality of service is a reflection of how safe our money is with them. I don’t want to transfer to HL for my wife, because there administration charges on funds are ridiculous.

Is there a provider out there that has the good service of HL, but with the more favorable charges of II ?

I’m wondering if you might consider reviewing drawdown options/charges at some point – could be increasingly relevant given the pension freedom changes. Although I appreciate it may be unclear at the moment how providers are going to respond and what the charges might be.

@algernond: my only other recent experience of transferring a SIPP is with Alliance Trust Savings. In contrast to Interactive Investor they were quick and efficient and I had no complaints with the actual transfer process. On the other hand Interactive Investor do allow you to set up an automated monthly investment of cash already held with them (at lower cost than ad hoc investments) which is in stark contrast to Alliance which does not allow this. The only way to set-up a cheap monthly investment plan with Alliance is to link it with a direct debit. For this reason I recently transferred cash out of Alliance specifically so it could be transferred back by monthly direct debit and be invested at £ 1.50 a trade rather than £ 12.50……

@ Man W – take a look at Cavendish Online, Best Invest and Interactive Investor for your SIPP. 2 accounts is fine and actually positive in terms of diversifying the risk of a broker going kaput.

Does anybody have any experience of transferring an ISA to these companies as a non-UK resident? It’s technically within the rules but finding a company that will actually allow this is proving very difficult. I think I’m about to start an exhaustively contacting each one in turn.

Interactive Investor dropped the option to link family ISA and trading accounts under a single charge at the end of November – just before I planned to get my sons to sign up and link their accounts to mine unfortunately. Existing links still operate.

Hi, a question as to how people arrange their ISA accounts? If you hold both funds and individual stocks.

I have a Charles Stanley ISA within which I hold Vanguard Lifestrat 80, drip-feeding monthly. As my fund is currently low (only started 1 yr ago) CS appears to be good for this.

However for my sins I do want to do a little bit of active – a lower % of my portfolio, perhaps 10% of my S+S allocation. I find it interesting and want to hold out for very occasional buys ( 1 every yr or so) when a good solid stock is too good a value to resist and slowly build up a small HYP in the buffet mantra of buy when price is irresistible and hold indefinitely. The problem being Charles Stanley don’t appear to be good for individual buys, £10 a pop + 0.25% min £20 a year meaning a substantial purchase required to make it worthwhile – say at least £500 – £1000?

If you can only pay into one S+S ISA a year how can I get round this and still keep all my investments in an ISA to save any tax/cap gains faffing? Assuming I plan to invest approx 10K a year I suppose I could deposit max cash in the isa this year, then open new isa with a different provider in April just for the HYP, meanwhile carry on monthly investing into original account throughout the coming year as per normal from the stash of cash in it?

Does this make sense!? How do other people arrange their portfolios? cheers Phil.

@ Phil

One potential is TD Direct, platform fee is now only 0.3% only a tiny bit more than CS and no platform fee for shares and ETF’s, Dealing is £12.50 though buit you can do regular buys at £1.50 (but no sells). I have a CS and a TD – to be honest not sure why now – although TD don’t do all Vanguard funds (mainly not Globals Small Cap, EM and a few others – Irish ones).

However I would potentially concur with @abc1 – active really just seems a waste of time when you try it.

One thought would be and this works okish for me at the mo is to set-up something like TD one year with a buy and hold long term approach in mind. Use the regular invest option to build up a Investment trust basket of 7 or Dividend portfolio. Then don’t touch this for 5-10 years, meanwhile set-up a good cheap passive approach with Vanguard 60/40 and pump money into this for the next ten years and watch them both every now and then. Then one good thing is any time you might think about selling a share/trust is that you think – that will cost me money to sell!

Just a though though and as always I’d (with captain sensible hat on) say “vanguard life strategy all the way!”

@Steve, thanks for the information. I have only been with interactive investor myself since the start of the current tax year. I would agree that they are broadly OK. I have an ISA with them though and they take the fee for that from the trading account first too. I am actually very happy with them doing that since I have maxed-out my ISA and this means the fees are not reducing my ISA at all.
I am tempted to move my Hargreaves SIPP to III too, they are just fractionally cheaper than HL at the moment, perhaps not quite enough to make it worthwhile for me at the moment, so I will need to ponder on that. (Transfers are slow and painful!)
For you, it seems you are already paying for the cost of an ISA with them through the £80 fee, so next tax year you could actually get you ISA with them at ‘zero extra cost’. The 2 trading credits are OK, I don’t really trade, just passively sit there really, but do occasionally rebalance, so it at least the credits go towards that.

Follow-up Question: Is anyone aware of broker(s) that allows you to hold Vanguard Fund GB00B41XG308 within an Equity ISA and charge NO platform fee?

My sympathy, I’ve learned from bitter experience on many websites, especially those that time out when secure messaging, that making a long post or comment is better done in something like notepad, at your leisure, and then pasted in to said comment box when complete. At the very least always select the text and copy it to the clipboard before hitting submit.

Do what I did when I had a really bad experience (mis-transfers into my account from other people transferring from Hargreaves) – write to the CEO Adam Seale, who is based in London. He seems to have got the ball rolling for me….

When in doubt, always hit the top guy. Certainly, the guys in their customer services dept are useless.

@Emanon – Try the financial ombudsman…you will need to file an official complaint with II first but you’ve probably done that already… If it’s not resolved to your satisfaction by the end of that it goes to ombudsman for arbitration. Ultimately you just want to rattle their cage..or at best extract some form of compensation for their incompetence. I did this successfully with TD who gave me conflicting information at the time I was signing up for their ISA.

Does anyone know if Interactive Investor still do the linked/family account charging discount?
My wife called and asked today prior to setting up her transfer and they denied all knowledge of it.

@MattD This previous comment suggests they dropped it back in November: http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/comment-page-15/#comment-681496

I’ve not heard anything, so suspect it only applies to new accounts (for now…)

L&G are offering their trackers on s&s isa account.I was looking into charges but apart from ocf they have not mentioned about any platform charges.
The minimum amount required to open ISA is 1000gbp and further on monthly basis minimum 10pound can be invested.
This is going to be lot cheaper than hl,csd if someone is just looking for L&G trackers.
http://www.legalandgeneral.com/investments/isas/stocks-and-shares-isa/

TD Direct have removed all their exit charges.

This is very encouraging as the disgraceful exit fee practices of firms like Youinvest (they have told me that it is part of their pricing policy to increase fees while charging exit fees to those forced to leave) simply erodes trust in platforms.

Great news about TD, seem they have changed a lot of fees, looking very competitive and fair now – glad I have stuck with them!

On platform on-line interfaces:

HL – The best, although searching fo index funds is trickier
TD – better than it was and not bad now, very easy to sort through the cheapest funds!
CS – OK, but a bit complicated in places to do simple things, very hard to sort funds as the system seems a bit broken

Just wondering guys if the list of UK brokers applies to UK residents only or if the same conditions apply to savers from continental Europe, and in euros that is? I’m specifically interested in index funds, rather than index-based ETFs. Thanks

Today The Motley Fool announced that from Mid March they will be changing their ISA partner to III. At first glance the pricing looks like it will be switching directly to the current III charging structure. I think the most positive thing is that this gives people a good opportunity to switch providers for free.

@ Investing Tortoise

In my case Youinvest quadrupled my charges within 9 months of me joining and then charged me 3 years worth of charges to exit (even though the reason they gave for increasing charges did not directly affect me).

Unfortunately unless you are willing to take a case through the County Court under the unfair terms legislation then in practice there is little you can do to stop platforms with high exit fees acting in this outrageous way. The Financial Ombudsman Service seem to be taking a strongly anti-consumer position in cases submitted to them.

I received a personal email from Andy Bell himself a while back which said

‘it would be quite a radical ruling if the industry had to offer free transfers out whenever charges were increased’

That seems to imply (although that is just my interpretation) that it is part of their pricing policy to increase charges and charge exit fees to those affected (their actions certainly suggest that). Youinvest have separately listed a whole list of reasons when they can increase charges cross subsidy amongst them. So might they use cross-subsidy (relative to funds) to introduce a platform charge on say ETFs, who can say?

The TD Direct move is excellent, and I applaud them for doing the right thing. I couldn’t agree more with John Tracy (head of TD) in his reported comments that ‘We believe a key factor to build consumers’ confidence is to review and reform how we, as an industry, do business’ and ‘Lack of transparency, complexity, the transfer process and high exit fees are four factors that can erode people’s trust in DIY investing’. Note he is talking about removing exit fees generally, and yet Youinvest not only have exit fees, but actually have applied those high exit fees in situations where they are increasing their charges (in my case quadrupling charges while charging 3 years worth of charges to leave). To me Youinvest’s behaviour is dsigraceful, but that is just my view, and it would be interetting to hear if others agree.

@Martin No, this was in reference to a new account.

They did mention that all new accounts opened with a referral code would receive a £30 credit, but this is hardly comparable!

Hi Snowman,
I agree with qpop, they definitely have an obligation to treat you fairly according to their regulator. This link gives a little background information: http://www.fca.org.uk/firms/being-regulated/meeting-your-obligations/fair-treatment-of-customers/
It could well be worth going down the formal complaint route and taking it to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Just the threat of that may improve things for you, so good luck.

Stay Clear of TD Direct

My tale of woe with their regular investment ISA:

* January 2014, switch current account. regular investment DD doesn’t move over. After several weeks dealing with customer services, they tell me my new current account number will never work and I’ll have to fund manually. Random Google turns up Stuart Welch’s (CEO) email address, I email him it gets sorted after another 3 weeks.
* December 2014 – none of my 5 regular fund purchases go through. Customer services say they will place the order manually
* January 2015 – one of my 5 regular fund purchases fail. (but I do nothing about it)
* February 2015 – add extra amounts to the 5 regular fund purchases and an extra share investment re-investing dividends. Three fund purchases go through correctly, one is missing the regular investment element but has the extra amount plus the amount from my share purchase, and the share purchase doesn’t go through at all. I’m left with 1/5 of my regular investment uninvested! Customer Services tell me all trades are placed manually and then added to the account electronically after the fact – sometimes they get miscalculated (well, yes, they’ve gone from an electronic system, to a manual system, and back to an electronic system – that’s at least two chances for a mistake!)

So that’s four problems in 12 months – and three in consecutive months! Plus, they must be the only broker who doesn’t allow automatic dividend reinvestment on some ISA accounts.

I’ll be moving in April. Haven’t decided if I go with halifax (my non-ISA share dealer) or charles stanley

Have to agree on TD Direct. We submitted transfer paperwork last February to move from them to III. They took approx 6 months to tell us that my wife’s transfer had been cancelled and couldn’t proceed as she used her married name on the transfer forms submitted to III (all other details identical), and that was only after we chased them. I’m not absolving III here at all, whenever chased they were apparently still waiting for TDD to respond (they sent them 22 letters apparently).

They then told her she needed to submit certified ID to prove change of name. She sent a passport copy certified by a police officer, not good enough, needed to be a marriage certificate. Marriage certificate copy sent certified by a police officer, not good enough, needed to be certified either by a bank employee or a solicitor (completely out of line with government guidelines on certification of ID). Finally at the third time of asking they accepted certified ID, incidentally their very exclusive policy of ID certification is nowhere to be seen on their website.

Transfer paperwork had to be submitted again to III as it had expired, only got round to this a couple of weeks ago. We’re now wrangling with TDD over the £50 fee they’re trying to charge for exiting as they received the transfer paperwork a few days before they changed their policy to zero transfer out costs.

Now if they’d have not messed us about so much we’d have transferred last year and they could have had their £50. After all the above out of principle I’d rather not pay them a penny for something they now offer for free.

I’ve raised a complaint with III and TDD, both surprisingly blame each other for the shambles and have offered no recompense, when I get round to it I’ll submit it to the ombudsman for them to decide.

Yep, because for at least the last year they’ve been closed to new members due to a protracted takeover. It looks like they’re back in the game now but as things have previously been shaky there, I think I’ll give them until the next quarterly review to see if they can keep up their current offering which is competitive on the face of it.

HL have indicated what their drawdown charges will be after April. Only charges remaining for drawdown seem to be a £354 charge that applies if the whole fund is extinguished within 12 months of drawdown being taken (the £90 GAD charge remains also for those remaining in capped drawdown). The SIPP closure charge of £30 presumably still applies.

So the new HL drawdown charges looks very reasonable, but those with large funds using drawdown will still be faced with high platform charges which is likely to make other providers with lower platform charges but explicit drawdown charges cheaper in many cases.

Will monevator be producing a separate crowd sourced table of drawdown charges to use alongside this broker table?

It depends what exactly you’re seeking but I have no problem recommending CSD, they aren’t the absolute cheapest, though their six trades rule is very competitive if utilised properly.

As for their day to day platform, account features, information retreival, customer service and overall effectiveness, as opposed to surface gloss, I personally cannot fault them at all (so far) and I’ve been with six others on this list over the years. None of them came close imho, although HL is a platform I haven’t used and admit their website is very good.

@john thank you so now just the choice between CSD and HL. Decisions

@geo thank you. I read the linked article. Also v helpful. Whilst I really wanted to keep costs down I am veering onto HL as its “the best”

and I don’t like the way HL are always trying to sell me trading ideas .. by email, by post, on their website ..

Hi TA, brilliant & a unique resource – it has taken a life of its own! It is easy to see that you are putting in a lot of effort. Thank you.

I am with HL and judging by many of the recent comments/feedback, I am glad that I have not exited HL yet!

I am fast approaching retirement and can not help thinking that in the next 2-3 years my focus and motivation will change quite significantly. It’s anticipating that which has delayed my decision to jump HL ship. The last thing I need is to pay to exit HL based on what my needs are today to then have to pay exit again when need/motivation shifts drastically which it most certainly will.

For me therefore it is an ongoing appraisal of what to do for the next life stage and for that reason this is a brilliant resource. I agree with a comment above about perhaps a separate thread focused on Drawdown: best of breed solutions around and people’s experiences to-date bearing in mind that the Drawdown approach is probably still in its infancy.

TA, great – look forward to it!

ATS are in the process of announcing their revised drawdown charges. Looks like the set up charge for drawdown is being removed but their annual charge remains.

http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/news…018994.article

Note I think the £276 annual flat fee mentioned in that article incorporates the platform fee for the SIPP (as their SIPP flat fee is £186pa and their existing annual charge for drawdown is £90pa and the sum of these is £276).

They are making separate charges for UFPLS (uncrystallised funds pension lump sums) although those charges interact with the £90pa element of the drawdown charges it seems, so you don’t pay both.

So for fund only drawdown portfolios (i.e no shares or ETFs), HL are cheaper than ATS for portfolios below £61,333 (=276/0.0045). Because ATS charge for buying and selling funds the break even where ATS becomes cheaper is going to be at some drawdown fund portfolio amount above £61,333. The exact break even will depend on how much buying and selling is going on and how many UFPLSs are taken. That assumes the pot isn’t emptied in a year incurring HLs £354 charge.

Why was my post censored? Is this some conspiracy by the financial services industry to prevent people seeing comprehensive comparison info about ISA and SIPP providers? The person who created the spreadsheet is just a forum-poster on MoneySavingExpert, he has no affiliation with any company, nor do I. I just thought this relevent to the discussion here: http://goo.gl/BrZNVg

The X-O sipp has just increased charges from April: 120+VAT annual charge, and various new charges for closure, UFPLS etc.