Broker comparison: cheap investment platforms UK

@The Investor Afternoon! Absolutely understandable and thanks very much for your support 🙂

I’ve set up a Facebook page, so if people would like to talk to me, ask questions or request a feature then please go to:

https://www.facebook.com/Talemio/

Would love to do a separate article if that suits, but can discuss on email.

So I’m a long-term fixed-fee broker client (currently transferring back to Interactive Investor after Selftrade move to bps charging structure), but I need something for my girlfriend to start a SIPP with.

She will have no pot to transfer in, and will be saving modest amounts monthly. I envisage I’ll end up picking some funds and perhaps investment trusts for her myself but unlikely to hold any direct equities.

I guess what I’m looking for is a low / no fee for regular savings into funds in a SIPP. Can anyone make any suggestions? From the table above I’m thinking Fidelity FundsNetwork or Bestinvest. My only bps-fee broker I have any experience of is HL and I know for her it will “just work” but I’m interested to see if there will be any alternatives you guys can suggest. Thanks.

Much appreciated, I had skipped over your summary at the end of the table so I missed it! Now to persuade her…

I have an AJ Bell SIPP. As explained in the table, it costs £9.95 to buy or sell an ETF, including the Vanguard ones. They are listed on the London Stock Exchange and so are not considered Irish shares. The ETF has an annual charge as you say, e.g. 0.25% for VWRL, but that’s built into the price of the ETF. There will be a bid-offer spread on buying and selling the fund, but Vanguard funds are liquid and so the spread won’t be very large. You can estimate what the spread will be when you are about to trade by comparing the buy and sell prices, as with any ETF or share trade. Note there is also a quarterly SIPP management charge, which depends on the size of your portfolio. If you buy Vanguard funds then there is a trading charge of £4.95 and a fund custody charge of 0.2% (on top of the ETF management charge) but no bid-offer spread.

Hi I was wondering if anyone had came across a broker which allowed you to make monthly regular investments into ETFs at a reduced fee? For example HL allows you to invest in certain ITs for £1.50 with regular investments but doesn’t have the same option for EFTs does any broker offer this?

@edel

Strange as if they allow you to for IT’s then why not ETF’s as strictly speaking they are both trading on the LSE like shares. I use Interactive Investor and their regular investment is £1.50 per trade. Certainly valid to IT’s, Funds and Stock, and an ETC that I have. I’ve just checked in the regular investment selection bit and plenty of ETF’s to set up in there.

Cheers

I would like to invest 20K in shares of about 5 US companies traded at NASDAQ. I prefer to do it in a tax-efficient shelter (ISA/SIPP). My idea is to keep the portfolio unchanged for at least 5 years so I’m not concerned so much about the trading fees. So, in essence, what I need is a broker which offers

(1) opportunity to buy US shares traded at NASDAQ
(2) tax wrapper (preferably both ISA and SIPP)
(3) sensible handling of any US tax (in the thread above some people mention that many brokers are bad at dealing with it)
(4) sensible currency conversion fees (my trading volume will be low so I probably should not worry too much about it but I’d still like to avoid any rip-offs)

Which brokers would you recommend?

£20 Charles Stanley min charge is on shares, ETFs, investment trusts. Even that doesn’t apply if you make enough trades. See the table.

@ Edel – see brokers with an entry under the Regular Investing column. Unlike Hargreaves most apply this rate to ETFs, although not all ETFs. Details vary by broker.

contacted halifax for more information on their stocks and shares isa and opening one and they told me it was no longer available and referred me to scottish widows

you know I might have made a mistake they did refer me to the scottish widows funds instead i didn’t realise that there were two separate products thanks so much for your help!!

Reply from X-O on FX fees:

“A foreign exchange charge of 1.5% will be included in the rate used to convert the value of your deal to sterling. This rate is set at 8am each day.”

@Simple_socrates

Total Expense Ratio includes any Annual Management Charge so you’ve double-counted there.

Most funds will quote an OCF (Ongoing Charges Figure), which is a truer calculation (supposedly) of fund fees.

Firstly thanks to all at monevator for the temple of investing knowledge you have constructed, true public service!

Can anyone help with a query on the range of funds availabile for regular investment with II?

To put my question in context: I am somewhat embarrassed to have only just learnt of Selftrade’s switch to the dark side, I guess i should have seen it coming, so much for going on holiday in april!

I am now considering switching (I have c£50k in passive funds currently in the selftrade SIPP). To inform my arithmetic I wondered if II’s regular investment option gives access to all their funds or is similar to Selftrade in the very limited range of funds offered? Web searching not returning much info of use.

Any information on this or IIs service in general would be gratefully recieved.

Hi, there are some major changes at AJ Bell, Youinvest. The email I received tonight says:

We are reducing our dealing charge for buying and selling funds from £4.95 to £1.50
We are introducing a custody charge for holding shares (including investment trusts, ETFs, gilts and bonds) of 0.25% per year of the value of the investments held. This is capped at £25 per quarter for a SIPP, £7.50 per quarter for an ISA and Dealing account and £5 per quarter for a Junior ISA. There is no custody charge for cash held in your account
We are changing our fund custody charge (which applies to unit trusts, OEICs and structured products) from 0.2% per year (maximum £50 per quarter) to a tiered structure based on the value of funds held:
0.25% per year for the first £250,000
0.10% per year for the next £250,000 to £1m
0.05% per year for the next £1m to £2m
0% over £2m

As someone who was paying the capped £50 per quarter for holding a Vanguard fund this has the potential to hurt. I will have to investigate swapping from funds (OEIC) to an ETF if I can find a cheap equivalent. Can anyone recommend a good low cost FTSE All Share Tracker ETF? Thanks.

@Investing Tortoise
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the All Share ETFs are not as keenly priced as the fund equivalents, so it may be a choice between taking a cost hit with a higher OCF or switching to the FTSE 250 (or staying in funds of course).

This latest change in charges is irritating. I hold shares and ETFs in both a SIPP and ISA at Youinvest. Clearly the SIPP is staying put. Their new annual charge for the ISA is set at a level that is enough for me to do an orderly switch over time elsewhere without rushing for the door.

Last time they played around with the charges they lost a six figure part of my portfolio to the competition when I read that they refused to allow customer to transfer out free of charge. Same will happen this time round, with the ISA eventually going to zero, as I’m certain they won’t have backtracked on that policy.

This obviously is assuming that their main competitor for my kind of portfolio (TD Direct) doesn’t follow suit in the meantime (their commitment to free exit hopefully means the chances of that are limited in the short term).

Don’t think your entry fees for ATS are correct. AFAIK they are free for ISA/IDA and SIPP. The “£600 per holding” cost is for an in specie pension contribution of shares or other non-cash assets, not a pension transfer in. Ref http://www.alliancetrustsavings.co.uk/pensions/pension-charges-and-fees/

I have a large ETF-only SIPP and two ETF-only Junior SIPPs with AJ Bell Youinvest. The new charging structure works out almost exactly the same as before, possibly slightly cheaper over the long term. I was hoping they would update the terms to allow ISAs for US citizens, but no luck. So top of my short list is iWeb for a UK shares-only ISA switch.

@Tobeman:

Have you considered waiting for the Lifetime ISA rather than opening a SIPP for your partner (assuming under 40 based on your avatar photo!).

This is what we’re doing now, seems to offer a bit more flexibility, particularly if your partner isn’t a higher-rate taxpayer. Suspect I’ll be shopping around in April for somewhere cheap to buy £333 a month of LifeStrategy…

@torus

I’m dating a spinster…

Just kidding. She’s 6 months older than me, so well deduced.

Good point, I hadn’t considered that. She’s only putting away £200 per month in the pension anyway so might suggest she stops that for now and accrues the cash for subscribing to Lifetime ISA come April.

Had it confirmed by AJBELLYOUINVESTSIPPDEAL that they won’t waive the charges. they say the ombudsman has ‘agreed’ this via previous raised issues, problem they have is the introduction of the unfair contract terms legislation in 2015. I have raised a formal complaint with them via e-mail and suggest you do the same also if you are annoyed at this position….

Looks like I’ll be managing multiple accounts across multiple providers again soon… ho hum…

P

@Paul hi there, i have just opened up a iii ISA and when doing so was advised to put the £20 each quarter into the trading account and it would be taken from that but that the 1.50 for regular investing would still come from that £20 ie. meaning no deduction from my isa for charges. Note that the £20 is taken every three months so need to make that date else is taken from isa

Thanks Edel and STL…

to ask more Q’s, on AJBELLYOUINVESTSIPPDEAL I have a ‘family account’ which basically means I can ‘look’ at all the accounts through one log on….that’s handy, but I get no benefits or economies of scale from it at all. Sounds like with iii I do? (I have a SIPP for me, dear wife & small child, ISA’s for all three and a single trading account)

Any insight is really gratefully accepted.

Cheers

Paul

@Paul Stansfield – they’re taken from the nominated account. I have a trading account in each of two names, plus two ISAs, but pay one set of fees, taken quarterly from my main trading account, though I did join over two years ago, so think they might be charging per name now, rather than allowing ‘family’ accounts? In any event, if the cash isn’t there, they just deduct it from my banking account, so it’s not a problem.

@Paul Stansfield They did away with the famility linking option some time ago, you now pay one charge across all accounts (£20 per quarter) + an additional charge if you have a SIPP (£80 + VAT). You get the £20 per quarter charge back in credit that can be used for trading, both regular investing (£1.50) and one off (£10).

@Paul Stansfield
I am going to issue a formal complaint as well and follow it up with the Financial Ombudsman. I moved to AJBell just recently, after HSBC Investdirect introduced quarterly fees, so obviously a key driver of the move was the absence of fees. Introducing them now with effectively no way out (paying transfer out fees costs more than 5 years of fees) is an insult.

Thanks very much for that Paul

Well done Paul Stansfield. AJ Bell’s decision to increase costs (in my case 200 per cent after joining them a year ago) and then insisting on applying exit costs for customers who are disgruntled because of their actions certainly needs questioning in law. The company have 50,000 clients and it was difficult to get through to their customer services last week, presumably from unhappy investors complaining about what was described in the Daily Telegraph at the week-end as “this just smacks of greed.” AJ Bell now need to think of rescuing the company’s reputation for fairness and suspend exit charges for those heading for the door.

I switched to ETFs with my AJBell SIPP to keep costs down, only trading rarely when dividends need reinvesting on the ones that are only available in income flavours. The other advantage being that you know the price you’re trading at before you trade. I doubt that they are making much if anything from me.. We’re not far off the point where any stray cash balances will be costing them ..

I have to add a word of warning here – I’m transferring to Fidelity and have had a bad experience, resulting in a loss of about £5k, which wipes out about 10 year of the gains in transferring my investments over. You could say I’m not too impressed with Fidelity, so far my experience has been very poor, resulting in financial loss, complaints and having to contact the ombudsman.

I’m with Paul Stansfield on the question of AJ Bell’s price increases. Reasonable increases may be justified but only if you have the opportunity to walk away if you are not happy. AJ Bell unjustifiably wants things both ways so their customers, some of whom will be hit as their charges treble and quadruple, are now relying on a favourable judgement from the ombudsman. They should reinstate a reasonable cap to persuade clients to stay or open a window in which they can go without penalty.
Also can anybody offer an answer to this question. If I decide to leave now and pay the exit charges on all my funds, will those charges be recoverable if the ombudsman finds against the company?

Sorry – fumble-fingers there…
It’s £21.60 admin charge per annum, plus another £20+VAT per quarter (if you sign up for the frequent trading deal, which then gives you a fixed dealing charge of £7.50 a time) – that’s a total of £117.60 pa on their best deal; otherwise it’s £21.60 + a 1% dealing charge, which could get quite painful on larger transactions.

@The Investor,

I doubt any of us want to see our online investing platform go bust, but with their latest change in fees AJ Bell has moved to a model where passive unit trust and OEIC investors may now be asked to pay FIVE to TEN TIMES what passive ETF investors pay, to hold what will in many cases be the exact same underlying stuff. The difference can run to multiple thousands of pounds a year — easily the cost of a decent holiday or cruise. Some investors could perhaps consider a switch to ETFs, easy in ISAs and SIPPs, but not so in unsheltered accounts, and not so for anyone whose fund holdings cannot be replicated by ETFs. And anyway, why should one alter their investment strategy just to conform to irrational platform charges?

Meanwhile, flat fee brokers such as Alliance Trust are crystal clear that it costs them pretty much the same to run an account no matter its size. The conclusion must be that either AJ Bell are VERY inefficient indeed when it comes to being a funds platform, or they are wildly profiteering. My money is on the former, as it happens. They are simply not trying hard enough to offer a good deal to customers. If AJ Bell’s underlying fund custodian charges percentage based fees then they should change to one that does not if they wish to remain competitive. Perhaps AJ Bell should just outsource fund custodianship to Alliance Trust.

All of the other fee increases are merely window-dressing compared to the massive (that is, multiples of the current costs) fees increase that some customers will see from the removal of the charge cap. It is this, rather than the window dressing, that is causing ire among AJ Bell customers. Understandably. Describing AJ Bell’s actions as clumsy here doesn’t really cover it. Clumsy implies a mistake that one would be keen to rectify once noted. Refusal to allow free transfers out for significantly adversely affected customers suggests a more deliberate and calculated policy, one with unpleasant undertones.

Quidco are offering £83.33 cashback for opening a Fidelity SIPP (£10k investment) as a new customer or £100 for a stocks & shares ISA (£5k investment).

http://www.quidco.com/search/?search=fidelity

They also cover SIPP transfer-out fees up to £500.

@ Aidan

You have just made my day! Finally a way to escape the exit charges on my Hargeaves Lansdown SIPP.

Actually, on closer inspection you can get between £100 and £1,000 cashback if you go directly rather than via Quidco:
https://www.fidelity.co.uk/investor/investing-for-your-retirement.page

Not only that, but Fidelity don’t charge any exit fees, so if you find you don’t like their 0.35% platform fee you can presumably then move onto the cheapest once you’ve banked the cashback.

I’m looking to transfer 2xCTF to JISA each worth £1000. Anyone recommend a low cost provider that provides good service.

I opened an ISA account in March with Self-Trade — based on the Broker Comparison table at that time– which I believe was showing them as No 1 for fixed fee brokers for ISA’s and Sipps ( Though as I didnt print off the table I’m not 100% sure on this) I note that on the updated table they are no longer listed under flat fee brokers– but show as good for ETF’s under percentage fee brokers. I deposited about £ 20k with them– but due to inertia, being too busy etc – I havent invested it in anything as yet. Its just sitting in their account. Im unlikely to start buying ETFs. Im a novice investor so want to take it steady with index funds as the main instrument in my equities portfolio–
My question is- should I move the money to a Flat fee broker on your table ? and why did Self- trade move from the flat fee to the percentage section of your table?

Cheers
David

By the way- Ive been a reader of your blog for about a year and I really like it. ( mostly )

I have registered my complaint with AJ Bell over their triple charges increase (in my case) and refusal to drop exorbitant exit charges and received a reply saying it is being done in the name of fairness, transparency and simplicity. If it wasn’t so serious it would be laughable so I’m joining a lot of other people in referring my complaint to the Ombudsman. The more people who do this the better because they have sold their clients down the river and this was not the business premise on which this business was formed.

Help please. Is there anybody out there who is a Share Centre customer? If so, can you tell me what their overall service and client releationship is like? Thank you, your views will be appreciated.

A J Bell

I disagree with the Investor!s comment on platform profitability. A quick look at AJ Bell financial statements, ironically available under ‘investor relations’, shows A JBell handsomely profitable every year 2011-2015′ with pretax profit in the range 27% – 50%+, of revenue. Margraves Pantsdown (nice!) had profitability way above that level when I last looked, which was one reason I switched to AJB.

I agree with Paul Stansfield on this issue. My dealing account charges would do up 4x if I stay with AJB or I face substantial exit charges to mitigate the proposed change in their contract terms. The FCA, who require customers to be treated fairly, and the Financial Services Ombudsman, can expect to hear from me unless A J Bell have a significant change of approach.

@The Accumulator

Hi, I’m new to this, so trying to interpret the table and your post on August 21st.

I am looking to get around £40k in either a Vanguard Target Retirement Fund, or a Vanguard Lifestrategy fund.

Would be a single cash transaction, and as it is part of my retirement savings plan then I intend to leave it there for at least 10 years as I want to retire at 55 in 9 years time. I might put more in, but only likely to be one transaction a year, and lets assume £10k-£20k.
After 10 years I would be taking money out but again intended to be a single transactions per year.

Who do people suggest I look into re: brokers?

Thanks for any help

Neil

Hi all,

just heard back from AJBELLYOUINVESTSIPPDEAL, they are adamant that they are allowed to change their charges at will with 30 days notice. I will move and then contact the ombudsman to recover my net overall loss (based on 1 year of charges) vs. staying on the agreed terms I signed up to. Their contract term about the raising of charges, is pretty much in line with telco and mobile operators, who have had there position defeated by the regulator. As an example, I am with PlusNet and they are raising charges, but have provided a 30 day period in which I can move to any other competitor without incurring the exit charges outlined in my contract.

I’m a bit disappointed but there you go. I have 6mths to raise my complaint with the ombudsman, and will do so after doing some not insignificant spreadsheet crunching to figure out where I’ll be moving to.

I’ll update on progress…

BR

Paul

The bottom line is, looking at AJB’s financial statements, it’s simply not possible to identify whether their execution only fund/platform operation is profitable or not. You might feel it’s highly likely that it is but your claim is spurious without numbers.

Those companies clearly identifying that aspect of their operations in financial reports show it to be a clear loss making venture (currently). I’m not seeking to defend AJB’s price rises in any way, just the accurate statement made which you’ve refuted.

Re AJB platform – profitable or not?

I don’t have any great insight on whether any of these platform providers are making profit or not; most do my head in to be perfectly honest. Remember commenting many months ago whe HL introduced their tiered %age charges that most of them would probably wait to see what the market/customerbase will tolerate and then push boundaries. Seems to me that is exactly what’s been going on in the last year or so. Therefore personally find it quite frustrating to take one in isolation (e.g. AJ Bell now) to start thinking about where to move next because it is perfectly possible that the next broker may well follow suit if regulators in effect give a nod (to for example AJ Bell now). I keep thinking about how many times am I willing to pay exit charges before I retire!

Would however like to offer a perspective on this debate about AJ Bell profitability exchange of opinions.

In most sectors it is not at all unusual that a particular service/product or line of business is cross-subsidised by another part(s) of a business. At the end of the day none of these platform hosts are in the game to provide social services. They will have a game plan/strategy which justifies a line of business being a loss leader for a certain period. Invariably it involves upselling or cross-selling or maintaining competitive edge (value-add) within the context of the overall business. There are many other reasons too for justifying a business line not being profitable for a certain period. Just a factor to consider!

A while ago I’d clocked that iWeb is run by Halifax, which is worth bearing in mind for those concerned with having some FSCS protection. But I only just realised that, of course, Lloyds and Halifax are now part of the same group. So presumably, iWeb, Halifax and Lloyds would all count as the same institution for FSCS purposes?

And am I correct in thinking that Interactive Investor and Motley Fool are also a single institution? Or is their relationship something different?

–“And am I correct in thinking that Interactive Investor and Motley Fool are also a single institution? Or is their relationship something different?” —

Yes, they’re the same. Actually, some of us have said in the past that this excellent chart should contain this information. I can only assume that the comments got swamped in the other posts. It would be fairly easy to put the parent company underneath in brackets. e.g. i-web (with Halifax, Lloyds, BOS) Fool.co.uk (with iii) etc.
Steve

@ The Accumulator : can we also have a line for foreign shares for the next update ? The offerings of brokers are wildly different in that aspect. For example iWeb adds a charge of 1.5%.

Beware Fidelity Funds Network – and any other brand using them like Cavendish Online.
I just got caught out by a “Dealing Charge” on a Vanguard Fund. Even though it states all over their website that there are no such dealing charges, and the person I spoke with said the same when I asked. However, on investigation by that person they back tracked and agreed that that was not true and some funds do have Initial/Dealing charges – although they could not provide a list. Apparently its buried in the Key Facts document – but I obviously did not look hard enough as I just believed that no such thing existed at Fidelity because that what it states clearly on the website Charges page – silly me!

@Chris
I recently bought the vg Ls 80/20 with cavendish, as far as I’m aware the fees are 0.3% for cavendish and 0.24% for vg for a total of 0.54%, is this similar to what you had but with now an extra fee on top that isn’t obvious when first purchasing.

I’m not a Fidelity customer, but personally I think its a little unfair to call Fidelity out on a fund manager charge. I can’t find any page on Fidelity’s site where you see the OCF of the fund without seeing this additional fund manager charge, and surely if the economics of the fund are important (which they are of course!) when selecting a fund a customer would be checking the OCF and thus spotting the fund manager charge?

I’d find this page on the Vanguard site rather misleading though if something like this is replicated on the platform site
https://www.vanguard.co.uk/uk/portal/investments/all-products?productType=indexFund
On their own site, when they are fully aware that they have an additional one-off charge on some of their funds, I think its more than a little misleading to have a table that includes a column for OCF without a column for the initial fund manager fee.

Just wondered if anyone has comment on Fidelity customer service quality?
I’m so sick of Interactive Investor’s appalling customer service and inability to perform the simplest of requests (this time it’s taken 3 months to change a direct debit, so far, and I’ve missed out on the gains of the post Brexit period).
I’m prepared to pay a bit more for good customer service to reduce the almost constant stress from II, but don’t want to go transfer to HL as I already have an account with them.
Also for Fidelity’s charging, does anyone know if their charge is for the accounts (e.g. SIPP/ISA) combined? Or for each account separately? It’s not quite clear from their description (i.e. would ETF’s be capped at £45 per year across ISA & SIPP, or it would be £45 each?)

https://www.fidelity.co.uk/investor/funds/fund-charge.page

“If the rate you pay is £45 you will only pay this once, no matter how many accounts you hold – that’s just £3.75 per month.”

But ETF charges wouldn’t be capped at all – they don’t come under that service fee, but attract the 0.1% dealing fee, which frankly is a killer for me.

@algernond

I decided not to transfer my SIPP into Fidelity because they took weeks to reply to my email enquiry about whether they would hold my funds, convert their class, or make me sell them. I chased them up several times and eventually they said I had to give them 48 hours notice and give them a time to call me to discuss it. It really wasn’t a difficult question and so I decided that if that was their customer service when trying to attract new customers, I should probably be worried about how I would be treated once I was tied in.

What also bugged me (probably unreasonably) about Fidelity is that they take their charge monthly. So with ISA and non-ISA accounts for myself and wife, and separate transactions to raise fees for ‘service fee’ and ‘advisor fee’ (Cavendish in this case) for each, that is ninety-six (96!) extra transactions to keep track of every year. Why not quarterly? Why not just from the non-ISA accounts?

Plus I always found their website very slow.

K

If the portfolio included funds, CS still charges 0.25% platform fee, though. So, doesn’t that favourable comparison with II only apply if the portfolio has no funds and with at least one deal per month? For such a portfolio, it might be worth looking at X-O, who I think would be cheaper than either CS or II.

@The Rhino

I haven’t used AT, but am familiar with II. I will say II are working on a new site (https://beta.ii.co.uk) which I’m impressed with. The mobile and desktop portfolio views are pretty good.

The SIPP fee is £96 on top of 4x£20 charges. You can use regular investments for both the SIPP and ISA and since the £20 quarterly fee acts as trading credits, the £1.50 regular investment fees come out of that. You could look at it as getting free trades.

Putting money in the SIPP does involve a bank transfer then sending off a paper form. The process takes 2-3 weeks in my experience so schedule in advance of the 23rd when the regular investment happens.

Thought I’d mention that so you can make a more informed decision.

@The Rhino

I currently have SIPPs at both II and AT. Both hold only passive trackers, and at the moment I am neither drawing on them nor contributing.

At this level of utter inactivity (most years I don’t even need to rebalance!) both are absolutely fine. Each platform has its few quirks, but really nothing that I would call a strong differentiation. And I’ve found both companies to be user-friendly and civilised in their approach to customers and to setting and subsequently collecting charges.

@The Rhino — Historical quirk, which I now back-rationalise as platform diversification. Provided both have the features you want, I guess I’m suggesting it won’t make much difference which you go for; it hasn’t for me. For what it’s worth, both proclaim flat charges, which may provide at least some hope that they won’t suddenly change this underneath you.

Here’s something that I’m struggling to find the answer to.
Suppose I am investing in 3 ETF’s and 2 funds, 20% of the total each. Suppose also that every month I am adding some fixed amount to my savings, say £500, and I want to put this fixed amount into those 5 investments.
Does that mean I have to pay the fund dealing charge 5 times every month? For example, with Halifax Share Dealing, 5 x £12.5=£62.5 every month? Or does adding new funds to existing investment not count as a new dealing?

@RS – you might use the £2 regular investment option with halifax for your situation. From memory, I half remember TA saying that he aims for trading costs to constitute < 0.3% of the amount invested. That would seem to be a sensible rule of thumb?

So decrease frequency of investment and/or no. of funds until that rule is satisfied

Picked up from TMF forum:
http://www.moneywise.co.uk/news/2016-10-12/interactive-investor-to-buy-td-direct-investing
Just to be aware of at the moment. If it happens, although there will apparently be “no immediate change”, inevitably it is likely that TD Direct customers will in due course have to consider whether they want to be on iii’s platform and charging structure. And the last time iii had a mass exodus of customers, it was a painful transfer out experience for some (so there could be a case for jumping early next year before being forced if iii’s charges don’t fit your personal circumstances).

haha – opportune timing – will have to delay any potential sipp switch to ii until dust settles, either that or just go AT. It prob makes little difference but I have a tendency to obsess over little differences too much..

iWeb and Halifax are one but not the same, as is Lloyds!

kraggash, Susan thanks for the reply yes those three are the same what really I wanted was feedback on these platforms and the others I listed as regard to customer service/user friendliness/competence. Reading through the posts above Alliance Trust has raised its head any thoughts on that one. This like wading through treacle.
Thanks.

@ Nobunaga – well, I use II and CSD now (having tried Lloyds/Halifax, TD and Share Centre) and I’d have to say, I think II is the best by far, though I’ve had some tough run-ins with them on service. CSD seems okay, though I haven’t been with them long enough to comment on their service standards (no problems as yet, while II gave me about a year and a half of grief before everything settled down). Buying a share with CSD is a bit irritating, as you have to put in your PW just before you buy (unlike II), so getting a re-quote is a bit tedious (the layout of the quote details is also less than easy on the eye). I don’t use OIECs – just ITS and ETFs – so can’t comment on that side of things but, if you trade fairly often, II is the one IMHO.

iWeb have been really good over the 3+ years I have been with them. Quick response to queries, usually via online chat. Only complaints are:
– Sometimes they do not carry funds that others (even A J Bell!) do. Example: Stewart Emerging Market Leaders. Reason given is they ‘do not meet iWeb’s criteria’
– Their website is really basic. So do research elsewhere.

@ Nobunaga I’d agree with Susan’s take on ii. They are the only platform I have used (to be transparent) but I have no major complaints with them. My choice is, however, price driven and they provide me with the lowest costs for the type and frequency of my trades together with the flat-fee charge structure. That of course wont be true of everyone.

In terms of customer service ii is ‘adequate’. There are a few little issues that I have had and they were resolved eventually, but nothing anywhere near bad enough to stump out more money to move elsewhere. I also like the platform layout and the new beta user interface has some nice features.

Conversely I was’t overly happy to hear they were buying out TD. I thought ‘here we go price increases or % based fee structure etc.’ However I think we need to be patient and see what this means operationally. Hopefully the marketing boys are looking at this and realising the two have slightly different positions in the market and trying to muddy the waters between them would prove costly. They could still maintain the two distinct products but just achieve synergies at a support level e.g. HR, Finance, Procurement etc. At least thats what I hope.

@Neverland. Thanks for the link. Bit worrying, although it looks like it was the former UK CEO of JC Flowers so no reason to believe that there is any issue now. However I wonder why they don’t want to press charges?? A cynic might wonder if they are worried what else the authorities might find if they start poking about??

@Kraggash – Bizarre. Be interested to know if you get to the bottom of it!

@Sharpespur

Whats particularly enlightening about the case:

– the fraud was executed by him issuing bogus invoices for £ millions to JC Flowers investments and nobody questioned this for at least a year; obviously such arbitrary charges were quite common

– the man steals millions from their investors and they chose not to pursue criminal charges against him; they don’t really care about their investors being ripped off

If a firm is run so laxly and has so little regard for its investors interests how much regard will they have for their customers?

@Rhino

I’ve used ATS, the various retail broking branches of Lloyds (iWeb, Halifax, Lloyds) and Hargreaves Lansdowne and TD Direct

They are all pretty much the same in terms of what you get (HL send you more marketing in the post), some just cost more than others

I think you just have to be prepared to move around every few years depending who is cheapest

I try and avoid the lower tier of spivy retail brokers

Might be worth waiting to see whether Vanguard set up a SIPP platform for the UK

@ljmuk
Transfers can be done in one of two ways:
1) Sell all the fund holdings, transfer the money and then when the money arrives at the new broker, buy back the original holdings and hope the price hasn’t gone up.
2) As an ‘in specie’ transfer. This does not involve selling anything. The fund holding you have will just be re-registered from CSD to Lloyds. The disappear from you old account and pop up in your new on on the day of the transfer.

There is a real risk markets could move against you in the time it takes to do the transfer, so requesting the transfer is done in specie, seems your best option and is something I have done several times when moving platforms, it is fairly quick and painless.

I transfered in specie from HL to iWeb a couple of years ago. Took ages (about 3 months in total) , needed to chase HL etc.
I transferred from Fidelity to Youinvest this year. Took about six weeks overall, but funds were showing on Youinvest platform within 3 weeks or so (unable to trade at that time, but a helpful touch). Painless and no need to chase.

@ ljmuk: http://monevator.com/how-to-transfer-a-stocks-and-shares-isa/

Hi,

I’m thinking to start to invest in a Vanguard Life Strategy fund. I notice after reading this article than Degiro is the cheapest broker or one of the cheaper in UK.

Do you think it is one of the best options to start to invest?. Vanguard Life Strategy + Degiro?

Thanks and sorry for my little knowledge about investments

Thanks for your answer Jeff,

I’ll check the link and the suggestions you did.

On the other hand I’m in a similar situation than you, I’m from Spain and I would like a broker who has platform in my country too to trespass my portfolio when I go back to my country, Degiro and BNP have it.

Finally, do you think to start to invest in Vanguard Life Strategy is a good option or maybe is better to make a 3 or 4 funds boglehead portfolio to be more diversified, some of them from Vanguard, others from Piccet or Amundi and with 2 different brokers ?

Thanks

Note that you also need to remain UK resident if you want to make further tax relieved contributions to a UK SIPP, but income and capital gains within the wrapper should be tax free, just taxed when you come to drawdown in retirement.

Bestinvest are still stubbornly applying a £60 closure fee for my ISA, even though it has nothing in it (apart from the last £60 of cash which they refuse to let me have). I’m considering a switch via Fidelity so they pick up the closure cost!

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for this, most helpful. I am a resident of Gibraltar – a UK overseas territory. I contacted Charles Stanley, Cavendish & some others to inquire about opening an account with them. Each time i was met with the same answer: you need to be a UK resident to open an account with us.

Can you recommend some Percentage fee brokers / platforms for people such as myself who are not resident in the UK?

Cheers,
M.

A few brokers that have been mentioned that might be suitable for non-UK residents are TD Direct Investing, Interactive Brokers and Saxo Bank. However, you would need to do your own due diligence and check what the eligibility criteria are and what would happen if you moved country. Also, just because you can open account does not necessarily mean that’s the best move from a taxation standpoint. I have no personal experience of investing options for European (non-UK) citizens and residents. It is usually not possible to avoid taxes in two countries if you are potentially taxable in both, (e.g. by opening an ISA). However, unless you have a lot of assets, you typically won’t go over your personal allowance in either country or else dual-taxation treaty tax credits will reduce or eliminate any taxes you need to pay. Note that ex-pat brokers tend to more expensive, assume you’re going to be doing a lot of trading, might have inactivity fees and might have minimum account balance requirements.

@Phil Moore

I can confirm Interactive Investor can for SIPP and ISA. You can choose when setting the regular investments up whether you want to do £-value of %-value of the contribution and specify the securities (and amounts) as an itemised list.

I’ve just spoken to TD Direct Investing regarding their Regular Investment product and their platform fee is 0.3% every 6 months so it’s 0.6% annually. Might want to double check this but that’s a huge difference and worth considering.

ATS is changing its fees from 1 Feb 2017.
ISA or Dealing Account platform charge £10 per month = £120 per year. (Up from £90, so a 33% price hike.)
But this now includes a “free” deal once a quarter, so if you deal at least once a quarter, you are slightly better off. If not, tough!

Dealing fees reduced to £9.99 (or less, if you get loyalty discount).

£30 annual fee if you want paper copies of your statements.

Thanks to all for fantastic discussions, so useful in this complex world of platforms and brokers. My experience in a nutshell:
I have been with Fidelity via Cavendish online for a number of years but combination of very poor service,
errors, etc. together with a % fee on a continuously increasing family account are now pushing me towards the exit.
This is the 2nd platform I have ever used; before I was with H-L but that was when I was a beginner investor so
it was easy to wake up on uncompetitive fees and some poor customer service and other matters.
I am an active investor in Funds only and could do many switches in a year, so execution is important for me.
From the info provided in monevator, I have the following current options/shortlist that best suit my investor personality
(order not important):
1. Lloyds Bank Share Dealing: appearing to be the best for me even with many trades but the reputation of Lloyds
is very poor as you all know and I have read no direct experience from any comments here to be able to take the risk.
I dislike that you need to call an expensive line if problems occur, visited a bank branch and I was told rudely to
call (everybody can say whatever they want over the phone), so unless I can find some honest experience out there
I may have to forego or try with a smaller account. Lack of online support/communication is a problem for most I believe.
2. Telegraph investor: The capped fee and free fund trades appear good option and depending on the number of trades
better than Lloyds but the underlying platform if II and I have seen the comments in monevator, so still sceptical,
especially as there are not any reviews here and I think reviews and experiences are important for all of us.
3. i-web: a possibility too. Found a lot of negative comments in other websites and the barrier here is the up-front fee (which discourages to give it a try…). Any particularly bad experiences from anyone?
4. Degiro: the Brexit concerns me with this one. low trading cost appealing, will have to trade ETFs instead which is
ok, regulation and jurisdiction can be an issue so again particular experiences of UK Residents are going to make the difference for me.
5. X-O.co.uk: dislike that one needs to pay to complain(!) and that has been a big barrier for me otherwise clearly better
choice in comparison with i-web. Again looking to read any experiences with them.
6. Interactive brokers: I need to read more about this one but from the excellent summary on costs and features from monevator
it is an option even with the inactivity fee (I don’t trade that often!). Any recent experiences with them (especially with respect to the dollar quoted costs which could be more painful than before in the months to come…)?
7. James Hay: 0.18% fee is the only % based in my list but still better than what I am experiencing currently. But I know of no
reviews on the actual platform and execution. Anybody has used them recently?

Have I missed anything else that you may thing is suitable for me? Any experiences are very welcome and thank you all!

Yes, though they are waiving this until the end of Jan, for people who want to leave because of the price hike.

@ivanopinion
Thanks very much for your very good observation; I will check again the ones you mentioned in particular. Originally I removed from consideration platforms that charge over £6 per trade. I am willing to consider ETFs and IT investments although these appear to be better for passive investors (especially the later are just stocks) because of spreads and the 0.5% tax for buying stocks and having to pay a fee for trading those. So it boils down to cost per trade again as the other costs are unavoidable (but cannot be ignored when considering whole portfolio costs).
For passive investing I agree, ETFs/IT are best within a flat fee platform.
Having rethought my options (and I will reconsider the options you pointed out) it largely boils down to pros and cons from customer experience of those platforms because unless you have actually experienced the platform and the service you always think it is “greener” on the other side. The fact that I had bad experiences does not mean that I should expect the worse again but I will be looking out for comments from fellow investors on this website about their particular experiences with the options I shortlisted. When costs become comparable, I guess the overall service is the deciding factor.

I noticed that the broker called IG has seems no platform charges and just flat rates for etfs dealings of £5 or £8. No other fees or charges. Does anyones have any experience of using IG? Would they be recommednded? They are not in the above comparisons table so not sure if any catch or if I am missing something.

@Robert J – I’ve been using them for a while, alongside II for diversification. The platform is free providing you make at least one spread bet (in a spread-betting account) in the previous month. They’re really a spread-betting platform, so the way they show your holdings is not like other brokers and can be a a little irritating. For instance, it can be quite cumbersome trying to check something on a statement (run weekly, not monthly, and downloaded in pdf, not read on screen), or in the cash book. They don’t do stop-losses (you have to put in an order for a spread-bet in the opposite direction, which is a bit messy) and they don’t offer every ETF (just the most popular ones), but it’s very straightforward and the data and charts are second to none. No funds, obviously.

Hi all,

I am new to this… it’s been a challenging experience getting everything in the right place, and I am still a bit confused. I have just arranged with TD Direct Investing to transfer to them my SIPP (£50K), an ISA (£35K) and an unsheltered investment (£10K) . All of these investments will be with Vanguard Life Strategy. I will not be trading at all.

Now I am reading that my SIPP and ISA amounts are on the threshold of being better off with a fixed-fee broker….

Can anyone please advise, given my details above, with which platform I might be best placed?

(I understand that TD will charge 0.5% for my £50K SIPP, which is is £250 pa. And TD will charge 0.3% for each of my £35K ISA and the £10K unsheltered investment, which is £135pa. All-in-all, TD will charge £385 per year).

Thanks accumulator for the update.

For Clubfinance Frequent trader should it not be 3 trades per quarter to avoid the £15pq inactivity fee (rather than 2 as shown in the table)

Thanks for the update and for all your work, Accumulator.

Please could someone explain why “Infrequent traders with SIPPs smaller than £50K may find that Halifax is best”? Why smaller than £50K and not larger? Being a £180pa fixed-rate, Halifax SIPP should be better value for higher amounts?

Thanks.

You haven’t mentioned Equiniti Shareview, which doesn’t charge any custody fees for a standard investment account, with £12.50 per trade (regular and divi investments are £1.75 a trade, which is good value). The ISA platform fee is 0.25%, min £10+VAT, max £37.50+VAT, which is very reasonable. More to the point for me is the simplicity of the platform, which compares very favourably with the other six I’ve tried so far!

Hi Accumulator,

Thanks for putting all of this together. Do you have a spreadsheet that calculates the fees for each platform based on the assumptions you mentioned? If so, would it be possible to get a copy to play about with expected numbers of trades etc?

Thanks,
Ali

If you wait a little while you will be able to invest direct with Vanguard as they are planning to go “direct to customer” (D2C) in spring.
I am waiting and hoping to start with them with the next year’s ISA with a lifestyle fund.
cheers
jim

Or is there a self-select option in the US, with no platform/custody fees? I can’t tell.
Either way, I had the impression that in the UK they would be going the robo-adviser route, though I could (easily) be wrong.

Maybe worth emailing Vanguard directly about their plans as that D2C story has been doing the rounds for 2 years.

Most I could get from Vanguard last week was ‘We have not yet launched the service but are hoping that this will happen within the first quarter of 2017.’

@ljmuk – agreed – see my own comment earlier.