Moneyfarm and Other Robo-Advisors
Options
Trinityx
Posts: 20 Forumite
I have looked around and I have seen a few questions asked about robo-advisors. The feeling I get is that people tend to shun them because they are more expensive than DIY and they don't give real personalised advice.
However the more I read about fund managers and the damning statistics that show that a lot of funds can't constantly beat the market, the more I find it hard to understand why people shun these robo-advisors, especially as far ISAs go.
Before you jump to answer, let me talk to you about my experience so far, my research as a new and inexperienced investor, then I will also show you where the money has been allocated in my portfolio by the robo-advisor I am using.
First of all I have seen a few people say that, if you don't really want to actively manage everything yourself, you could invest in a Vanguard Lifestrategy fund. Pick the one that fits your risk profile and go with that, as they would be cheaper than the fees of the robo-advisors. You get the same thing - a pool of stocks (in the case of Vanguard Lifestrategy it's a pool of funds) that gets rebalanced every year and you hardly have to do anything, other than invest the money. Use a cheap broker, in my case it would be Charles Stanley Direct, as they don't charge for funds.
If one takes this approach, then it becomes increasingly difficult for me to see why someone WOULDN'T go for a robo-advisors (especially if you pick the right one), since the people who go for them are those who don't have a huge lump sum to invest. I am talking especially about the people who have less than 10k and are not likely to have enough money to max their ISA in one year. Vanguard Lifestrategy also allows you to invest with small amounts (with the right broker) but you will see why I am talking about that 10K figure soon.
Nutmeg is perhaps the most known Robo-advisor in the UK. Because of that, my first instinct was to go with them. However I decided to move away for a couple of reasons.
FEES
I am going to compare Wealthify, Nutmeg and Moneyfarm. I am using Moneyfarm currently; you will see why I picked them by the end of this. I have used all of them, although not long enough to make a detailed performance comparison. I will do the best I can however.
Nutmeg Fees
Nutmeg is the most established of the three, at least in the UK. It has been around since 2011 but it is apparently still running at a loss. They have two fee structures, one for their fixed allocation portfolios and one for their managed portfolio.
Manged portfolio fees:
0.75% for the first 100k
0.45% after 100k
Fixed fee portfolio:
0.35% for the first 100k
0.25% after 100k
Plus an average fund charge 0.19%
Both types offer automatic rebalancing, but the fixed-fee portfolio will not get managed and it is, therefore, fully passive management. In both cases they trade twice a week. Any money you add to your pot will not be invested until their next trade cycle. They trade on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This means also that when you ask for a withdrawal, they will wait until the next trade cycle before they close your pot and send you the money back.
Wealthify Fees
Wealthify is the newest of the 3. They have been around for about an year. They recently lowered their fees.
0.7% from £1 to £15K
0.6% from £15K to £50K
0.5% from £50k onwards
Plus an average fund charge 0.17%
Wealthify invests the money you put into your pot the day after they receive it. I am not sure if they invest daily, but they don't wait for investment cycles to invest your money.
Moneyfarm Fees
Moneyfarm has been around in the UK for about 1 year, but they actually started out in Italy in 2011, where they had decent results.
0% up to 10k
0.6% from 10K to 100K
0.4K from 100K to 1 mil
0% over 1 mil
Plus an average fund charge 0.25%
Moneyfarm invests the money you put into your pot the day after they receive it. I am not sure if they invest daily, but they don't wait for investment cycles to invest your money.
Fees Conclusion
Depending on the amount you invest, some robo-advisors are better than others, however when you average it out, Nutmeg's fixed-allocation portfolio wins.
When you compare the Nutmeg's managed portfolio to the other two robo-advisors (Wealthify and Moneyfarm both do a certain amount of managing) it gets a bit muddled, but Moneyfarm is the winner. Their ETF trading might be a bit higher, but when you average out the fees, they are a bit cheaper than Wealthify and clearly cheaper than Nutmeg's managed offering.
CUSTOMER AND ONLINE SERVICE
They are all great. They can all be reached on the phone quite easily, or they can be messaged and they will always respond. However, Moneyfarm wins here again because they respond within the same day, even multiple times within the same day. Wealthify usually responds some time within the next day, and so does Nutmeg, but Nutmeg is slower.
That said, a lot of the inquiries I found myself asking to the Moneyfarm customer service were generated because of lack of UI features in their web interface or their app. Nutmeg wins for the web interface, you can simply change your porfolio risk or even whether it's managed or fixed allocation, at the touch of a button. You don't get this level of flexibility with Wealthify or Moneyfarm. While they will change the risk level for you once you started investing, you have to contact them for that to happen.
Nutmeg however does not have a phone app, although their user interface adapts well. Both Moneyfarm and Wealthify have a mobile app, I prefer Wealthify's app, but that is not a deciding factor for me.
Moneyfarm has the worst user interface in my opinion, creating a portfolio at the beginning is confusing and it isn't well explained. You have to play around with the sliders to get the risk you want. However their customer service is very good (you even get your own support person with their direct line) so if you can't get something done online, they will do it for you. Note that when I say worst user interface I don't mean "bad". It's all relative to the other two.
It is worth noting that I closed accounts and withdrew money from both Nutmeg and Wealthify. They allowed me to do it no question asked, although it took a good 10 working days for Nutmeg to send the money back to the bank, and a good 2 weeks for Wealthify. When I asked to transfer my ISA from Nutmeg to Moneyfarm, again they did it quickly (after asking identification) and it took me a week to get the money transferred from Nutmeg to Moneyfarm.
Talking of web interface, I like what Nutmeg does more than the other two in regards to creating pots. You open an ISA with Nutmeg and then open any number of pots. Let's say you want a low risk pot to save for your car, which you will only use for 3 years, and then also a high risk pot for your retirement, they will both be under your ISA wrapper. I cannot stress enough how handy this feature is. Both pots will count towards your ISA allowance.
With Wealthify and Moneyfarm you can't do this. Your pot is tied to your ISA, so if you want to do this kind of split saving under an ISA wrapper you can't. One will need to be a general investment pot and will be taxed.
All three robo-advisors offer ISAs and General Investment accounts. Moneyfarm is gearing up to offer a pension as well. Nutmeg already offers a pension (a minimum of £5k deposit required) while Wealthify doesn't offer any extra services.
Note that Nutmeg will be offering a Lifetime ISA too, which will make it attractive for people with low income and who don't have an employer that matches contributions in their pension. I think both Moneyfarm and Wealthify are missing out on an opportunity here because for people in the above circumstances, i.e. with a basic tax rate of 20%, a Lifetime ISA will turn out to be better than a pension. Those are also the people who are more likely to want to use a robo-advisor. I can't post links because it is my first post, but have a look at the Telegraph. They have an article titled "Is This New ISA Really Better Than a Pension?". There is also another one I can't find right now with a table showing when a pension is better and when a LISA is better.
ASSET ALLOCATION AND MINIMUM INVESTMENT
Wealthify used to have a £125 minimum, but that got slashed. Now both Moneyfarm and Wealthify both let you invest from £1. There are no minimum contributions.
Nutmeg will ask you to invest at least £500 and will then ask you to invest a minimum of £100 until you have £5000. If you invest £5000 you don't need to make contributions.
The asset allocation is where I can't really give information on all 3, as I no longer hold a portfolio with Nutmeg and Wealthify. According to their "How We Invest" page, this is their breakdown (UPDATE: please see the edit under the breakdown, Nutmeg's allocation actually changes, depending on the portfolio you pick):
UK 58.1%
North America 24.1%
Japan 3.3%
Pacific Ex-Japan 1.3%
Europe Ex-UK 6.2%
Emerging Markets 6.7%
EDIT: Actually the above breakdown is only for one of their portfolios, the geography allocation varies depending on the risk you pick.
Wealthify doesn't have a list of their investments, and since I no longer hold money with them, I can't provide one.
For Moneyfarm, I can give you my current portfolio breakdown. Even though they say you can start investing with £1, they recommend a sum of £1500 for a truly diversified portfolio. I only have about £800 in it, so it might not be as diversified as they could make it. This is the highest risk portfolio they have on offer.
5.46%
- Global Sovereign Bonds Sterling hedged
21.82%
- Emerging Markets Sovereign Bond local currencies
- Global High Yield Credit
66.02%
- Global Developed Markets Equities (MSCI WORLD) Sterling Hedged
- Global Dividend Equities
- Global Equities (FTSE All World)
6.70%
Cash
I am just starting out, so I might be getting this wrong, but it looks to me like Moneyfarm has made sure there is no home bias.
Robo-Advisor or Vanguard Lifestrategy Fund?
So at this stage, after I have read some here and in other places and people have said, "Why bother with a robo-advisor? Just use a Vanguard Lifestrategy fund." I started to draw some comparisons.
Since I went for the highest risk portfolio on Moneyfarm, let's take the Vanguard Lifestrategy 100, using the Charles Stanley Direct platform, as I mentioned earlier. My conclusion is that for the first 10K the two are comparable. Moneyfarm's customer service is superb, I haven't tried Charles Stanley Direct yet, but the fees are similar.
The results for the last year show that Moneyfarm's actual performance on their high risk portfolio was 19.61%. Unfortunately I can't go any further than that because they have not been around long enough.
For the Vanguard Lifestrategy 100 the returns for that same year have been -2.81%. However that happened to be one of their worst years, they have actually been doing well otherwise. They year before they made 18.01% returns, the year before that 4.83% and the one before that 15.52%. For this year ending now, the fund had a whopping 33.68% return.
Because there isn't enough historic data from Moneyfarm it is difficult to compare, but as you can see, they actually fend off for themselves quite well, so at least for the first 10K, there is no reason to shun them over a DIY approach. The fees are only a tiny bit cheaper for Vanguard (0.22% ongoing charge VS an average 0.25% for the ETFs Moneyfarm uses).
One other thing to consider is that Moneyfarm will place your money in 7 ETFs below 50K, but they will increase your ETFs to 14 above 50K.
Once you reach the 10K limit though, here is where the extra 0.6% charge bites. In the mean time, if you have been diligent, you would have studied more about the markets and you might just be able to start your DIY approach and move away from Moneyfarm. However if Moneyfarm did perform well during your first 10K, why not stick with them? Not all funds will cost 0.22% like the Vanguard Lifestrategy ones do, some will be more expensive.
I think that frowning upon people who use robo-advisors because they don't "take ownership of their own investments" only to then direct them to "DIY investing" through funds such as Vanguard Lifestrategy (where they don't really do it themselves anyway) demonstrates that people haven't really looked into robo-advisors enough, and just shun them because they don't have enough data. I hope I have provided more information.
However the more I read about fund managers and the damning statistics that show that a lot of funds can't constantly beat the market, the more I find it hard to understand why people shun these robo-advisors, especially as far ISAs go.
Before you jump to answer, let me talk to you about my experience so far, my research as a new and inexperienced investor, then I will also show you where the money has been allocated in my portfolio by the robo-advisor I am using.
First of all I have seen a few people say that, if you don't really want to actively manage everything yourself, you could invest in a Vanguard Lifestrategy fund. Pick the one that fits your risk profile and go with that, as they would be cheaper than the fees of the robo-advisors. You get the same thing - a pool of stocks (in the case of Vanguard Lifestrategy it's a pool of funds) that gets rebalanced every year and you hardly have to do anything, other than invest the money. Use a cheap broker, in my case it would be Charles Stanley Direct, as they don't charge for funds.
If one takes this approach, then it becomes increasingly difficult for me to see why someone WOULDN'T go for a robo-advisors (especially if you pick the right one), since the people who go for them are those who don't have a huge lump sum to invest. I am talking especially about the people who have less than 10k and are not likely to have enough money to max their ISA in one year. Vanguard Lifestrategy also allows you to invest with small amounts (with the right broker) but you will see why I am talking about that 10K figure soon.
Nutmeg is perhaps the most known Robo-advisor in the UK. Because of that, my first instinct was to go with them. However I decided to move away for a couple of reasons.
FEES
I am going to compare Wealthify, Nutmeg and Moneyfarm. I am using Moneyfarm currently; you will see why I picked them by the end of this. I have used all of them, although not long enough to make a detailed performance comparison. I will do the best I can however.
Nutmeg Fees
Nutmeg is the most established of the three, at least in the UK. It has been around since 2011 but it is apparently still running at a loss. They have two fee structures, one for their fixed allocation portfolios and one for their managed portfolio.
Manged portfolio fees:
0.75% for the first 100k
0.45% after 100k
Fixed fee portfolio:
0.35% for the first 100k
0.25% after 100k
Plus an average fund charge 0.19%
Both types offer automatic rebalancing, but the fixed-fee portfolio will not get managed and it is, therefore, fully passive management. In both cases they trade twice a week. Any money you add to your pot will not be invested until their next trade cycle. They trade on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This means also that when you ask for a withdrawal, they will wait until the next trade cycle before they close your pot and send you the money back.
Wealthify Fees
Wealthify is the newest of the 3. They have been around for about an year. They recently lowered their fees.
0.7% from £1 to £15K
0.6% from £15K to £50K
0.5% from £50k onwards
Plus an average fund charge 0.17%
Wealthify invests the money you put into your pot the day after they receive it. I am not sure if they invest daily, but they don't wait for investment cycles to invest your money.
Moneyfarm Fees
Moneyfarm has been around in the UK for about 1 year, but they actually started out in Italy in 2011, where they had decent results.
0% up to 10k
0.6% from 10K to 100K
0.4K from 100K to 1 mil
0% over 1 mil
Plus an average fund charge 0.25%
Moneyfarm invests the money you put into your pot the day after they receive it. I am not sure if they invest daily, but they don't wait for investment cycles to invest your money.
Fees Conclusion
Depending on the amount you invest, some robo-advisors are better than others, however when you average it out, Nutmeg's fixed-allocation portfolio wins.
When you compare the Nutmeg's managed portfolio to the other two robo-advisors (Wealthify and Moneyfarm both do a certain amount of managing) it gets a bit muddled, but Moneyfarm is the winner. Their ETF trading might be a bit higher, but when you average out the fees, they are a bit cheaper than Wealthify and clearly cheaper than Nutmeg's managed offering.
CUSTOMER AND ONLINE SERVICE
They are all great. They can all be reached on the phone quite easily, or they can be messaged and they will always respond. However, Moneyfarm wins here again because they respond within the same day, even multiple times within the same day. Wealthify usually responds some time within the next day, and so does Nutmeg, but Nutmeg is slower.
That said, a lot of the inquiries I found myself asking to the Moneyfarm customer service were generated because of lack of UI features in their web interface or their app. Nutmeg wins for the web interface, you can simply change your porfolio risk or even whether it's managed or fixed allocation, at the touch of a button. You don't get this level of flexibility with Wealthify or Moneyfarm. While they will change the risk level for you once you started investing, you have to contact them for that to happen.
Nutmeg however does not have a phone app, although their user interface adapts well. Both Moneyfarm and Wealthify have a mobile app, I prefer Wealthify's app, but that is not a deciding factor for me.
Moneyfarm has the worst user interface in my opinion, creating a portfolio at the beginning is confusing and it isn't well explained. You have to play around with the sliders to get the risk you want. However their customer service is very good (you even get your own support person with their direct line) so if you can't get something done online, they will do it for you. Note that when I say worst user interface I don't mean "bad". It's all relative to the other two.
It is worth noting that I closed accounts and withdrew money from both Nutmeg and Wealthify. They allowed me to do it no question asked, although it took a good 10 working days for Nutmeg to send the money back to the bank, and a good 2 weeks for Wealthify. When I asked to transfer my ISA from Nutmeg to Moneyfarm, again they did it quickly (after asking identification) and it took me a week to get the money transferred from Nutmeg to Moneyfarm.
Talking of web interface, I like what Nutmeg does more than the other two in regards to creating pots. You open an ISA with Nutmeg and then open any number of pots. Let's say you want a low risk pot to save for your car, which you will only use for 3 years, and then also a high risk pot for your retirement, they will both be under your ISA wrapper. I cannot stress enough how handy this feature is. Both pots will count towards your ISA allowance.
With Wealthify and Moneyfarm you can't do this. Your pot is tied to your ISA, so if you want to do this kind of split saving under an ISA wrapper you can't. One will need to be a general investment pot and will be taxed.
All three robo-advisors offer ISAs and General Investment accounts. Moneyfarm is gearing up to offer a pension as well. Nutmeg already offers a pension (a minimum of £5k deposit required) while Wealthify doesn't offer any extra services.
Note that Nutmeg will be offering a Lifetime ISA too, which will make it attractive for people with low income and who don't have an employer that matches contributions in their pension. I think both Moneyfarm and Wealthify are missing out on an opportunity here because for people in the above circumstances, i.e. with a basic tax rate of 20%, a Lifetime ISA will turn out to be better than a pension. Those are also the people who are more likely to want to use a robo-advisor. I can't post links because it is my first post, but have a look at the Telegraph. They have an article titled "Is This New ISA Really Better Than a Pension?". There is also another one I can't find right now with a table showing when a pension is better and when a LISA is better.
ASSET ALLOCATION AND MINIMUM INVESTMENT
Wealthify used to have a £125 minimum, but that got slashed. Now both Moneyfarm and Wealthify both let you invest from £1. There are no minimum contributions.
Nutmeg will ask you to invest at least £500 and will then ask you to invest a minimum of £100 until you have £5000. If you invest £5000 you don't need to make contributions.
The asset allocation is where I can't really give information on all 3, as I no longer hold a portfolio with Nutmeg and Wealthify. According to their "How We Invest" page, this is their breakdown (UPDATE: please see the edit under the breakdown, Nutmeg's allocation actually changes, depending on the portfolio you pick):
UK 58.1%
North America 24.1%
Japan 3.3%
Pacific Ex-Japan 1.3%
Europe Ex-UK 6.2%
Emerging Markets 6.7%
EDIT: Actually the above breakdown is only for one of their portfolios, the geography allocation varies depending on the risk you pick.
Wealthify doesn't have a list of their investments, and since I no longer hold money with them, I can't provide one.
For Moneyfarm, I can give you my current portfolio breakdown. Even though they say you can start investing with £1, they recommend a sum of £1500 for a truly diversified portfolio. I only have about £800 in it, so it might not be as diversified as they could make it. This is the highest risk portfolio they have on offer.
5.46%
- Global Sovereign Bonds Sterling hedged
21.82%
- Emerging Markets Sovereign Bond local currencies
- Global High Yield Credit
66.02%
- Global Developed Markets Equities (MSCI WORLD) Sterling Hedged
- Global Dividend Equities
- Global Equities (FTSE All World)
6.70%
Cash
I am just starting out, so I might be getting this wrong, but it looks to me like Moneyfarm has made sure there is no home bias.
Robo-Advisor or Vanguard Lifestrategy Fund?
So at this stage, after I have read some here and in other places and people have said, "Why bother with a robo-advisor? Just use a Vanguard Lifestrategy fund." I started to draw some comparisons.
Since I went for the highest risk portfolio on Moneyfarm, let's take the Vanguard Lifestrategy 100, using the Charles Stanley Direct platform, as I mentioned earlier. My conclusion is that for the first 10K the two are comparable. Moneyfarm's customer service is superb, I haven't tried Charles Stanley Direct yet, but the fees are similar.
The results for the last year show that Moneyfarm's actual performance on their high risk portfolio was 19.61%. Unfortunately I can't go any further than that because they have not been around long enough.
For the Vanguard Lifestrategy 100 the returns for that same year have been -2.81%. However that happened to be one of their worst years, they have actually been doing well otherwise. They year before they made 18.01% returns, the year before that 4.83% and the one before that 15.52%. For this year ending now, the fund had a whopping 33.68% return.
Because there isn't enough historic data from Moneyfarm it is difficult to compare, but as you can see, they actually fend off for themselves quite well, so at least for the first 10K, there is no reason to shun them over a DIY approach. The fees are only a tiny bit cheaper for Vanguard (0.22% ongoing charge VS an average 0.25% for the ETFs Moneyfarm uses).
One other thing to consider is that Moneyfarm will place your money in 7 ETFs below 50K, but they will increase your ETFs to 14 above 50K.
Once you reach the 10K limit though, here is where the extra 0.6% charge bites. In the mean time, if you have been diligent, you would have studied more about the markets and you might just be able to start your DIY approach and move away from Moneyfarm. However if Moneyfarm did perform well during your first 10K, why not stick with them? Not all funds will cost 0.22% like the Vanguard Lifestrategy ones do, some will be more expensive.
I think that frowning upon people who use robo-advisors because they don't "take ownership of their own investments" only to then direct them to "DIY investing" through funds such as Vanguard Lifestrategy (where they don't really do it themselves anyway) demonstrates that people haven't really looked into robo-advisors enough, and just shun them because they don't have enough data. I hope I have provided more information.
0
Comments
-
I think people shun them because they are new and have less of track record. If you compare something like Moneyfarm, 0% platform fees on the first £10k (or £20k via MSE I believe) it could be a lot cheaper than using a traditional broker + Vanguard Lifestrategy.
I've used Moneyfarm and DIY brokers. For me, a negative of Moneyfarm was some currency hedging they did around Brexit that lost value compared to a straight world-ETF. That is just my view of what happened when glancing at the holdings and relative performance and not based on in-depth analysis. Obviously it could have gone the other way, they were playing it safe.
Lots of traditional banks are looking to open their own robo-advice products which should bring it more into the mainstream.0 -
Lots of traditional banks are looking to open their own robo-advice products which should bring it more into the mainstream.
But this time, they get to mis-sell all over again but without the consumer protection.I am an Independent Financial Adviser (IFA). The comments I make are just my opinion and are for discussion purposes only. They are not financial advice and you should not treat them as such. If you feel an area discussed may be relevant to you, then please seek advice from an Independent Financial Adviser local to you.0 -
I should mention that I just checked the management fees of the ETFs used in my Moneyfarm portfolio. Although the majority of my shares are in ETFs with a management fee of 0.25%, I have several in ETFs with 0.50/0.55% at the moment. Meaning that my average fees currently are more than 0.25%.
I don't have the £1500 they recommend yet, which means my fees might be higher because of the asset distribution.0 -
Thanks for that very full comparison and description of your experience. . .
However the more I read about fund managers and the damning statistics that show that a lot of funds can't constantly beat the market, . . . it becomes increasingly difficult for me to see why someone WOULDN'T go for a robo-advisors (especially if you pick the right one), since the people who go for them are those who don't have a huge lump sum to invest. I am talking especially about the people who have less than 10k . . . .
I agree on that main point.
Such investors can possibly understand the points about size of investment, fees and customer service. They would not understand, however, your points on asset allocation and performance.
In the end, performance is how an investor will judge them, but, where there are multiple risk levels, multiple asset allocations, and multiple timing and amounts being paid in, there is no distilled performance figure, and so it is impossible to make a digestible star rating. There is perhaps no benchmark either, except, as you say, a LifeStrategy fund.
In the end, just like any fund manager choosing shares, it is a lot about being in the right sector/geog ETFs at the right time, and, with any robo-fund or multi-ETF fund, this is partly luck and partly the skill of a design or a manager.
The firms probably study each other, and After three years or so, a decent account from inside may emerge of which design or manager is judged most creditable overall.0 -
I think you have nutmeg's "managed above £100k" and "fixed allocation below £100k" fees the wrong way around. They are 0.35% and 0.45% respectively.0
-
I had part of a house deposit with Wealthify and part with 'normal' platforms. Wealthify correspondence didn't show amount invested, statements of value, transactions, or amount withdrawn. I therefore have no evidence of the investment for solicitors Anti-Money Laundering requirements.0
-
I see that Moneyfarm has also launched a refer a friend scheme - I've posted separately on the referrals board which can help cut fees in year 1.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=57954570 -
I know this thread was a while ago but anyone mind if I pick up on it with a fresh question?
I have a very small (<£500) amount of money in a S&S ISA at Wealthify. I pay in £50 a month.
I'm looking at exploring the Vanguard Lifestrategy passive fund, because I've heard great things about it; and because, for the most part, it seems to get good returns. I would probably look to deposit, say, £1000 to begin with, and then look at regular contributions, say £200 a month or the like. (I am, separately, maintaining 3 months' salary as an emergency cash fund.) I would probably go for either the 60% or 80% equity option, the rest being bonds.
But of course I can't contribute to two S&S ISAs at the same time. So I need to do one of the following:
- keep and build up the Wealthify ISA as I already am, open a normal account with Vanguard - I will be taxed on anything I gain through them
- do the opposite - change the Wealthify to a non-taxfree account, open the ISA with Vanguard and get the benefit of the tax savings there
- ditch Wealthify and focus all my efforts on Vanguard, to reduce my (really minimal at this stage) fees and keep ALL my gains tax free
- forget Vanguard and just invest more with Wealthify
It's seemingly been a rubbish year for investing so I haven't made anything with Wealthify. But it seems like they held the line better than many competing platforms of their kind. I have neither lost nor gained money. It is, of course, a long game, so this doesn't bother me yet.
Vanguard get great reviews but I haven't used them yet, so they represent the unknown. But I THINK their numbers look better....
What would you do?0 -
How about opening a new ISA on 6th April for the new tax year? You won't be able to pay any more into Wealthify then, and you can transfer it at your leisure.
If you want to invest in Vanguard funds, one option is to open an ISA directly with Vanguard (0.15% annual charge on the investments you hold, but no charge per trade); another option is an ISA with a broker that offers a broader range of funds, in case you want to also add non-Vanguard funds to your portfolio. For example, Halifax Sharedealing has [STRIKE]no annual charge[/STRIKE] a £12.50 flat annual charge, and charges £2 for each trade, if you do it as a scheduled monthly investment.0 -
londoninvestor wrote: »For example, Halifax Sharedealing has no annual charge, and charges £2 for each trade, if you do it as a scheduled monthly investment.
There is a £12.50 annual charge with the HSD ISA so for someone regularly investing at £2 per trade that would be £36.50. For the amounts ambrosino is talking about they would probably be better opening a Vanguard Investor ISA and asking them to transfer-in the Wealthify ISA and then in a few more years once the account valuation is big enough moving to someone like HSD.
Alex0
This discussion has been closed.
Categories
- All Categories
- 343.2K Banking & Borrowing
- 250.1K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
- 449.7K Spending & Discounts
- 235.3K Work, Benefits & Business
- 608K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
- 173.1K Life & Family
- 247.9K Travel & Transport
- 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
- 15.9K Discuss & Feedback
- 15.1K Coronavirus Support Boards