New AJ Bell Youinvest charges

george4064 · 9 August 2016 at 8:02PM

FYI just received the below email;

From 1 October 2016 our charges for SIPPs, ISAs, Junior ISAs and Dealing accounts will be changing.

Why are we changing our charges?

One of the main attractions of AJ Bell Youinvest is our approach to transparent, fair and simple charges that caters for people at all stages of their investment journey.

Having carefully reviewed the charges all our customers are paying, we have decided to introduce a new charging structure which will be more consistent in approach across all our accounts. The new charging structure ensures that all customers are paying a fair price for the services they receive from us, irrespective of account or investment style.

We believe this will be easier to understand, whilst maintaining AJ Bell’s commitment to offering some of the lowest charges in the market.

We have created a simple Charges calculator that will help you to estimate your charges under the new structure and also to compare them with our largest competitors.

What are the changes?

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

We can also confirm that our charges for a Lifetime ISA, which is scheduled to be available from 6 April 2017, will be the same as our new ISA charges.

The new charges come into effect from 1 October 2016.

Changes to interest rates

Following the recent cut in interest rates by the Monetary Policy Committee, we are changing the interest rates we pay on cash balances in your accounts to 0.05% on balances of £50,000 or more. We will pay no interest on balances below £50,000. The new rates come into effect on 9 September 2016.

coyrls · 9 August 2016 at 8:22PM

I relied on their cap on charges. I will now have to move my ISA and SIPP to a flat fee provider or providers. Any recommendations for investments primarily in funds? Given the drastic change in costs for me (more than a 5x increase), I hope that AJ Bell will waive their transfer charges.

JenniferK · 9 August 2016 at 8:24PM

These changes almost double the amount of charges that they will claim. Any alternatives?

masonic · 9 August 2016 at 8:35PM

JenniferK wrote: »

These changes almost double the amount of charges that they will claim. Any alternatives?

iWeb contract out their SIPP to AJ Bell and waive their normal opening fee. Whether or not their charges will be brought more in line with those above remains to be seen though.

EdGasket · 9 August 2016 at 8:38PM

There is a cap on S&S charges but not funds. On my SIPP it makes no difference as I was paying £25 per quarter before.

If I am understanding it right then they have cut the costs of pension withdrawals which is handy as I'm coming up to that stage.

Introducing a custody charge on their ISA sucks. There are plenty of providers that make no charge. Time to move elsewhere!

bigadaj · 9 August 2016 at 9:20PM

masonic wrote: »

iWeb contract out their SIPP to AJ Bell and waive their normal opening fee. Whether or not their charges will be brought more in line with those above remains to be seen though.

Yes, just moved to iWeb for their sipp, it's a moving feast.

Moved my isa with funds to Halifax share dealing a few months ago and have been happy with that so far.

hoc · 9 August 2016 at 9:42PM

More details here, including comparison of before/after as the wording on some of the changes is a little cheeky: https://www.youinvest.co.uk/charges-and-rates

Previously, the max custody for SIPP of 100/year was relevant for portfolio over 20k. This is effectively being reduced to portfolios of 10k. I suppose most SIPP portfolios are over 10k but a majority were over 20k anyway so this is essentially no change.

Introducing a custody charge on ISA to hold shares is a bit much. It is capped at 30/year which applies to portfolio of 12k, so should just about cover all users.

I like AJ Bell/Youinvest and recommend them at every opportunity. I like the service and I like the platform. If I were starting today, I would not recommend them for ISA. There are many that won't charge custody for ISA.

The new benefits are all aimed at funds (reducing trades to 1.50 and new tiered custody fees) but I don't by funds so just slightly bad news for me. The one change that would make me leave immediately is if they scrapped the regular share trading.

I was expecting some changes including to charges after the survey they had the other month, but the ISA custody fee does surprise me.

george4064 · 9 August 2016 at 9:54PM

I dont actually hold an active account with AJ Bell, however I was surprised to find that you can only use the dividend re-investment service for stocks that are eligible for regular share investment plan.

I hold quite a few income paying stocks that therefore wont be able to automaticall re-invest dividends, leaving me with a hefty dealing commission to pay if I wanted to re-invest them myself...

pavane · 9 August 2016 at 9:58PM

Funds are now uncapped for both SIPP and ISA. If you are into funds, I can second recommendation for Halifax.

The "custody" on shares for SIPP is really just to make standard terminology I think hence the cap. If they had uncapped custody fee for shares then they'd seriously lose a lot of customers.

Custody fee for ISA? It seems they don't want ISA customers. Going down the one time initial fee route iweb introduced a few years ago would have made annoyed fewer customers.

hoc · 9 August 2016 at 10:04PM

george4064 wrote: »

I dont actually hold an active account with AJ Bell, however I was surprised to find that you can only use the dividend re-investment service for stocks that are eligible for regular share investment plan.

I hold quite a few income paying stocks that therefore wont be able to automaticall re-invest dividends, leaving me with a hefty dealing commission to pay if I wanted to re-invest them myself...

Weren't they changing this? I remember a message earlier this year about some positive changes on dividend re-investment.

I wonder what, if any, new offerings on products and services will be included. The survey was asking about additional things customers may want, a lot about analysis, magazines, etc. which I don't want to pay for.

hoc · 9 August 2016 at 10:12PM

pavane wrote: »

Funds are now uncapped for both SIPP and ISA. If you are into funds, I can second recommendation for Halifax.

The "custody" on shares for SIPP is really just to make standard terminology I think hence the cap. If they had uncapped custody fee for shares then they'd seriously lose a lot of customers.

Custody fee for ISA? It seems they don't want ISA customers. Going down the one time initial fee route iweb introduced a few years ago would have made annoyed fewer customers.

Oh, I missed the removal of cap on funds. I don't do much funds to begin with, and none with AJ Bell so wasn't paying too much attention. So, previously max capped of 200/year for funds now effective on portfolio of 80k. If I had a big fund based portfolio, I would probably move to a platform that gets preferential (reduced) management fee funds like HL.

Bank of Scotland is slightly cheaper than Halifax, same product, just more white than blue. They're good for funds although sometimes problematic platform, but this shouldn't matter for funds dealing.

New AJ Bell Youinvest charges

Comments

Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

🚀 Getting Started

Categories

Is this how you want to be seen?

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free