All investment with Hargreaves Lansdown?

Laughing_Boy

dunstonh wrote: »

The assets are held under a trust in the pension and ringfenced. A similar arrangement exits with the ISA and unwrapped holdings. You are not investing in HL. HL are facilitating the purchase of your investments. They do not own those investments.

I thought that if I invest in funds via the HL Vantage Stocks & Shares ISA, my investments are actually held by Hargreaves Lansdown Nominees Limited.

So surely they do own those investments.

sabretoothtigger

No I think you own them, they administrate them collectively.
Hence when it comes to voting its you who can decide if the board gets voted back in or not, HL do not vote on your behalf because ultimately they are not the owners of those shares

If the company you have shares in goes broke then you lose the money but not because the nominees do

Laughing_Boy

Sorry to disagree but this is important ...

No! If I invest in a fund in a Hargreaves Lansdown Vantage Stocks & Shares ISA Hargreave Lansdown Nominees Ltd own the investments. The individual fund manager has no record of me nor my details. So dunstonh has given slightly misleading information, although what he is saying is correct if HL are simply acting as an execution-only broker - in which case they merely facilitate the investment with the fund manager and do not own the investments themselves. This is not the case, however, with anything held in Vantage. HL Nominees are, however, ringfenced so if HL go bust they could be bought out by someone else.

Read http://www.h-l.co.uk/investment-services/vantage-service/how-safe-is-your-investment for further info.

RayWolfe

Sparky47 wrote: »

As they have just moved offices, you can probably get rid of your envelopes !

I thought that would make the old ones collectables!

aspiration_2

Laughingboy's statement has made me nervous.

I just re-read H&L's note as pointed out in his post.

" A) All client money is held on deposit in Trust accounts, so that any creditors of Hargreaves Lansdown would have no legal right to it, we cannot use any of this money to cover the company's obligations, and is subject to controls and procedures over and above those required by the FSA. In addition, client money held within the Vantage Service is spread across a number of banks.

Stock you hold with us is held by Hargreaves Lansdown Nominees Limited, a non-trading company which is a member of the Hargreaves Lansdown Group of Companies. As a non-trading company it cannot run up liabilities of its own and Hargreaves Lansdown accepts full liability for any default by our nominee company. All your assets are held in an account designated with your name. "

The first part is fine and clear.

The second part is unclear. Assets are in clients name - WHERE ? With the listed companies?

No mention about ring-fencing.


Could someone clear up this please ?

jamesd

Nominee companies are probably the most common way for most people to hold investments, whether they are shares or funds. The nominee company is what holds the records of who holds what investments. The ring-fencing happens because the nominee company is not the same as Hargreaves Lansdown the investment business, so it's not exposed to any financial difficulties it might have.

sva19

What is the next best alternative ISA provider to HL who is very competive in prices, i.e no initial charge on most funds and free switches?

thanks

cepheus

I discussed this in detail with HLa few years ago and they seemed to convince me that any monies (even large amounts above the 50k limit) held in ISAs were safe. Either it was ring fenced, insured or both. Ring them and see what they say. I also keep check of how the company is faring as an extra safeguard

jamesd

sva19, if you're concerned about this nominee discussion, you'll find that the alternatives have a similar structure.

Next most competitive, or sometimes more competitive, depends on how much money you'll be investing and how often you trade. Some have bigger annual discounts that are eaten up by the fees if you trade more than infrequently. I haven't found anywhere for funds that makes more sense up to £50,000 or so per account. Those that have lower annual charges for funds are uncompetitive for monthly purchases because of dealing costs for the buys.

Jonbvn

jamesd wrote: »

I haven't found anywhere for funds that makes more sense up to £50,000 or so per account. Those that have lower annual charges for funds are uncompetitive for monthly purchases because of dealing costs for the buys.

Having recently moved our S&S ISA's from Fidelity to H-L, it is evident to us that H-L are far superior from several aspects I won't go into here. However, given the increased ISA limits, we will both quickly breach the £50k limit. What to do when this happens? Open another S&S ISA with someone else?