Fundsnetwork safety

csj_2

I have a significant amount of money invested in Equity ISAs through Fidelity Fundsnetwork. In the unlikely event that Fidelity were to fail, how safe are my savings? I realise that my equity investments are held in a number of non-Fidelity funds but am unclear how safe they would be in the event of the failure of Fidelity as the administrator of these funds.

I am unable to find a link anywhere to clarify this point.

I suppose the same argument would apply to investors using Cofunds.

middlepuss

My understanding would be that you don't have any money invested in Fidelity, you have money invested in various funds via the Fidelity platform. So if Fidelity goes down you should be OK.

However - and although the experts will be in to tell you I'm paranoid - I would never have all my investments held via one platform. Fraud is so remote a possibility with a big company like Fidelity you can just about rule it out. But who knows what might go wrong administratively or in some other way one cannot foresee?

jimjames

Even Fidelity funds would be held by an independent custodian so Fidelity going bust would not have an effect on the value of your investment. It might affect how you could access it for a while if their platform was also stopped.

I'd agree it is a good plan to split investments across different platforms but the risk of a company like Fidelity going under is fairly low.

pqrdef

Presumably the risks involved are those associated with holding investments through a nominee rather than in your own name. The bankruptcy of the nominee wouldn't affect client holdings, so long as the firm had been trading properly. But conceivably your holdings could turn out to have been mortgaged or sold or never bought in the first place.

EdGasket

So while cash held at the platform administrator, Fidelity in this case, are protected to £50K by the FSA, what protection, and from whom, is there on the stocks/shares/funds held by a nominee if the nominee goes bust or just disappears off the face of the earth?