Low cost Stocks & Shares (Investment) ISAs: The Best Currently Available List!

fimonkey

What's best for a monthly regular investment of £100 into stocks/shares and funds with no initial deposit? - for VERY long term holding and building up gradually.

TD waterhouse look like they charge £1.50 to trade S&S and nil for funds, and that making a monthy investment would take the charges on a trading account to zero too AM I RIGHT? Does this also apply to an S&S ISA too (i.e if I open an ccount as a regular investment with TD can I hold them in an ISA for free)?

iweb charge a one off fee of £25, can trade in an ISA, and pay £2 per regular trade. They are cheaper if closing an account or transferring out than TD waterhouse.

Just one thing though, is this worth it for a year if the platforms are likely to change their charges again (I had to move out of ii for this reason),

ajdj

I'm currently debating the same thing when looking for a provider and had narrowed it down to the same 2- TD and iweb.

I can't find much info on the regular trades at iweb, i know at TD you are restricted to FTSE350 only?

There is no administration fee at TD provided you set up a direct debit for a minimum of £25/month (min £50 for buying funds). Regular trades at TD are twice a month. Iweb is 4 times per month.

I think TD has a more sophisticated platform too.

bowlhead99

koru wrote: »

I was interested to note when looking at the TD Direct website that although they do not have junior ISAs, they do allow adults to open Trading accounts that are designated for their children. This makes TD Direct a pretty good option for investing in funds on behalf of children, as long as you have £10,000 to invest in funds or you have a linked Trading ISA (because this means you pay no annual fee).

I'm not sure that this is the case though (linking designated account to a trading ISA acct to avoid the fee).

I have a designated account -application form was essentially a joint account form for both our details and it comes with its own account number, login password and linked savings account. With my existing separate login for my main trading account, I'm linked to my ISA and a savings account, but not the designee accounts.

There is a feature to link accounts under one login, but when I go through the screens for that, it says you will be able to link accounts under one login if they are in your sole name only. I can go through the motions, it finds the accounts ok and asks me to confirm they're mine, but after that it says it has not been possible to complete the requested function, ring customer services. I have not bothered to call as I'm not that bothered about getting all the accounts under one statement, I just tried it to see if I could, and gave up when it wasn't going to be one minute job.

So I don't know, but I suspect, the fact I can't link the accounts means they wouldn't allow me to use the existence of the ISA to avoid inactivity fees on the child's account. Certainly there is no explicit guidance in the fee section on the site that says you can link ISAs in your sole name to designated accounts and joint accounts to get a fee break based on your overall family relationship with the provider (this is a selling point with another provider).

I've never paid the fee on the child's account yet, as I've had a trade each quarter so far, but was presuming I would have to turn it into a regular account in due course to avoid inactivity fees on infrequent trading going forward. The raising of the fee threshold from 7.5k to 15k of portfolio or 10k of funds makes this even more likely so I hope a 'linked ISA' arrangement works, but I'm not banking on it.

As a side note they have been quite helpful, allowing me to transfer across small chunks of cash or shares from my main account in specie to the child account as and when I've requested it, for free. You can move cash online but to transfer shares you have to call. I still did some 'real' trades out of the account to ensure I didn't fall foul of inactivity charges.

koru wrote: »

The page I linked to in post 169 is perfectly clear. You only need to meet one of the criteria.

I can confirm this having never paid the quarterly fee on my trading a/c or the annual fee on my ISA account. Actually to be picky a fee did appear in my ISA account last year but I emailed them to say I qualified based on the portfolio size, they checked it, blamed a system glitch, apologised and reversed it.

fimonkey wrote: »

TD waterhouse look like they charge £1.50 to trade S&S
yes for sterling-quoted FTSE 350 shares and certain ETFs
and nil for funds
yes this has been my experience although I haven't tried to do a cheap tracker on a regular investor account - there is a thread herehttps://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4362371 where a poster wondered if they would be charged, I thought no, TD confirmed to them 'no' (post 4), then TD called them back and said actually they would pay 1.50 for the cheap trackers on monthly investing (post 5). Either there is a miscommunication somewhere or the reality is out of whack with the fee structure currently described on the website. This was only a very recent post and they have not updated with what happened when they actually placed the trade (this month's payment will not have gone through yet anyway).

and that making a monthy investment would take the charges on a trading account to zero too the regular investment version of the trading account currently (pre-February new structure) doesn't have any management fees at all so it's without question. Going forward I only have the flyer from the link above, which does not say whether the regular investment account is within scope - but presuming it is, you would expect that you would always have at least one trade in the account in a quarter and therefore meet the exemption. Unless they say that a commission free purchase of a fund does not qualify as a 'trade'.
AM I RIGHT? Does this also apply to an S&S ISA too (i.e if I open an ccount as a regular investment with TD can I hold them in an ISA for free)?
Under the current fee scale, the annual ISA admin fee is 30+VAT but is waived on a normal ISA account only if you have a balance of 5100 at the end of May each year. It explicitly says that the current 'regular investment' ISA does not attract an admin fee.

However on the flyer for the new scale it just refers to 'no changes to our basic pricing structure on the following services' and goes on to list various services including annual ISA administration at 30 p.a. (no mention of VAT) if you are under 5100 balance. I expect the VAT missing is a typo, and it is intended to be the same as it always was, with the regular investment version of the account being completely out of scope for annual admin. But it doesn't say either way.

Just one thing though, is this worth it for a year if the platforms are likely to change their charges again (I had to move out of ii for this reason),

Platforms are indeed likely to change their charges again, they have all seemed to solve their 'trail commission' issues but whether they might want to revisit after the 'platform review' happens (2014 or beyond), we don't know. Expect they will. Shortly after iii made their changes, SIPPdeal put a banner on their site saying no fee changes until 2014, which I am reading as, expect more changes around then, or earlier with some others.

At the end of the day this is all market forces and they will charge what they want to gain or lose different types of customers with regard to what their competitors are doing from time to time!

TD do have an exit fee / account closure fee - whether they would enforce this if they changed a small part of the deal, who knows.

Special_Saver2

I have carried out the January update for this thread.

- commfreefunds.com removed from the list as they are no longer open to new business

- Hargreaves Lansdown have added the option of automatic dividend reinvestment once dividends reach £200 per share holding for a fee of 1% (minimum £10, maximum £50). Beware, if your dividends get reinvested once they reach £200 then with a charge of £10, this represents a 5% charge! They are also offering their "share dealing for £1" promotion again for new customers until 28th February if you join by 31st January.

- Massow's paymemy website says that they rebate 100% of the trail commission with no on-going fee if you have the rebate paid back into your account (or they charge a "small audit fee" if you want the rebate in cash). I do not understand how they can make any money if customers opt for having the rebate added to their account.

- Sippdeal have promised not to introduce new charges or increase existing charges until 2014 (it said this on the home page of their website last month although it has curiously disappeared now!)

- TD Direct charges change from next month including changes to frequent share dealing charges

I will do another update in March (or sooner if anybody notices anything that has changed and posts the information on this thread).

SS2

Edit: I have also added a link to the Alliance Trust entry for the page mentioned by koru in the post below.

koru

ATS now has a list of clean fund classes that you can buy from them post 31/12/12: http://www.alliancetrustsavings.co.uk/rdr-updates/

In most cases, the AMC is 0.75%. They have all the HSBC C class trackers. Many fund houses currently missing.

Special_Saver2

I have added a link in the entry on the first page of this thread about TD Direct regarding the 0.35% platform fee they are going to start charging in August 2013 on clean funds. I have also added a link to a separate thread where this is currently being discussed.

SS2

kingshuk

I am finally about to move from ii (already too late I know!) and came to this thread again as my starting point. iWeb looks best for what I need but noticed in fsa register (sorry can't post a link but its easy to find in fsa dot gov dot uk) that they are no longer authorized.

I know that they are operated by Halifax Share Dealing (sorry no link again) but was wondering whether this means they are owned by HSDL? Does anyone know? And does this mean they are authorized to take client money and if things go wrong client money will be protected by FSA regs?


thanks
Kingshuk

NPowerUser

If anyone could give a answer to the question, whom is cheapest buying platform for paying £50 to £100 a month in a regular S&S ISA?

innovate

NPowerUser wrote: »

If anyone could give a answer to the question, whom is cheapest buying platform for paying £50 to £100 a month in a regular S&S ISA?

It would depend to some extent - or even entirely - what you are investing in.

Have you tried the the fund comparison tool? http://www.comparefundplatforms.com/compare

It's not perfect, but it list a number of the platforms known as usually being competitively priced. You'd have to add any charges for the ISA itself, though any of the good platforms should not charge extra if you contribute regularly.

danrfd

Hello, I am completely new to investing and have spent a fair bit of time over the last week trying to work out the best platform for my needs. I have about 20k to invest of which 11k can be in an ISA. It appears either Alliance Trust or Cavendish may be the cheapest options but I have a few questions:

1) As I will have both an ISA and a non-ISA chunk of investment. Will I need to pay the AT quaterly fees twice over?

2) AT charges a £1.50 fee for monthly investment but a £12.50 for one off investment. Can I therefore spread my initial investments for each fund over two months and pay £3 per fund rather than £12.50?

3) Are there any upfront charges for Canvendish? It is pretty hard to work out from their website! Assuming I go for an account with AT, would it make sense to also open a Cavendish account and use whichever works out cheaper for each particular fund?

Thanks for your help sorting out my confusion!