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

innovate

I don't know the details of AT and Cavendish, but given you can deposit £11K-ish into an ISA now, and the same again from April 6, I would not bother with a non-ISA investment account for a couple of months. Unless, of course, you were planning to have an additional £11K for the next financial year.

koru

danrfd wrote: »

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!

1) Yes. As innovate says, you could avoid the double charge by delaying some of the investment until 6 April, so you get a new ISA allowance. However, this might mean you miss out on any growth over the next two months (or the market might fall and you get the chance to buy at lower levels).

2) yes

3) I don't think Cavendish has upfront charges. I would be surprised if Cavendish is cheaper (by which I assume you mean has a lower AMC, net of any rebate) for many funds. If it was, then having accounts at both platforms would seem to make sense, assuming cutting costs is your priority.

Another option for you would be Interactive Investor, which has a higher fee than ATS (£20 per quarter, rather than £12), but this covers ISA and non-ISA accounts for you and your family. And, they give you a credit against transaction costs, so you would probably pay nothing more for transactions.

danrfd

Thanks very much for the advice folks! I'll look at Interactive Investor and do my sums..

koru

I am starting to realise that there is another issue that you need to take into account in comparing platforms. You need to check which specific classes of a fund are offered by each platform. Even platforms that claim to offer the clean version are not necessarily offering the version with the lowest TER.

For instance, ATS offers Troy Trojan O class, which has a TER of 1.03%. That looks pretty good compared with, say, Hargreaves Lansdown, which offers the I class, with a TER of 1.53%. However, Interactive Investor offers the S class, which has a TER of 0.78%.

Another example is JP Morgan Natural Resources. ATS offers the B class in its list of clean funds, which has a TER of 1.18%, but Interactive Investor offers the C class, which is 0.25% cheaper.

Best thing to do is look up your fund on Trustnet and check out which fund class is the cheapest. Then go hunting for which platform has it.

Unfortunately, so far I have not managed to find anyone who has Fidelity South East Asia W class.

koru

Also, worth noting that Interactive Investor will try to add fund classes to the platform if you request. They can't always do so (such as Fidelity SEA W), but well worth asking. Maybe other platforms will do the same.

Special_Saver2

I have an added a note to the Selftrade entry to show that they are closed to new business at the moment, as mentioned in the best mini cash ISAs thread and in this article.

SS2

innovate

Useful summary on Monevator now
http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

koru

innovate wrote: »

Useful summary on Monevator now
http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

Though bear in mind that it is really only aimed at passive investors. For instance, although I can see that you could possibly describe Hargreaves Lansdown as being "post-RDR" in relation to trackers (because of their £2 per month charge for holding trackers with no commission), I don't think they offer any clean classes of active funds and they give every sign that they will not do so until the very last minute.

donniej

innovate wrote: »

Useful summary on Monevator now
http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

I like the quote in the comments:

"Focus solely on cost -> horsemeat lasagne"

Costs are important, but they're not everything.

Special_Saver2

I have carried out the March update for this thread.

I have added some information to the IWeb entry and moved it up into the "no annual fee, low cost for real time dealing".

I have updated the fees in the TD Investing entry (they increased on 1st February).

I have thought about moving the Traders Own entry into the "no annual fee, low cost for real time dealing" section but given their dividend processing fees, I have left them in the "higher dealing charges" section.

I have added the monevator broker comparison page to the links in post 1.

SS2