Thinking of transfering to HL Vantage A/c Help please

savingmore

I currently have my S&S ISAS held with an IFA who of course gets initial commission and trail commission.

I have just discovered the Hargreaves & Lansdowne Vantage service. Do you have any knowledge of this and do you recommend it? could you give me the pros and cons.

It appears that the initial commission is vastly reduced and you get loyalty bonus for keeping your S&S isas there (with a minimum of £1,000 in each fund.

Is this worth doing and putting in my few individual shares (not in a Isa wrapper) as well?

Would really appreciate help, especially from those knowledgable and IFAs...

Thanks!

MrMalkin

HL currently get an amount of kickback trail commission from most of the funds they offer, but it's recovered from the fund houses via the 'discount' they offer, not taken out of your balance. There are quite a few funds from which they receive no commission, so they charge a fee (£1 or £2 a month, mainly on trackers) to hold those funds. So ultimately what you see is what you get - look at the funds you're interested in on HL's website and see if you'd be better off with them.

You may be better off with someone like Alliance Savings, because they refund all of the commission kickback they get back from the fund houses, but charge various flat fees for using their platform. You'll need to break out Excel and work out which platform saves you the most money based on what you want to invest in.

Personally I have a love-hate relationship with HL. Their platform and website are undeniably excellent, and they offer a very wide range of funds, but sometimes they come across as more of a marketing firm than an investment manager, and they have a distressing tendency to want to put their hand in your pocket. Ignore their marketing newsletters, pay attention to the charges, and you'll stand a better chance.

There are likely to be changes to the whole fund industry over the next year or two, I'm sticking with HL on the basis of 'better the devil you know'. When the dust settles I'll review things and think about moving.

le_loup

They are excellent at what they do. There may be cheaper, there may be givers of bigger discounts, but what they do, they do do well.
Look on their website ... all available to non-subscribers, and see the scope of their activity.
They have grown from a back-bedroom to a FTSE 100 company in around 20 years: they must be doing something right.

savingmore

Thanks, hadn't heard of Alliance Saving so i will have a look.

Is there somewhere where you can get very low initial charges and the refund of trail commission?

which is better in the long term, lower initial charges or lower trail commission, or trail commission refunded??

i get alot of this stuff, but feel i need to investigate the nuances more

Really appreciate the advice

savingmore

Another question too: i am thinking of putting quite a bit in a tracker, thinking of the virgin or the l&g, is it better to go direct to them to get or through an intermediary like HL and pay some fee/trail commission?

i would have presumed going direct, but somewhere i read it wasn't and that confused me.

le_loup

No, it is never cheaper to go direct. Counter intuitive, I know but, a discount broker discounts some or all of the initial charge and sometimes part or all of the trail commission.

jem16

savingmore wrote: »

Another question too: i am thinking of putting quite a bit in a tracker, thinking of the virgin or the l&g, is it better to go direct to them to get or through an intermediary like HL and pay some fee/trail commission?

Forget Virgin - expensive and dire. Has the big brand name but that's it.

L&G trackers. In this instance it's cheaper to go direct than with HL as there is no initial charge on either and the amc is exactly the same. However HL are no charging £1/£2pm for their trackers. It may be cheaper with Alliance Trust so you would need to check.

i would have presumed going direct, but somewhere i read it wasn't and that confused me.

Most of the time it's dearer to go direct. However with trackers it's mixed at the moment.

Porcupine

Apart from a few special cases like Vanguard, initial charges are essentially an upfront commission paid to your adviser. So I would expect initial charges to be zero on funds you buy yourself, and to be wary of funds where they're significant or fund supermarkets that don't reduce the charges to zero.

Have a read of the Best S&S ISA thread where each provider's charges are described.

Be aware that if you go direct you're limited to the funds from one provider - often providers have a few star funds and lots of mediocre ones, so you're limiting your options by that route. This isn't such a big deal if you're just sticking to trackers.

savingmore

le_loup wrote: »

No, it is never cheaper to go direct. Counter intuitive, I know but, a discount broker discounts some or all of the initial charge and sometimes part or all of the trail commission.

thanks, can you recommend a good discount broker?

MrMalkin

This was posted in another thread, a selection of fund supermarkets and their charging structures:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/investing/article-1718291/Pick-best-cheapest-investment-Isa-platform.html

It's not comprehensive but you could use it as a starting point.

le_loup

savingmore wrote: »

thanks, can you recommend a good discount broker?

???? Hargreaves Lansdown?
I have used them for 17 years, been reasonably happy or am too lazy to change?