Trying to consolidate my S&S isa portfolio

redmalc

Hi all,I am currently looking at consolidating all my S&S Isas,currently I am with Hargreaves,Fidelity & Skandia in total approx 120K.
I have been looking at the HSBC global investment centre because I fancy a punt on the HSBC trackers,can anyone advise of any costs or pitfalls I would have transferring my portfolio,or alternatively any other alternative companies.
Regards

SnowMan

TD Direct Investing looks like a more obvious option than the HSBC Global Investment Centre (GIC) because the clean C class of HSBC trackers are available there without additional cost (see here for where no platform charge applies) as well as some Vanguard trackers and some institutional L&G trackers like the L&G global emerging markets I class tracker.

The HSBC GIC was looking good for HSBC trackers at one point but their failure to put their own clean C class onto their platform, and so only the 0.1%pa more expensive retail class are currently available, and the fact they have indicated they are going to have a 0.29% pa platform charge when they do put them on (which is likely to apply to other funds with them also except possibly legacy funds) would make them unsuitable for someone with a 120K portfolio size.

The downsides with TD are that they have to introduce some charges at some time, but I would guess that would be a single flat charge rather than a percentage charge, and for a 120K portfolio a flat charge is likely to be better than a percentage.

In terms of pitfalls you may incur some costs with re-registering your funds from the outgoing platforms. Fidelity Fundsnetwork don't currently charge for re-registration away, I think HL have a re-registration away charge of £25 + VAT per fund and don't know about Skandia. If you are forced or choose to transfer by investments being sold and rebought by the new platform you can lose through market movements and other costs while you are temporarily out of the market.

To state the obvious, if you are moving to a new platform make sure that you just fill in the new platform's ISA transfer form and let the new platform do the re-registering or buying and selling so you don't lose the ISA wrapper.