F&C Childrens Investment Plans - New Charges

jimjames

Got home today and found letter from F&C advising that their children's investment plan charges are changing so that they now charge an annual fee of £40 per account.

I need to review what I keep long term; if all such accounts bring in charges then it would make sense to consolidate into a single place rather than paying £40 out per account. Might also be worth retaining only a single designation rather than one per child and then split it ourselves when needed.

Has anyone heard anything from other IT savings providers?

Biggles

£25+VAT per account, surely?

I also got the letter today (they do say they wrote last Aug but I don't recall it).

The thing that concerns me more is the reference to a charge for lump sum investments of £12+VAT. It means I might be forced into starting a monthly DD, whereas my preference was to decide the amount of my contribution on birthdays and at xmas each year.

Tammer

I was going to have a look through my documents to see if they are allowed to introduce a charge. I suspect they will have checked too.:(

It is a shame as their ctf share account was really good. When will financial services companies wake up realise its doing things like this that makes them despised?

kay_hill_2

I'm really disappointed by this. We took it out for my son who missed the Child Trust Fund by a couple of weeks, and matched what my daughter received, so it only has about 600 in there. Take £30 a year off that and it will disappear rapidly, especially as it hasn't exactly made lots of money. I will have to take the money out, by I suppose they'll try to charge for that as well. Anyone any suggestions as to where to put the money instead?

benalder284

Have about £1500 in F&C CIP in the Global Smaller Companies IT. £30 a year is quite a percentage fee and I think we will simply sell-up and move the funds elsewhere as we already have other ITs such as TEMIT, RIT and Edinburgh IT with no such annual fees. we also have SVM Global .....but that's another story!

Interesting to see F&C's share price down by over 4% today - one of the top fallers in the whole market. Surely MSE forum posters haven't caused that??

xylophone

We took it out for my son who missed the Child Trust Fund by a couple of weeks, and matched what my daughter received, so it only has about 600 in there.

So he could have a JISA? https://www.gov.uk/junior-individual-savings-accounts/overview

http://www.halifax.co.uk/isas/

And re F&C CTF have you seen http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=59222945&postcount=208

jimjames

Biggles wrote: »

£25+VAT per account, surely?

I also got the letter today (they do say they wrote last Aug but I don't recall it).

Oooh that's sneaky! I'd only read one of the letters we got which states £40. Although it makes no mention of being related to the balance of your account and implies that it is a fixed charge, my other account is only being charged £25 so it does appear to be a percentage band on your balance.

As the letter make no mention of percentage I wonder what they would do if I want to move both into the lower charge one!

Tammer

I have about £800 in the ctf and pay in £25 a month.

I was happy with it, not least of all because I saw the Global Small Co.s IT rise by over 20% in the last year.

I think I will have to switch to the stakeholder account and then stop my monthly payment and just pay that into my equity isa instead, as I'm not giving F&C any more money.

Biggles

jimjames wrote: »

Oooh that's sneaky! I'd only read one of the letters we got which states £40. Although it makes no mention of being related to the balance of your account and implies that it is a fixed charge, my other account is only being charged £25 so it does appear to be a percentage band on your balance.

As the letter make no mention of percentage I wonder what they would do if I want to move both into the lower charge one!

I should have thought it was more account type rather than balance - my accounts hold £3k and they're both £25. There's no mention of a balance above which the fee will rise, in fact there's a table on the second page of the letter showing what a reassuring small(!) percentage of the balance the fee represents, going up to £25,000. Is your £40 one a different type, or a particularly high balance?

Does everyone else read this the same as me, ie that every time I top the account up, I will pay an extra £12? What about reinvestment of dividends, it looks like there is no charge there?

I am slightly peed off becuse I took these out in July after discussing them with someone at F&C and one of the key points was that there was absolutely no charge/deduction. I shall speak to her again Monday....

atush

Some of the others are and have been doing this (Witan did last year) they are bringing all their accts into line and they all charge an annual fee, but most of them incl Witan are charging this in lieu of buying and selling fees so it can work out cheaper if you are either putting in larger amts or selling occasionally (as the old fee was 1% charge to sell).

jimjames

Biggles wrote: »

Is your £40 one a different type, or a particularly high balance?

No they are exactly the same account. One does have a slightly higher balance but both are under £10k. The chart on the rear does helpfully show the percentage charge at different amounts but obviously for one of them the percentage at £10k is higher than the other. Just seems bizarre, I'd think it was a mistake apart from the table and details all matching the different amounts.

Biggles wrote: »

Does everyone else read this the same as me, ie that every time I top the account up, I will pay an extra £12? What about reinvestment of dividends, it looks like there is no charge there?

I am slightly peed off becuse I took these out in July after discussing them with someone at F&C and one of the key points was that there was absolutely no charge/deduction. I shall speak to her again Monday....

Yes that's how I read it too but DD monthly doesn't pay anything now. Slightly misleading of them to say the details were in the T&Cs sent out last year as that makes no mention of these charges.

I guess back in July the phone agents would have no knowledge of any changes to charges and in fact F&C may not have known then.

atush wrote: »

Some of the others are and have been doing this (Witan did last year) they are bringing all their accts into line and they all charge an annual fee, but most of them incl Witan are charging this in lieu of buying and selling fees so it can work out cheaper if you are either putting in larger amts or selling occasionally (as the old fee was 1% charge to sell).

I did move from Witan as a result of them bringing in additional charges. They were never very competitive anyway and that was the final straw. I still hold Aberdeen plans so I'll watch with interest what they say and may move there if they remain the same.