looking for a Non-stakeholder investment for CTF

baron777red

hi

i currently have 2 CTF's (shares) with F&C and want to transfer them to another provider with Lower annual fees than the £30 F&C are about to impose.

i could transfer then to F&C's stakeholder CTF to avoid this annual fee, but this only invests in the FTSE100, and i want to keep them invested in stocks and shares.

I was looking at selftrade, which would be perfect but i i have no experience in buying shares myself, and would prefer the investor to manage the funds.

the values of my CTF's are £280 and £53, so not massive amounts, and i am not planning to add to these, so i am looking for a percentage annual managment fee, rather than a set amount.

even if it was 1% that would only be £2.80 and £0.53, so that would be fine.

i also know that i will have to pay a dealing fee for buying the shares, but again a percentagefee would be preferable.



thanks

colin

Reaper

There's stacks of posts of people discussing where to move, I suggest you do a search on the forum.

However to start you off the Guardian newspaper writes:

Connolly says: "If you are thinking of moving, we recommend the Child Investment Account from the Share Centre. This CTF provides access to a wide range of good-quality fund options including Invesco Perpetual High Income, M&G Global Basics, First State Global Emerging Market Leaders and the Jupiter Merlin Worldwide, Balanced and Income Portfolio funds."

The Share Centre account has an initial dealing charge of 1% then an annual charge of 0.5%, so the total annual charge for any of the funds mentioned above is 2% a year. Connolly says: "This is expensive for a normal investment, but sadly not for a CTF, where charges are typically more anyway."

xylophone

but this only invests in the FTSE100, and i want to keep them invested in stocks and shares.

The FTSE 100 is stocks and shares.

baron777red

thanks i read the guardian article, and thought the shares centre CTF looked good so had a look on their website, and in particular their child investment account,

dealing charges are 1%, but there is a minimum of £7.50 (which is 2.67% of the value of my investment - £280), whilst i can probably live with this as its a one off fee. The Confusing thing for me is their admin fee

0.5% p.a. (+VAT), paid at the rate of 0.125% each quarter, minimum £2.50. Plus the Fund Manager's charges

so again even though it is 0.5%, the min is £10 PA (not sure if that includes vat or not), which if it does is 3.5% of my £280.
and what are the fund managers charges???

Assuming the investment performed well returning, say, 7%, that would make £20, and then half of that is taken by the fee,

am i being unrealistic, or expecting too much?

and i havent even contemplated what impact these fees would have on my other CTF with the value of £54

https://www.share.com/a/child-trust-funds-costs.html

baron777red

xylophone wrote: »

The FTSE 100 is stocks and shares.

i know that, i was meaning that i dont want to invest in it because f&C use it tfor their stakeholder CTF, and a few other providers do the same.

baron777red

Reaper wrote: »

There's stacks of posts of people discussing where to move, I suggest you do a search on the forum.

However to start you off the Guardian newspaper writes:

the guardian article also quoted "Unfortunately, there are limited options for those wanting to transfer their money away from F&C, as it is not alone in imposing high charges"

Reaper

baron777red wrote: »

The Confusing thing for me is their admin fee

0.5% p.a. (+VAT), paid at the rate of 0.125% each quarter, minimum £2.50. Plus the Fund Manager's charges

so again even though it is 0.5%, the min is £10 PA (not sure if that includes vat or not), which if it does is 3.5% of my £280.
and what are the fund managers charges???

I can't really be bothered to look into the detailed T&C, I will leave that for you to do but from what the Guardian article said it sounds like the fund charges are 1.5%:

then an annual charge of 0.5%, so the total annual charge for any of the funds mentioned above is 2% a year

In the end you have to accept you need to pay a reasonable charge for a provider to administer the CTF, after all why would they to do all the admin involved in running your funds when you only want to pay them pence in charges?

The free money added to CTFs were never intended to be all. The hope always was it would inspire parents and other relatives to chip in. Sadly it largely failed which is why the new Junior ISAs provide no free money at all.

If you could add a bit to the CTFs the minimum charges would not hit the funds so badly.

baron777red

Thanks reaper, i wasnt intending to add to the CTF, i have a seperate investment running that i regularly contribute to.

I have been doing a lot of research, and its not going to be cost effective to transfer my shares CTF (with F&C) to another shares CTF, with a different provider, mainly due to the low values of them both.


So regretfully i have taken the decision to move both of them over to F&C's stakeholder plan, and pay the 1.5% anuual fee, at the end of the day these are relatively small amounts of money, and i have made other provisions for my childs future through another investment.


I just wish the government would let us move them into JISA's.


Ah well, it was free money after all.