Charles Stanley Direct for Vanguard Lifestrategy

nearlyretired2004

Has anyone used Charles Stanley for this (or I guess any other ....) fund as they would seem to be cheaper than the other favourites HL for small amounts (e.g. 1 years ISA allowance)

Always good to get recommendations from others on here !

Thanks for any replies.....

Perelandra

No personal experience, but if your fund value is < £9600, and you have one fund, yes they're cheaper than HL.

JohnRo

I signed up to their basic service to have a look around. Intend to consolidate later this year or early next once most of the RDR changes look to be in place and they're looking like a strong contender.

Web site looks very accessible and polished, then again so does fidelity but the account portal they make available through cavendish is woeful.

nearlyretired2004

Sorry to bump my own thread, but would be really grateful for any comments from people actually using Charles Stanley before I go ahead and open an account ........

donniej

I haven't used it, but if it's of any help I think Charles Stanley's offering is fairly new - launched earlier this year if I remember well. So you may want to look out for issues typical of new platforms, such as the customer services team not really knowing the products or the general area; operational problems like things getting lost, etc.

This being said, I think that Fund Choice are owned by CS; I don't know whether that's run by the same team that run CS Direct.

JohnRo

CSdirect look to be the only fully RDR compliant platform that doesn't charge for fund transactions. Searching through their available fund list seems to indicate the only charge attached to any of their offerings is the "clean" fund manager charge and it's related OCF, no platform or trail commission whatsoever.

The dilemma is that they won't be cheapest at present for funds from the likes of Vanguard that have never had any commission elements built into their annual charge figures anyway.

I'll probably start using CSdirect for all my non vanguard funds and just hold the Vanguard trackers with bestinvest select for now, pending their RDR changes.

I'm more interested in identifying which platform has the best quality account interface at present. I'm very put off by the opaque account balance and transaction details and info that cavendish via fidelity provide.