Experiences of Sippdeal

phuket

Does anyone have any experiences of using Sippdeal for investment account or ISA?

After looking at all the commonly available platforms Sippdeal look to offer reasonable charges for smaller portfolios and for making regular investments however I haven't heard much about them and they don't seem to be mentioned that frequently on this forum.

What is their customer service like?
Does the platform offer good features for managing your accounts?
Are they reliable?

Any feedback welcome. Thanks!

Trentenders

I've used them over the last year for buying shares (not funds though, so I cannot comment on thise) and so does my GF. No major complaints and very little down time from their site, dividends paid promptly, etc.... and they are comparatvely very cheap for me. They also now have a new phone app, which is useful.

The only real negatives are:

The research side of the site is pretty basic, however they do have plans to improve this in the very near future (plus you can find enough information on other sites without any trouble)
The stock prices can go a little funny after trading hours, on occasion (similar to how Google Finance does, if you've ever looked there)

P.S. If you can find someone to recommend you, then the person would receive £100 (which they could split with you )

bowlhead99

I use Sippdeal for a SIPP.

I use TD Direct for most of my normal sharetrading & ISA but they have additional fixed annual fees for their SIPP product (administered by AJ Bell) whereas SIPPdeal did not (i.e. AJ Bell direct).

Customer service has been fine. After initial form filling /signup, they dealt with a transfer in without any issues. I have only had cause to speak to them twice:

- early days I placed an online buy order for a particular fund which I thought was soft-closed to new customers (based on what I'd read elsewhere on the web), but I tried anyway, it let me book the order online. They called me up the next morning to say actually they couldnt deal it for me. No problem.

- I wanted to place a trade for a UK listed share which has low volumes and could not give me an immediate market price online, and was listed in USD so the online system wouldnt allow me to leave a limit order. I called up and the only option really was to place a phone order and let their dealers work the trade. This cost a telephone dealing fee of 29.95 instead of the online 9.95 so was annoying (about 1% on a 3k trade). However the bright side was the FX rate they gave me was very competitive, while TD Direct, who would have allowed me to place the order online, would have stung me with a 2% FX rate spread and been just as expensive or more. So actually not too bad and the shares are up 28% since August so I'm happy I went ahead with it!

Other points
- Yes platform does offer decent features for managing the accounts (can view portfolio and pending orders and place trades on mobile app, although some things you have to log in properly for, like viewing full contract notes or cancelling pending orders)

- the platform for pure share-trading is not as sophisticated as TD Direct - no multicurrency accounts, perhaps fewer international markets, no extended settlement options on trades.You can place limit orders and stop loss orders but not more complex stuff like trailing stops etc. But for funds it's easy to find what you're looking for and place orders.

-I pay the additional 12.50 a quarter custody fee as I hold some investments not on their 'free' funds list, e.g. some Vanguard ones. It's just one flat fee for such funds or structured products no matter how many you have. Compared to TD Direct, TD would have a fixed percentage commission on such funds (once their new charging structure comes in). Hargreaves Lansdown charge a fee per fund and also charge a fixed percentage (up to a limit) on shares or ITs or ETFs, which Sippdeal and TD don't. Which of these sort of fee structures is best for you, depends on what you hold or plan to buy.

- Having said the platform is fine, they do seem to have an issue with displaying current bid prices out of hours on certain shares and ITs. Sometimes I log in and see my portfolio is well down due to individual shares being randomly 20% or so lower than the last real bid price of the day. This is quite annoying if I log in at a weekend and want to export the portfolio view to a spreadsheet, if some of the prices aren't reliable. Obviously I can look them up elsewhere. It does always get the holdings (name and number of shares) right, it's just the prices can be weird. During trading hours it seems OK.

- From time to time they have downtime or login problems but this is same with any online platform. I can't say whether they would do a telephone trade at the online price in such circumstances like other brokers I've used - as I'm never in a state of urgency with my Sipp and it always comes back in the end.

So generally a thumbs up from me.

Ark_Welder

bowlhead99 wrote: »

... they do seem to have an issue with displaying current bid prices out of hours on certain shares and ITs.

I see this on the LSE too, with both the bid and ask deviating quite a bit. So perhaps not a SippDeal problem as such (don't use them myself, so can't say for certain that it is one and the same)