The right platform for me?

NoSocialLife

Good afternoon all you lovely knowledgeable people! I hope the weather is serving you well.

I am in a position now where i need to keep my cash ISA as accessible as possible to pay for my deposit on a house.

I want to start putting away about £50-£100 into a stocks and shares ISA monthly (to start with). I am very interested in the Invesco Perpetual Monthly Income Plus Acc fund as i am pleased with its performance over the years (i know this isn't a reflection on future performance).

My question is, which platform do you recommend? I understand that i could go to IP directly, however if i wanted to go with a few other funds this wouldn't be allowed if they weren't IP funds. But for the meantime i will stick with this fund.

I would appreciate any feedback / comments and hopefully you can help me make an informed decision.

Kind Regards.

jimjames

I use Cavendish Online and HL.

Cavendish are cheaper and HL has a better website so you'd need to decide if that is worth paying more for.

Totton

I use Hargreaves Lansdown, have done for many years and am very happy with their service. Excellent research and portfolio tools and an easy to set-up monthly drip-feed facility that allows you to switch funds with no problem. Not the cheapest around, especially if investing low amounts into trackers but fees are going to change so difficult to say where would be the best place to invest based on platform costs.

NoSocialLife

Thanks for your input.

Just out of curiousity what would the charges be if i was to set up regular payments in that fund if i went with Cavendish?

innovate

NoSocialLife wrote: »

I am in a position now where i need to keep my cash ISA as accessible as possible to pay for my deposit on a house.

In the light of this, are you sure you want to start a S&S ISA?


Big broker comparison: http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

grizzly1911

I use Cavendish on-line (broker) and it is a mirror of Fidelity funds who they use for the transactions.

If you need other tools trustnet, morningstar, citywire, H_L are available for free.

Cavendish don't charge for purchases in funds. the certainly don't for lump sums and I haven't seen any mention that I can find for monthly contributions either.

I personally can't fault their service.

They only sell "dirty funds" at present but do rebate a good proportion of the AMC. They ususally come out cheapest for smaller holdings on the comparison sites. How this will change going forward is anyone's guess.

jimjames

NoSocialLife wrote: »

Thanks for your input.

Just out of curiousity what would the charges be if i was to set up regular payments in that fund if i went with Cavendish?

There are no initial charges, no annual charges and you get rebated 0.5% of the fund value every year with commission being refunded to you.

HL do rebate some commission but for most funds it is 0.15% or 0.25% tops.

oldfella

Cavendish as above, and the same positive feedback

smellymel222

I am also in the same boat and can't decide what platform to go for.

I looked at cavendish online and liked it but it didn't have any of the vanguard trackers I was interested in.

I also looked at Hargreaves lansdown and these had the vanguard and HSBC trackers but charge £2 a month platform fee for a lot of the trackers and I feel that if you have 4 or 5 trackers each charging £2 per month then the costs soon mount up and cheap trackers suddenly become expensive especially when investing relative small amounts.

Now I'm looking at charles Stanley direct who have lots of tracker funds including vanguard available and are also already clean class charging so I am tempted to go with these.

Anybody had any experience with Charles Stanley direct?

SnowMan

smellymel222 wrote: »

I am also in the same boat and can't decide what platform to go for........

I also looked at Hargreaves lansdown..........
.........
Anyone had any experience with Charles Stanley direct?

Hargreaves Lansdown haven't announced how they are going to react to the platform Retail Distribution Review but almost certainly they are going to be expensive and from past experience will make it difficult for those affected by higher charges to move elsewhere. So best avoided.

For trackers it seems to be a straight choice at the moment between Charles Stanley Direct for those with smaller funds built up (as the 0.25% charge is good for them) and Sippdeal or ATS and possibly Interactive Investor for long term investors with larger funds and where a fixed platform charge and dealing fees for funds works out cheaper.

Of course charging structures could still change for any of those platforms and some of the other platforms who are some way from being RDR ready will come into the mix.

See monevator for a comparison between brokers in particular look at the clean class brokers at the top as they are likely to be closest to their post RDR positions.

Totton

SnowMan wrote: »

Hargreaves Lansdown haven't announced how they are going to react to the platform Retail Distribution Review but almost certainly they are going to be expensive ..... So best avoided.

Rubbish, you know no better than anyone else if in the future they will be expensive or not :-)