Hargreaves Lansdown "playing hardball"

Financial_Saddler

Got the excellent mail from HL detailing "an extra £8m of savings for HL clients".
Unfortunately, that does not appear to include myself.
I have well above £250k currently with HL - current TER is 1.01% for a mix of funds, trackers and ITs.
A quick and dirty calculation gives me a new TER of 1.08% with superclean funds and 1.05% with HL super-superclean funds.
A signal to move my account, I guess.

jamesd

Imnoexpert wrote: »

To put a good word in for them they do at least try to communicate with customers in a timely and relatively simple way

Recently I asked them for a list of the commission levels paid to them on all funds. They declined to provide it, even though it's available if you check each fund one at a time.

foofi22

Financial_Saddler wrote: »

Got the excellent mail from HL detailing "an extra £8m of savings for HL clients".
Unfortunately, that does not appear to include myself.
I have well above £250k currently with HL - current TER is 1.01% for a mix of funds, trackers and ITs.
A quick and dirty calculation gives me a new TER of 1.08% with superclean funds and 1.05% with HL super-superclean funds.
A signal to move my account, I guess.

Not necessarily, just because your costs may have risen doesn't mean you would be better off elsewhere.

Not that I'm saying you wouldn't be better off elsewhere of course, that depends on your circumstances

ayayay

I hold a mixture of shares and investment trusts. Whereas before they were assessed together so I pay a max of £45 per year in ISA and £200 in SIPP, now they are assessed seperately so my fees will double.

I'm absolutely fuming. Not sure what to do now.

jimjames

Rollinghome wrote: »

Via google http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CEsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hl.co.uk%2F__data%2Fassets%2Fpdf_file%2F0006%2F7797741%2FChanges-to-the-Vantage-Service-explained.pdf&ei=X2_WUq--EdSV7AaTg4DYBQ&usg=AFQjCNEhoS1UK9WgM49jg4Yv2D_mg7tL-Q&sig2=GJgcpFX-EVBuXbY7ssGQaQ&bvm=bv.59378465,d.d2k&cad=rja

I also got a hard copy this morning, have yet to read it.

Thanks.

Hard copy just arrived in the post so will have a read through that.

Impressed with it being sent out but will be interesting to run some calcs as to how it will affect my relatively small pot with them as I moved the rest away when they added the platform charge.

gterr

Husband and I each have a fund account of approx. £80k and an Isa of approx. £20k - mainly trackers. Currently paying £36 per year each to HL for the trackers, and nothing for fund dealing charges.


The new pricing structure will see this rise to £450 each with HL, or £250 each if we moved to Charles Stanley Direct.


However, a move to Interactive Investor would allow us to hold both fund accounts and both Isa accounts for a single annual charge of £80. There would be dealing costs on top, which in our case could add approx. £100 each per year (though there's a small trading allowance to offset some of this), giving us a total annual fee of approx £280 for both of us.


I'll have a look at Trustnet and others mentioned here, but I can't see Interactive investor's offering being beaten for us.


Just have to work out the best way to transfer out of HL - which funds to transfer across in specie, and which to convert to cash. At £25 a time for funds transfers out from HL it would cost us £550 total to transfer all funds in specie, so I'm not inclined to do that.

Gaaraz

Is there any sort of calculator online that you can enter your information into (ie X and Y funds (totalling £X) in an ISA wrapper and Z fund (totalling £Y) in a regular fund account) and it'd compare the different options available, along with fees?

It's actually quite confusing comparing all of the different services with all of the different fees, and it doesn't help that the fees aren't consistently set across platforms, ie some have higher monthly or opening charges, but actually work out cheaper

jimjames

ayayay wrote: »

I hold a mixture of shares and investment trusts. Whereas before they were assessed together so I pay a max of £45 per year in ISA and £200 in SIPP, now they are assessed seperately so my fees will double.

I'm absolutely fuming. Not sure what to do now.

I really can't see why ITs should be treated any differently from any other shares. They are traded on LSE in exactly the same way so other than as an attempt by HL to fleece customers by charging double the current amounts should be counted in the same costs.

What about VCTs? And private equity funds? Will other companies come into the scope of the IT charge with HL?

It may be worth raising with the AIC as it seems to be direct discrimination against IT shareholders.

hyposmurf

Here's another change to their charging:

Account closure fee £25 +VAT

It was free before, but other platforms charge a lot more.

peterg1965

SnowMan wrote: »

Assuming those amounts are all in funds (i.e. 120K in SIPP, 13K in ISA, 17K in dealing account then platform charges (before dealing costs) are

HL: £675pa (0.45%)
ATS: £366pa (fixed charge)
Trustnet: £344pa (0.25% capped to £200 + £144 for SIPP)
Youinvest: £360pa (£100 + £200 cap for SIPP, 0.2% for ISA/dealing)

You then have to factor in dealing costs including regular purchases for the ATS, Trustnet and Youinvest options, but that isn't going to close the difference.

If going with ATS for your SIPP (£186) then would be best to use someone else like Charles Stanley for your dealing and ISA accounts (£75) which could further reduce total costs to £261 (=186 for ATS + 75 Charles Stanley) + dealing costs for ATS SIPP, cf £675 with no dealing costs with HL.

Trustnet £144 SIPP charge is waived for a year (saving not allowed for above)

That doesn't factor in shares which are usually best held with a broker that doesn't charge a custody charge or ISA wrapper charge for shares (I use FD sharedealing for my ETFs).

Sorry, am I reading this right? HL will now begin to charge me £56 per month for the pleasure of investing with them? If so, the upside is that the AMC/TER or whatever they call it, is less than it was previously. I have to say I am unhappy if this is the case, unless I am missing something here.

My SIPP is split 50:50 shares and funds, my ISA is all shares and my fund. Account is majority shares, if this makes any difference. I no longer fund my SIPP, and I will not place further funds in it before I crystallise the benefits. So I will have to consciously sell part of my holding to ensure there is sufficient cash to pay the fees, else they will sell for me and charge £1.50 extra every time?

Lots to ponder.