Hargreaves Lansdown "playing hardball"

Betolerant

I have both shares and Investment Trusts with HL (been with them since the 1980's) . I'm looking for somewhere cheaper now. TD Direct look interesting. They have no charge for holding shares or IT's in an ISA and their exit fee is only £60. They charge 0.35% for clean funds.

I have 12 holdings with HL. They would charge me £360 to transfer out, but there is the possibility that the FOS would rule this charge invalid.
Even if they didn't, saving £90 per year would pay off the exit charge inside 4 years. Has anyone else a view on TD Direct? Any views on their customer service?

jamesd

Froggitt wrote: »

Isnt it 3% below base rate, ie nothing?

No, it is higher than that. It's currently zero only for the first £999.99 in an individual account. For the portion between £1,000 and £49,999.99 it's 0.05% gross.

Froggitt

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

ok, that really is minimal ... if you never switch, then perhaps the way i'd look at it is that you'll just have to pay 1% once when finally cashing in your investments - so it's a 1% exit fee.

I hadn't anticipated the 1% being an exit fee. That's a lot.....£1k on £100k. But I would obviously change to a frequent trader account to exit!!!


They cant mean that surely????

grey_gym_sock

Froggitt wrote: »

I hadn't anticipated the 1% being an exit fee. That's a lot.....£1k on £100k. But I would obviously change to a frequent trader account to exit!!!


They cant mean that surely????

well, eventually you either have to sell, or transfer out to another provider in specie. (dunno what they charge for the latter.)

but if you can switch it to frequent trader later, that may work out OK.

gterr

guitarman001 wrote: »

So what is the best alternative for somebody holding only Lifestrategy funds (and possibly some American shares)? Christ, it seems every other couple of months we have to change provider!

If you have a buy-and-hold strategy then perhaps a platform that charges an annual fee plus a separate charge for trading would be best. I'm looking at Alliance Trust and Interative Investor for our unwrapped funds.


If you are likely to do a lot of trading/rebalancing then a platform that charged a percentage rate, but with no extra charges for dealing, might be best (e.g. Charles Stanley Direct). We might use this for our S&S Isas.


There are a couple of platforms that allow you to have a joint account for unwrapped funds, or pay one annual fee to cover all family members and/or all funds (S&S, Isa, Sipp) held by a single person, so these are worth considering if you are in that position. You need to do your own sums really.

grey_gym_sock

Betolerant wrote: »

I have 12 holdings with HL. They would charge me £360 to transfer out, but there is the possibility that the FOS would rule this charge invalid.

if that includes multiple fund holdings, you could always reduce the exit charges by switching them into a single fund before transferring (since HL don't charge dealing fees on funds), and switch back afterwards (assuming you move to somewhere that also doesn't charge for switching).

(though FOS may well rule that you shouldn't pay the transfer out charges.)

grey_gym_sock

gterr wrote: »

If you have a buy-and-hold strategy then perhaps a platform that charges an annual fee plus a separate charge for trading would be best. I'm looking at Alliance Trust and Interative Investor for our unwrapped funds.

you need a decent size holding for that to work out.

e.g. ATS charge £90 p.a. to hold an ISA (or unwrapped) account. so on an account less than £36k, it would be cheaper to use charles stanley direct, at 0.25% (and charles stanley also don't charge for dealing, unlike ATS).

the same applies to ii. also, though they look good now, at £80 p.a., for multiple accounts, including some dealing - i don't think we have their final clean pricing, because they're using cofunds, and cofunds are retaining a small slice of commission on funds which pay it.

Wilkins

Betolerant wrote: »

Has anyone else a view on TD Direct? Any views on their customer service?

TDD is my main provider. The website is good but of a rather different design to that of HL. I only have ETFs, ITs and shares, both in and outside an ISA, so I pay no ongoing fees at all, only transaction costs.

I can't really comment on their customer service as I have never needed to use it.

guitarman001

*** it, I've only got £3-5k in the ISA. I'll keep it there for the year until the dust settles. Ridiculous charges on large holdings, though!!

cepheus

I'm not sure if anyone has linked this comparison site yet, from the renewed Telegraph article

Compare Fund Platforms

seems Interactive Investor comes out best for me. The other issue before anyone changes platforms with more than 50k, is financial security, i.e. are the funds ring fenced?