Hargreaves Lansdown "playing hardball"

juliamarsh

Has anybody considered SVS Securities, who charge a flat fee of £5.95 per trade and have no other charges for fund and share account or ISA? They don't have a sipp yet but they are planning to introduce one. Does anybody have an opinion on this?

Froggitt

NO Annual or Management Fees


Cant be sure but it "feels" like unbundled funds, with management fees taken from the fund AMC.

gterr

Transfer offers starting to appear from different platforms:

Youinvest are offering £500 to cover in specie transfers to them, for a limited period, and I've had a message from Alliance Trust Savings to say they will shortly be announcing a "special offer regarding the transfer of new accounts to our platform". If I get this by email I'll post it up.

jem16

Froggitt wrote: »

NO Annual or Management Fees


Cant be sure but it "feels" like unbundled funds, with management fees taken from the fund AMC.

That would be bundled funds, not unbundled.

SnowMan

gterr wrote: »

Transfer offers starting to appear from different platforms:

..............and I've had a message from Alliance Trust Savings to say they will shortly be announcing a "special offer regarding the transfer of new accounts to our platform". If I get this by email I'll post it up.

ATS offers clients £150 to re-reg onto platform

I'm just too early switching to them to benefit from that one.

masonic

juliamarsh wrote: »

Has anybody considered SVS Securities, who charge a flat fee of £5.95 per trade and have no other charges for fund and share account or ISA? They don't have a sipp yet but they are planning to introduce one. Does anybody have an opinion on this?

I've used their share account and they seem fine, but you can only use them for UK shares - they don't do funds.

One thing I'm considering at the moment is liquidating my Vanguard LifeStrategy fund in my HL ISA (which makes up about 50% of my portfolio) and transferring the cash to a discount broker such as SVS to invest in a few ETFs such as VWRL, FTAL, and one or two others. The main drawback is that I would have to go 100% ETFs/ITs or end up with 2 ISA accounts, only one of which I could fund with new money each tax year.

It seems that ETFs held in a sharedealing account may be the way to go for purely passive investors.

For people like me who hold active and passive funds, there are still a couple of platforms charging a flat fee, but it seems they charge transaction fees on funds, which means I would have to change my regular investing habits or I could end up paying more than I would with a percentage charge!

colalba

SnowMan wrote: »

ATS offers clients £150 to re-reg onto platform

I'm just too early switching to them to benefit from that one.

ATS are also saying they will not increase prices for a while.


From their web site


"We are so confident in our charging structure and service we guarantee not to make any further increases to our charges until 2016 at the earliest. Nor will we increase the online or offline dealing fees. This will give you certainty on the cost of our service to you."

Glen_Clark

Interesting article about HLs fees: http://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2014/jan/17/hargreaves-lansdown-fee-price-war

Imnoexpert_2

Thanks. This is a good piece. There is a lot of fat in this distribution chain. I wonder what margins will look like in a few years. I suspect just as bankers bonus payments are still being justified so too will fund managers charges, platform fees and advice charges.

But I'm no expert.

juliamarsh

masonic wrote: »

I've used their share account and they seem fine, but you can only use them for UK shares - they don't do funds.

One thing I'm considering at the moment is liquidating my Vanguard LifeStrategy fund in my HL ISA (which makes up about 50% of my portfolio) and transferring the cash to a discount broker such as SVS to invest in a few ETFs such as VWRL, FTAL, and one or two others. The main drawback is that I would have to go 100% ETFs/ITs or end up with 2 ISA accounts, only one of which I could fund with new money each tax year.

It seems that ETFs held in a sharedealing account may be the way to go for purely passive investors.

For people like me who hold active and passive funds, there are still a couple of platforms charging a flat fee, but it seems they charge transaction fees on funds, which means I would have to change my regular investing habits or I could end up paying more than I would with a percentage charge!

Depends on the size of your portfolio. Interactve Investor charges £20/quarter ie £80/year which would work out substantially cheaper for me, and that includes 2 free trades /quarter so it would depend how often you are trading your funds whether it would work out more advantageous for you.