Genuine alternative to HL?

jimjames

grizzly1911 wrote: »

A PITA but could funds be switched into one or two "safe" holdings holdings, then transferred, reducing transfer cost, then split once again when at their new home? Appreciate there may be time out of market for some funds whilst in transition etc.

Yes you can do that. But you can also transfer as cash which doesn't cost anything. You are out of the market for around 5 days which could go for or against you but if you have a number of funds at least you won't pay the massive fees to leave.

I transferred as cash when I moved most of my ISA from HL and there was a small variation in units when they were rebought but very minor.

jamesd

A story in the Telegraph from mid December offers some alternatives:

"Trustnet Direct's website has been designed to be easy to use for novice investors. It will charge 0.25pc a year of the total value of assets owned through its service, capped at £200 a year. There is also a charge of £10 each time a share or fund is bought or sold, with discounts for frequent traders. " (the cap here applies to combined SIPP and ISA accounts, not individually)

"AJ Bell's Youinvest announced its own new price stucture earlier this month, with a 0.2pc charge on funds, with the amount capped at £200 a year. Funds, starting on 1 January, can be bought or sold for £4.95."

A more recent story covers Alliance Trust Savings, noting "a stocks and shares Isa with investment company Alliance Trust Savings (ATS) will from next month be hit with a £90 a year charge up from £48 ... a self invested personal pension, known as a Sipp, will also see their annual charges rise from £162 to £186 ... This is the second time in eighteen months Alliance Trust has increased its fees. In August 2012 savers’ annual fees on an Isa went up from £30 to £48. Mr Mill promised savers there will be no further price hikes until at least 2016. ... Alliance Trust is offering free transfers until 28 February 2014 for customers who wish to move their investments. " ATS seems to have picked a really bad time to increase prices.

Trustnet Direct's capped charging shared between ISA and SIPP is looking quite interesting.

bigadaj

jimjames wrote: »

Yes you can do that. But you can also transfer as cash which doesn't cost anything. You are out of the market for around 5 days which could go for or against you but if you have a number of funds at least you won't pay the massive fees to leave.

I transferred as cash when I moved most of my ISA from HL and there was a small variation in units when they were rebought but very minor.

Though if unwrapped then transferring to cash could trigger potential capital gains. I'm already paying cgt this year so am waiting for April to transfer, was going to move to cavendish a few months ago but they would only accept a transfer of all holdings so have delayed, and given the ongoing saga of rdr2 then that's probably not worked out too badly.

I also hadn't appreciated that not all of the funds would be held on both platforms so some would have to be transferred in cash in any case, though this could be a useful prompt to review my allocations.

planteria

jamesd wrote: »

Trustnet Direct's capped charging shared between ISA and SIPP is looking quite interesting.

http://www.trustnet.com/News/478127/fe-launches-new-low-cost-platform-for-private-investors/

who are FE? and yes...i quite like the look of this. i assume that it's possible to hold funds and shares in both ISA and SIPP, and US shares, and that the funds available would be comparable to HL

jamesd

FE are one of the most popular financial data companies in the UK, providing data to a huge number of businesses, including things like the underlying data for the charts you see at HL, which carry the label "Powered by data from FE" and are actually directly served by them, from their financialexpress.net servers, to be embedded in the HL pages.

Porcupine

I may be missing something (my ISA transfer has yet to arrive, so I have no cash to test this out with) but it appears iWeb have a surprisingly good deal if you want cheap funds.

So it's well known it's £5/share trade and £2/regular saving trade, with no custody fee. There's also a one-off £25 account opening fee.

But they also do funds. If you dig around, you can find some low cost funds without extra platform fees. For example, Vanguard Lifestrategy 100% with AMC at 0.33%. It's good for trackers, but managed funds are still stuck at old-style 1.5% AMC prices. There's no platform fee or transaction fees that I can see (except for rare managed funds where they don't rebate all the inital fee).

That they're not advertising clean funds does suggest the pricing must change soon though.

pip895

bigadaj wrote: »

I also hadn't appreciated that not all of the funds would be held on both platforms so some would have to be transferred in cash in any case, though this could be a useful prompt to review my allocations.

I am concerned about this too - I feel that being forced out of funds I like, because they don't happen to be supported on a given platform would be a poor idea.
I am just hoping that TrustNet - which is where I do most of my primary research anyway, will enter the market with a sufficiently wide range of funds.

planteria

pip895 wrote: »

I am concerned about this too - I feel that being forced out of funds I like, because they don't happen to be supported on a given platform would be a poor idea.
I am just hoping that TrustNet - which is where I do most of my primary research anyway, will enter the market with a sufficiently wide range of funds.

i feel similarly. otherwise, may be back to considering HL as the best option...giving the flexibility that i want.

jamesd

You could always use two or more places. That may work out cheapest overall sometimes, depending on just what you want to hold.

planteria

agreed james, but it would be good to have all together.