Leaving HL without transfer charges

le_loup

xylophone wrote: »

Masochism? Penance?:)

One can't help picking at a scab .........

virgin11

I started the transfer from HL in Feb, HL letter today says transfer complete,only problem is the Sipp has not moved only the ISA starting to wish i had not started on this path as it is the longest drawn out thing i have ever known.Now even more phone calls to find out who has cocked up, is this ever going to end.

helfordpirate

My tale of woe...

I am just approaching the four month point for my SIPP transfer from HL to ATS. (The ISA and IDA went in three and two months respectively.)

The SIPP has 7 funds/ETF of which 2 were to be sold and 5 were to be transferred. HL success rate for this transaction was 3/7.

- Two Vanguard funds were successfully transferred.
- One ETF was correctly sold.
- Three other ETF were sold when they should not have been. When I chased they said "we told the trading room to sell ishares"!! I pointed out that as iShares was the biggest ETF provider in the UK with over 40 products this was somewhat vague. They "undid" the sales a few days later with no loss to me.
- A final fund (of six figure value) was not sold as instructed but was transferred to ATS. But as the share class was an HL-special it was never received.

So I got final closing letters from HL and ATS saying it's all done - with a large fund holding lost in the ether with neither party saying they had it - HL saying they had transferred it and ATS saying they had instructed HL to sell it.

Two pleading calls to HL to resolve the issue, resulted in two nice spoken young gentlemen promising to call me back with a resolution. Neither of them ever did.

Calls to ATS were not much better till finally a "senior" transfer team person admitted they did have the fund transferred to them as nominee but as they a) did not support it on their platform b) had never asked to receive them, they had not noticed.

They are now on their way back to HL to be sold... saga continues

juliamarsh

I feel relieved to know that I am far from alone in this transfer fiasco, and it is true of most situations that there is always someone worse off than you - from reading all these posts it certainly seems to be true in this case too!! God help us....you have to laugh or you would cry!! On a serious note though I am annoyed that I have lost money by being out of the market in an attempt to mitigate costs while HL chopped and changed their minds about what they were doing/charging.

kfsimpson

Despite misgivings, I decided to sell all holdings in my HL ISA and ask them to hold as cash pending transfer. Orders placed 19 May, settlement date 23 May, cash transferred to II 29 May, new trades now placed with II and back in market. Yes, out of market for a fortnight, but still grief-free and now all sorted.
Non-ISA sold as much as I could within CGT limits and transferred this as cash via my bank account, even faster, HL processed these as quickly as ever. Now comes the grief of transferring the remaining lines of stock in specie, which will doubtless take months and involve arguments with HL about exit fees.
Based on my experience, I would definitely recommend the cash option. Do be aware you may need to contact your bank to ask them to authorise debit card transfers of larger sums to II, and that II will only let you transfer in £20K in one lump, but you can make multiple transfers.

rpc

If you have ITs, ETFs or other shares, sell and repurchase can cost the same as an in-specie transfer.

Given that the costs would only be incurred as a result of HL's unfair terms it doesn't really seem a sensible approach.

If you hold only OEICs with "free" trades then it is more of an option.

bossymoo

I have no accounts with HL any more! :T

Granted, I'm still missing 2 etf and about £2.5k cash, and most of my ISA funds are not actually in the ISA, but hey, you can't have everything...

Just under 9 weeks for me, ISA plus trading account.

le_loup

Nice attitude!
Illegitimi non carborundum

lejog2003

helfordpirate wrote: »

My tale of woe...
- A final fund (of six figure value) was not sold as instructed but was transferred to ATS. But as the share class was an HL-special it was never received.

So I got final closing letters from HL and ATS saying it's all done - with a large fund holding lost in the ether with neither party saying they had it - HL saying they had transferred it and ATS saying they had instructed HL to sell it.

Two pleading calls to HL to resolve the issue, resulted in two nice spoken young gentlemen promising to call me back with a resolution. Neither of them ever did.

Calls to ATS were not much better till finally a "senior" transfer team person admitted they did have the fund transferred to them as nominee but as they a) did not support it on their platform b) had never asked to receive them, they had not noticed.

They are now on their way back to HL to be sold... saga continues

This is pretty much the problem I faced with the transfer of my SIPP from HL to ATS, posts describing it being scattered throughout this long thread. So you're not alone, although in my case ATS spotted the HL-only fund immediately.

- I sent off my transfer forms to ATS specifying a in-specie transfer of funds both companies hold, but cash transfer of the SWIP Foundation Tracker, which HL offer a unique class of with the low 0.09% charge.
- After some weeks passed HL sent me their own transfer form, which only gave tick boxes for either transfer of the whole account either by in-specie transfer or by cash transfer. Since I wanted neither of those, I wrote "DETAILED TRANSFER INSTRUCTION SUPPLIED TO ATS" over the form - hard to believe now but the transfer of my ISA initiated at the same time was now complete and HL had been happy to accept detailed instructions from the transfer form I sent to Cavendish without asking me for duplicate instructions.
- In early April, HL wrote to me saying the transfer was now complete, no closing statements, no further information and all funds had simply vanished from my on-line account, no records of any transactions.
- And the transferred funds slowly appeared at ATS, but not the £85000 cash from the sale of the SWIP tracker.
- Alarmed by this amount of money just apparently disappearing, I managed to persuade the ATS call centre to put me through to the person handling the transfer. No they hadn't received cash from HL, but yes they had just received from SWIP an in-specie transfer of a fund was HL only, but fortunately she had noticed immediately and that it was having to be transferred back to HL for a cash transfer. She was having difficulty getting HL to admit to a mistake and they said they were not prepared to follow my written instructions that details of the transfer were supplied to ATS. Fortunately I had sent ATS a copy of my HL transfer form, so she was able to quote it to HL.
- SWIP excelled themselves in taking over four weeks in re-registering the HL-only fund back to HL. HL were persuaded to sell the fund, but hung on to the cash for a week ("for settlement purposes") before sending it to ATS.

This took 18weeks 2 days. If ATS failed to spot your fund I guess your transfer will take you longer.

lejog2003

bossymoo wrote: »

I have no accounts with HL any more! :T

Granted, I'm still missing 2 etf and about £2.5k cash, and most of my ISA funds are not actually in the ISA, but hey, you can't have everything...

Just under 9 weeks for me, ISA plus trading account.

I wish to put forward a hypothesis (based somewhat unscientifically on my own experience only) that the time it takes for HL to transfer cash is directly proportional to the sum involved:

£17 - same day
£11,000 - one week
£85,000 - nine weeks:p