Leaving HL without transfer charges

gowgowuk

naedanger wrote: »

I think I would go for a two pronged approach.

Thank you again naedanger for your help. Very helpful as I'm not exactly used writing these sort of letters (and English not being my mother tongue!)

masonic

fozzeh wrote: »

8 weeks is pretty poor. I think HL are buckling…why I don’t know! I had one the other week coming from them…correct instructions in place 18/02/14, everything settled and confirmed 04/03/14…and that included a week delay with a dispute over fees!!!

Have you got onto them asking what the delay is? I would be kicking up a fuss by now. Complaint lodged? I’d ask for a copy of the Terms of Business or SLA’s on transfers!

I have been in touch and they've replied within 24 hours (better than their performance in the recent past) stating they expect my transfer to complete shortly. It was the platform fees being charged at the end of this month I was getting slightly concerned about and they've agreed to waive those, so that being the case I'm not too concerned about the delays. However, I think those who have not got confirmation that their transfers are being processed should be starting to make a fuss.

fozzeh

naedanger wrote: »

Thanks for the useful information. When I said I could not claim compensation I meant for the delay. If their inefficiency leads to a demonstrable loss then I will make a claim. I cannot really say I have been distressed by any of this, although I have been irritated and inconvenienced. If I do claim for any demonstable loss, I will also add an amount to cover time and effort (although I understand FOS will only agree to very modest claims for this element.)

I have started to write to HL and the receiving platform and from what I have seen the delay seems to be down to HL having left my case in a pile for 3 weeks (although that is not how they have phrased it).

HL implied that they could only start to transfer my funds (unit trusts) after they had transferred my equities. Is this the case?

If the transfer does not complete soon then I will start pressing HL on the detail to their first response, and will ask them how their responses compare with their SLAs. They have already taken longer than what they originally quoted for the whole process so it seems they must have failed to meet their SLAs. (I have allowed for the time that they say they were waiting on responses from others.)

Yeh, you can claim for the delay (which I was trying to get to in a round about way). Demonstrating loss with FOS is in with one hand and out with the other. So, tally it up what you have done and quantify it but don’t take the proverbial. If you’re in a professional position (where you charge people for a service), you can use this as an example (such as, for me, we either charge per hour or per piece of work within a file). FOS don’t like being mucked around but if you help them understand the effort you have put in, it’s better for you. Something like £10 per letter sent sometimes works, amount of time spent on the phone plus what you spent on the phone, if you had to travel (adding 45p per mile you had to travel)…all tallies up. Break it down into a table, add some sums in, HL have to address those directly and can’t skirt around it. They have to try and argue your justified costs and, if you do it right, will find it hard to fail.

To the question; no. It’s BS. Their systems should not obstruct their obligation to initiate transfer. Rules on this are changing I think. Some transfers left the cash element until last…so imagine if you’d sold part of your equities and the UT’s took 2 months and you had £200,000 sat doing nothing…had that a couple of times but I escalated that myself. Got it within a week. I digress; the system is separate and doesn’t impede the other at the bottom line.

masonic wrote: »

I have been in touch and they've replied within 24 hours (better than their performance in the recent past) stating they expect my transfer to complete shortly. It was the platform fees being charged at the end of this month I was getting slightly concerned about and they've agreed to waive those, so that being the case I'm not too concerned about the delays. However, I think those who have not got confirmation that their transfers are being processed should be starting to make a fuss.

Agree, I would be starting to think about what is happening if you haven’t had a response. And getting a response in 24 hours is another tick box exercise; if they do so, it reflects nicely on Management Information statistics.

liquidityftw

First post for me and may I start by thanking all prevoius contributors for such excellent work here.

Seems to me there is a problem in the making with these superclean/exclusive share classes. Consider the situation where a H/L account holder has such funds and wants to transfer to another provider.

The other provider will not be able to accept them (at least the couple I have spoken to say this is the case) and logically the fund manager will not want to allow it either. So the option of an in-specie transfer dissappears and one will be obliged to sell and transfer cash and rebuy. This has cost implications - not least being out of the market for a (possibly protracted) period of time.

[As a side issue and as its a bugbear of mine I think this out of the market cost is often underestimated. Clearly markets could go up or down so in any specific situation one can gain or lose. but if we assume markets are going to rise (and if not why are we investing?) and if we assume 6% a year (not outlandish and makes the maths easy) then a month out costs .5% on average. so if shifting a 100k porfolio thats £500. Quite possibly bigger than the line by line transfer charges people are routinely focusing on. So do the sums before deciding to cash and transfer just to avoid a few £25 charges] rant over back on topic

If however the holding is in a General Investment Account as opposed to a tax wrapper the situation is worse as (if there is a gain) CGT will be triggered. H/L and some other forums have suggested that by buying back within 30 days the B&B rules will apply so eliminating the problem - but I think this is wrong. The B&B rules only seem to apply if the same class of share is being bought and clearly it is not. The HMRC guidance talks about an exception where conversions are done on behalf of the investor by a platform as being treated as CGT neutral but do mention that where an investor receives cash and then reinvests themselves this would not be the case. so by allowing the conversion at H/L one could enter an expensive trap.

I have checked with H/L and they will not be offering the "normal" clean class of a fund where they offer a superclean class so the option to do that conversion at H/L first then transfer in specie does not exist. It occurs to me it may be possible for a while to switch to dirty - then transfer that - then new provider converts to clean - but not sure that is possible - and in any event in a couple of years dirty will not exist.

Now I should add that the HMRC site is pretty opaque on the point and a lot of this information seems to be about a year old (there was a topic on the candid money site then) so i would be very intersted if anyone has a differnt view or more up to date info. Thanks.

fozzeh

liquidityftw wrote: »

***The above post***

Welcome to the world of branded products and white labelled pish!

These products are making a minority of people a lot richer than they should be by taking huge commissions from the portfolio for investing millions in them when the client finds it hard to get them out.

“Hey, this stock you have which I got for you? It’s up 10% over 2 years”
“I went to sell it”
“Sorry mate, it’s illiquid, only trades 4 times a year and the UTM won’t allow transfers. I, however, have made 20% of all the profits I have diverted into this fund and you get left with the 80%. Oh wait, from this, the fund provider takes their cut too…and the tax man will take another 20% or 40%. From the gross gains you’ll probably end up with 40% net if you’re lucky”.

This isn’t aimed at the UTM’s or fund managers (like Henderson or Fidelity) as they generally have a product, they market it with a portfolio breakdown and sell you it. These are consumer funds.

Funds like this is where you will get into sticky mud - http://www.trustnetoffshore.com/Factsheets/Factsheet.aspx?fundCode=N7FD7&univ=DC

ANYTHING which has the name of the place where you hold it (so, for example, “The HL Emerging Markets Fund Trackers”) is ALWAYS bad news in my eyes. For all of the above administrative problems and that the company administering it will always take a bigger cut. And, I’ll say it again, for a prevalent mainstream broker open to many Barclays operate this system quite extensively.

gowgowuk

Well, it looks like so far I'm luckier than others in the transfer process. Day 4 after I sent the transfer forms to iii, I've already got confirmation from HL that they have received the transfer request from Interactive Investors today and have issued a valuation of the account to them. Finger crossed for the rest but it looks like I'll be safe transfer fee-wise!

masonic

liquidityftw wrote: »

Seems to me there is a problem in the making with these superclean/exclusive share classes. Consider the situation where a H/L account holder has such funds and wants to transfer to another provider.

It's still a theoretical area, but there are two possible workarounds to this problem I can think of:
1) The in specie transfer is done after an intermediate fund switch into a similar fund that does not have an exclusive class at the originating platform. Obviously that still has CGT implications, but allows some planning.
2) A more complex re-registration is carried out in which the holding is converted to standard clean class at the same time. Obviously that is not something that exists right now.

Superclean pricing, along with high exit charges, do appear anti-competitive and I wouldn't be surprised if they are the target of future FCA campaigns.

[As a side issue and as its a bugbear of mine I think this out of the market cost is often underestimated. Clearly markets could go up or down so in any specific situation one can gain or lose. but if we assume markets are going to rise (and if not why are we investing?) and if we assume 6% a year (not outlandish and makes the maths easy) then a month out costs .5% on average. so if shifting a 100k porfolio thats £500.

I hold a few funds that have recently had gains of 2% or more over the course of a week and that's not particularly volatile in my view.

naedanger

fozzeh wrote: »

Yeh, you can claim for the delay (which I was trying to get to in a round about way). Demonstrating loss with FOS is in with one hand and out with the other. So, tally it up what you have done and quantify it but don’t take the proverbial. If you’re in a professional position (where you charge people for a service), you can use this as an example (such as, for me, we either charge per hour or per piece of work within a file). FOS don’t like being mucked around but if you help them understand the effort you have put in, it’s better for you. Something like £10 per letter sent sometimes works, amount of time spent on the phone plus what you spent on the phone, if you had to travel (adding 45p per mile you had to travel)…all tallies up. Break it down into a table, add some sums in, HL have to address those directly and can’t skirt around it. They have to try and argue your justified costs and, if you do it right, will find it hard to fail.

To the question; no. It’s BS. Their systems should not obstruct their obligation to initiate transfer. Rules on this are changing I think. Some transfers left the cash element until last…so imagine if you’d sold part of your equities and the UT’s took 2 months and you had £200,000 sat doing nothing…had that a couple of times but I escalated that myself. Got it within a week. I digress; the system is separate and doesn’t impede the other at the bottom line.

Thanks for the above. I have today received a response from my new provider which gives me evidence that the delay has been entirely caused by HL.

I also received a letter today from HL saying the transfer of one of my accounts is complete yet that is not the case.

I will give it another few days and then write HL again.

Thanks again for all the information.

Sparky47

gowgowuk wrote: »

Well, it looks like so far I'm luckier than others in the transfer process. Day 4 after I sent the transfer forms to iii, I've already got confirmation from HL that they have received the transfer request from Interactive Investors today and have issued a valuation of the account to them. Finger crossed for the rest but it looks like I'll be safe transfer fee-wise!

I received a reply today to my secure message yesterday asking for confirmation that they had received my transfer request from III.

Apparently they received it on the 14th March, so I am at least within the time stated in their letter to waive their transfer fees and new charging structure, which is 31st March.

hyposmurf

No more H&L for me I'm off to Bestinvest now. They also offer to pay your transfer fees from your previous platform:

https://select.bestinvest.co.uk/help-forms/transfer-investments/transfer-in-exit-charge-refund