The Share Centre for holding unit trusts/OEICs for a flat fee

Special_Saver2

I notice that The Share Centre are going to have a flat fee charging structure for holding funds, which could be good news for people with large portfolios who want to avoid a % charge.

They are charging:

No tax wrapper: £21.60 per year
ISA: £57.60 per year
SIPP: £172.80 per year

For all accounts they have dealing charges of 1% per deal (min £7.50) or frequent trader rate of £96 per year and £7.50 per deal. Fee of 0.5% for automatic dividend reinvestment (once they have reached £10). No mention of any charges for corporate actions.

Full details here: https://www.share.com/fair-funds/full-costs-table/

They are also currently offering to reimburse up to £300 of transfer costs.

Has anybody here used The Share Centre before? What do you think of them?

SS2

traineepensioner

"For all accounts they have dealing charges of 1% per deal (min £7.50) or frequent trader rate of £96 per year and £7.50 per deal." 1%....Ouch! Interactive investor or Alliance trust could work out cheaper for larger portfolios.:o

ChesterDog

I use them. I have a pretty big portfolio (well above £200k) and generally don't deal very much.

The dealing charges have a 30% discount if you hold 500 of Share PLC shares.

Whatever you make of their charging, they have been an excellent company to deal with - no pun intended.

le_loup

Special_Saver2 wrote: »

I notice that The Share Centre are going to have a flat fee charging structure ........

Now, what we need from you SS2 is for you to develop a comparison thread for platforms as brilliant as your Regular Saver thread.
You're so good at it.
Really.
Please.

badger09

le_loup wrote: »

Now, what we need from you SS2 is for you to develop a comparison thread for platforms as brilliant as your Regular Saver thread.
You're so good at it.
Really.
Please.

Now that would brilliant - especially if it incorporated Snowman's excellent spreadsheet :T

le_loup

Wow SS2!
With this overwhelming support from your fan base, how can you not do it?

SnowMan

Their charging structure is definitely worth a discussion.

It is the size of that dealing cost that puts me off the Share Centre. I've always read it that the dealing cost (1% min £7.50) applies to fund purchases and sales also. Can anyone confirm that for definite.

For example if you buy a single fund within an ISA wrapper (for over £750) and sell it 4 years later that seems to average out at a 0.5%pa charge (1% + 1% divided by 4) and then you have the £57.60 pa charge on top.

If you choose the frequent dealer option then it looks like you are down to a platform charge of

No tax wrapper: £117.60 per year (21.60 + 96)
ISA: £153.60 per year (57.60 + 96)
SIPP: £268.80 per year (172.80 + 96)

+£7.50 per trade dealing costs

which itself doesn't look at all cheap vs the likes of interactive investor even if the dealing charge is marginally cheaper.

ChesterDog

I think you meant 1% + 1% / 4.

Apart from that, at a quick read through, yes those figures look correct.

Edit: but don't forget the dealing fee reduces to about 0.7% each way if you buy a few Share PLC shares. The minimum charge is reduced to £5.25.

Porcupine

I think iweb beat them on all counts:

Special_Saver2 wrote: »

No tax wrapper: £21.60 per year
ISA: £57.60 per year
SIPP: £172.80 per year

iWeb fees:
No wrapper: free
ISA: free
SIPP: £75 < £50K, £150 > £50K

For all accounts they have dealing charges of 1% per deal (min £7.50) or frequent trader rate of £96 per year and £7.50 per deal. Fee of 0.5% for automatic dividend reinvestment (once they have reached £10). No mention of any charges for corporate actions.

Deal fee £5. Dividend reinvestment 2%, max £5. Corporate action £7.50, free for ISA/SIPP.

However the range of funds is different - more Vanguard at Share Centre, for example, but only one Cavendish fund (to pick some random data points).

Mattygroves2

If you don't trade much or make regular small investments (which are 0.5% commission (min £1) on share centre) then Share Centre could work out cheaper. The website looked easy to use as well.

I've crunched the figures for my portfolio with 4 regular small fund investments each month and 3 larger £2k or £3k trades a year in shares. Share Centre works out £300 cheaper even without buying 500 shares in Share plc for the 30% discount. Not worth going for the frequent trader option in my case as my total dealing costs only come to £128. IIIs dealing costs are a killer for me given that funds don't appear to qualify for their £1.50 regular trading price.

The thing I don't like about iWeb is that you can't have a joined up funds and shares ISA so I couldn't do what I currently do and use my ISA allowance to buy some funds and some shares. Otherwise the pricing looks good.

ChesterDog

What Share Centre desperately needs (from my viewpoint, with £10k+ in each of my funds) is a cap on the dealing costs.