Iii

Martin_ford

Hi quick fact check I have a standard life pension in addition to my company scheme. Charges 1.35%. So with value £80000 paying over £1000 per year? If I move to III charges reduced to approx £200 if I invert in their standard growth portfolio?
Have I read this correctly?

Nocto

Martin_ford wrote: »

Hi quick fact check I have a standard life pension in addition to my company scheme. Charges 1.35%. So with value £80000 paying over £1000 per year? If I move to III charges reduced to approx £200 if I invert in their standard growth portfolio?
Have I read this correctly?

I don’t have a pension with III, but seriously before considering transferring to them spend an evening reading through the posts on this thread…

Yes, they are cheap - but, good value?

I bet if you transferred £80,000 to III but only £8,000 arrived and it took you twenty phone calls to sort it out (and a dozen sleepless nights), you’d wish you’d stayed put where you are paying £1,000 a year!

xylophone

I have now been with II for two years. The transfer out from HL was accomplished within about eight weeks - that was fine really.

I sold my dirty funds and repurchased clean. That was no problem.

Share dividends are almost always on time - fund dividends are usually late, occasionally very late but this has been improving.

Tax refunds are made within six to eight weeks - that's okay.

But - a complete pig's breakfast when it came to the partial transfer of a notice cash isa - to be fair, I'm not sure that the other party exactly covered themselves with glory.

And, there was a real mix up and confusion with payments/tax credits on REITS which took weeks to resolve.

A couple of relatives also hold accounts with II - main gripe the late payment of dividends.

For the moment I'm fairly happy - at all events, not unhappy enough to pay HL several hundred pounds for what II do for £80 a year.

juliamarsh

I think you have got away pretty lightly really, xylophone, all things considered! Unfortunately my problems with them seem to be relentless and never ending. All I want is a quiet life!!!!

juliamarsh

Martin_ford wrote: »

Hi quick fact check I have a standard life pension in addition to my company scheme. Charges 1.35%. So with value £80000 paying over £1000 per year? If I move to III charges reduced to approx £200 if I invert in their standard growth portfolio?
Have I read this correctly?

I agree with Nocto. But there are other alternatives that do offer a good service at a reasonable price such as AJ Bell. Not quite as cheap as II but still good value, a decent service from what I've been told and a lot cheaper than your Standard Life pension.

Paulrm71

According to iii, the 'b' class of Newton Global does NOT provide any rebates despite it showing on the factsheet. They have advised that the 'w' class is the cheapest version. Unfortunately due to their added incompetence they have reinvested my Feb dividends back into the old dirty class which had disappeared when they converted to 'b'!!!!! I feel some compensation might be coming my way shortly.

planteria

can anyone confirm that i am in the cleanest classes with the following funds please?:

* Marlborough Special Situations P Acc
* Smith & Williamson Global Gold & Resources B
* CF Eclectica Agriculture C GBP

juliamarsh wrote: »

You aren't lucky enough to have £10 million invested in Marlborough Special Situations P Acc are you, planteria?!?! If not, then sorry to be a nuisance but could you give me the ISIN No. of the fund you actually hold..

not quite Julia:D ISIN No. is: GB00B907GH23

it has become a very interesting thread. no doubt at all that iii have some very poor staff. but part of me feels inclined to stick with them now. i am generally simplifying my investments over time, and in some ways i think that by staying on top of them we can ensure that we get what we need, whilst benefiting from their pricing. they are a good option for someone prepared to stay on top of them, and as xylo says, let's hold on to our £100s:cool:

that said, can i be the first to predict that there'll be some consolidation in the platform sector and that iii will be taken over by a slicker organisation, that will look to charge us more:think:

masonic

planteria wrote: »

* Marlborough Special Situations P Acc
* Smith & Williamson Global Gold & Resources B
* CF Eclectica Agriculture C GBP

I can only vouch for the Marlborough one, but the easiest way to check is by typing the fund into the "Search to trade" box and then of more than one class comes up, compare the KIIDs. This should only show you available clean classes.

juliamarsh

Well, they obviously decided to pass my message straight on to the organ grinder as I received a reply directly from Julie Baxter last night as follows:-

'Our stance has always been that we would convert all dirty funds to the cleanest class available to us. It seems that when we carried out this exercise we believed that we had indeed converted to the cleanest. However, it transpires that we had previously been given a waiver from the Fund Managers, in that we did not need to comply with the minimum investment in each of the cleanest funds you have identified. We will therefore be carrying out this clean to cleaner conversion at the end of March. The whole exercise of moving dirty funds to clean funds as you can probably imagine is a large exercise involving a few different parties. It was therefore not possible to look at each fund individually to ensure that no special exceptions had been made for us previously, but none the less, you have brought to my attention that there are cleaner fund available and we will make this good.'

It sounds like hogwash to me and that this 'waiver' idea she has come up with is just a smokescreen to try to cover up the fact that her staff don't know their ar&e from their t*t! :rotfl: Especially as we know that people have been holding the funds in question since way before the conversions, and presumably the alleged 'waiver'. I don't believe for one second that a 'special exception' had been made for them. At least they have now agreed to do it, but why does there always have to be a battle before they do?

My one outstanding February dividend finally arrived today, nearly 3 weeks late and again their attitude to my chaser left a lot to be desired. They basically just said that no payment had as yet been received but that should it subsequently arrive they would credit it to me. So if it didn't 'subsequently arrive' would that just be hard luck on me then? No indication that they had any intention of chasing it up! Anyway it is here now....at last.

As we have all agreed, they are cheap, and I wouldn't want to pay HL's prices either although I do still hold a small SIPP with them. However, although we have all had lots of problems with II I think I have had even more than most and it has been really stressful, I absolutely dread dealing with them. If I had had a crystal ball I would have transferred to AJ Bell at the beginning instead of II - they are a lot cheaper than HL, not much more expensive than II and from what I hear they give an excellent service. I am either a complete fool or the eternal optimist in continually hoping that the problems with II will eventually come to an end, but I can't face the thought of moving now and the mess up that would inevitably ensue, even though I bitterly resent II. I would dearly love to leave but I think it is unlikely.

Nocto

juliamarsh wrote: »

Well, they obviously decided to pass my message straight on to the organ grinder as I received a reply directly from Julie Baxter last night as follows:-

'Our stance has always been that we would convert all dirty funds to the cleanest class available to us. It seems that when we carried out this exercise we believed that we had indeed converted to the cleanest. However, it transpires that we had previously been given a waiver from the Fund Managers, in that we did not need to comply with the minimum investment in each of the cleanest funds you have identified. We will therefore be carrying out this clean to cleaner conversion at the end of March. The whole exercise of moving dirty funds to clean funds as you can probably imagine is a large exercise involving a few different parties. It was therefore not possible to look at each fund individually to ensure that no special exceptions had been made for us previously, but none the less, you have brought to my attention that there are cleaner fund available and we will make this good.'

It sounds like hogwash to me and that this 'waiver' idea she has come up with is just a smokescreen to try to cover up the fact that her staff don't know their ar&e from their t*t! :rotfl: Especially as we know that people have been holding the funds in question since way before the conversions, and presumably the alleged 'waiver'. I don't believe for one second that a 'special exception' had been made for them. At least they have now agreed to do it, but why does there always have to be a battle before they do?

My one outstanding February dividend finally arrived today, nearly 3 weeks late and again their attitude to my chaser left a lot to be desired. They basically just said that no payment had as yet been received but that should it subsequently arrive they would credit it to me. So if it didn't 'subsequently arrive' would that just be hard luck on me then? No indication that they had any intention of chasing it up! Anyway it is here now....at last.

As we have all agreed, they are cheap, and I wouldn't want to pay HL's prices either although I do still hold a small SIPP with them. However, although we have all had lots of problems with II I think I have had even more than most and it has been really stressful, I absolutely dread dealing with them. If I had had a crystal ball I would have transferred to AJ Bell at the beginning instead of II - they are a lot cheaper than HL, not much more expensive than II and from what I hear they give an excellent service. I am either a complete fool or the eternal optimist in continually hoping that the problems with II will eventually come to an end, but I can't face the thought of moving now and the mess up that would inevitably ensue, even though I bitterly resent II. I would dearly love to leave but I think it is unlikely.

Well, that answers one question for me - It would definitely seem that going in with both barrels gets results far more quickly than a very British, “Do you mind awfully looking at that again for me?”

Anyway, thank you for posting Julie Baxter's reply. Knowing that they’ll be processing ‘clean to cleaner’ conversions soon is a great weight off my mind.

I agree that they really don’t seem to know what they are doing and are making things up as they go along. Surely if you are a broker dealing in funds, then understanding the different unit classes is basic stuff.

Only II could get themselves in such a mucking fuddle, and give themselves so much more work to do…

You do of course realise that the next thing they are going to muck up is the end of May dividends. I bet they’ll never be able to work out what class of unit our holdings were on xd day - ‘dirty’, ‘clean’ or ‘even cleaner’…:eek:

(Which reminds me - I must add washing powder to my shopping list..!)