Stocks & Shares ISAs

Brand

jimjames wrote: »

. . .
So the answer is that it is normally cheaper to go via a fund supermarket . . .

Yes you are right, and that is a much simpler answer than mine.
I looked up two or three and see:
even if you go to Fidelity direct in effect you have to go onto a platform so pay the 0.2% Fundsnetwork platform charge,
even Legal and General FTSE 100 tracker accumulator is charged 0.85% pa going direct, versus, I think, only 0.44% pa using Cavendish
http://i.legalandgeneral.com/consumer/investments/products-and-funds/index-tracker/investments-productsandfunds-indextracker-fund-uk100.jsp
http://www.cavendishonline.co.uk/investments/fund-research/
Fundsmith I think is 1.31% using Cavendish v around 1% going direct (I won't go into the details of costs, as it gets arcane

Cavendish therefore do really well, don't you think.
twenty years ago,, you usually had to go direct to the fund house, but , but then in the 90s the "discount brokers" took off, later called "fund supermarkets", who deal and store clients' funds using, say, the Fundsnetwork platform.Nowadays the fund houses don't really want to know about people who come to them direct, not even Vanguard. The admin of dealing with the public must be a headache to them, so they are now happy to offload it.

stphnstevey

Myself and my wife have H&L S&S ISA and looking for a cheaper alternative

We only invest in funds


My current ISA has about 30 different funds, but I want to move away from this and invest in maybe 3 funds and trackers with the lowest cost.


Would each fund purchase be considered a deal? Or would each contribution be considered a deal? eg 1 contribution split between 3 funds, 3 deals or 1?

There is approximately one bulk ISA contribution a year and I think I would now split that between about 3 funds.

My wife no longer makes contributions to her ISA


I've heard that the charges by H&L for transferring my ISA to someone else is quite high - any ideas how much?
Also, would I need to factor in transfer in cost from the new provider?


iWeb and Interactive Investor seem quite cheap. The costs are confusing as each has different ways of charging

delboy711

@stphnstevey

Hargreaves Lansdown give the transfer out charge as £25 per fund or stock which is quite high.

Some ISA providers will pay you an incentive to transfer into them.
YouInvest will pay you up to £500, and Interactive Investor will pay you £120 in cash and £120 in dealing credits. If you decide you do not like II they will pay your transfer out costs in the first 12 months.

However it is more important to look at the long term costs of moving your account. Hargreaves Lansdown currently pay you a "loyalty bonus" which is in fact a rebate of some ofthe trail commission paid to them by fund managers, but at the same time they charge you 0.45% of the value of your funds in annual charges. How much the loyalty bonus is depends on the fund. You will have to look it up on the H-L website to see how much it is worth.

By contrast Interactive Investor will refund you all of the trail commission paid to them by fund managers and will not charge you a % annual fee at all. However they will charge a flat £80 a year, but they also give you £20 a quarter in trading credit, so, so long as you trade twice a quarter you are effectively paying no annual fee.

YouInvest do not repay any trail commission at all, and charge an annual fee of 0.2% for funds. So although their dealing costs are low, and they do not charge an annual fee if your portfolio contains a lot of funds, and those funds are the old style 'dirty' funds which pay a lot of trail commission then You Invest could work out dearer.
(The new style 'clean funds' which do not pay commission have only recently been launched.)

In short the best ISA provider depends on the size of your portfolio, and the investments in it. You will have to sit down with a calculator to work out which is the most cost effective provider.

As always do your own research and do not rely on the advice of strangers on the internet.

Brand

stphnstevey
h-l have a £25 Transfer out As Cash charge from "2 June" (not say if 2014 or 2013). http://www.hl.co.uk/investment-services/isa/savings-interest-rates-and-charges
The charge per fund suggests easier to sell all the funds within h-l then transfer the cash.h-l ISA is consolidated. masonic says the "From" ISA will happily break up the transfer of a consolidated ISA to multiple recipients. I doubtit. Why should they do all that extra hassle for no benefit. though may do if it is £30 a pop, I have argued the case for keeping ISAs distinct, so if that is you plan, check that.
There are many comments about h-l on this website and on many others.
I found h-l very efficient at cash transfer. The complaints of delays I bet are because people are trying to transfer funds (to try not to be out of stockmarket if it rises). Better to contact h-l by phone than webform or email, I found.
Yes the e.g. £10 charge is per every time you buy or sell. Yes you have to weigh up costs of the new ISA provider, though few charge to open, and may well have special offers on transfers in, like interactive did in April. Again, remember staff may be unfamiliar with transfer details, so best to ring to clarify if such deals apply to cash transfer in as well as to fund transfer in.
Look for quirks. Small print in iWeb suggests if there is any delay on transfer in, you may be advised to pay £25 into their dealing account to cover your personal set up cost. You sound as if have large ISA pot, and are happy to leave alone, so the MSE guide suggestion to avoid the %pa fee for the fixed-fee+£per deal, with a decent range of funds, as with Interactive Investor, would suit you very well.
Just a note, the MSE dicussion uses the word "fund" to mean OEIC or unit trust, but London-listed tracker ETFs or investment trusts achieve more or less the same thing, and can be cheaper, and can be bought through ISAs from stockbrokers such as x-o.co.uk or iweb, but these barebones ISAs won't have transfer deals.

Brand

PoorPaul wrote: »

Sorry MSE - I appreciate it is a 'first incarnation' but to someone like myself who really doesn't understand much about Stocks and Shares ISAs, which I believe is the target audience, this new guide is wide of the mark.

I have been paying in to a S&S ISA with the Halifax for years, as has the wife with the Co-op. Not because they were the best options, but because they were 'convenient' and considered 'better than nothing' at the time. The Direct Debits are taken each month, and they have virtually been forgotten about.

But now we are thinking... the Co-op are in trouble, Halifax are never top performers, so how much better off would we have been if we had put more effort into S&S ISAs - or at least, the same amount of effort we put in to choosing Cash ISAs?

But the information has never been there - or easy to find and understand - as it is for Cash ISAs.

I would guess that the majority of S&S ISA holders are in a similar position, having taken the 'easy route' with someone they already use for other products (banking, saving etc).

To me, the new Guide doesn't help those of us with only basic knowledge of the products much at all.

Much of the chat on this thread is so far over my head it is frightening! Did I stumble into the 'Advanced' section ?!?! :eek:

Here's hoping the 'second incarnation' comes right back down to earth and provides information the average person can use to good effect.

In the meantime, our Direct Debits will keep feeding the (most likely) underperforming but easy to manage S&S ISAs we hold......

The Halifax ISA is not self-select (DiY) ISA but involves a Halifax managed fund sold by a tied advisor visiting the branch. Coop ditto where the tied advisor may call at the home. I'd say contact the tied advisor and say what were you playing at, selling me something I don't understand.
My opinion would be not close the ISAs but wait till the new rules in July mean you should be ableto transfer to an ISA with a bank offering a cash style ISA. (maybe even Halifax !)
If you somehow want to stay in the stockmarket even though you don't really understand it, then likewise don't close your ISAs but my opinion (again, not advice)try fundsmith.co.uk https://www.fundsmith.co.uk/Lib/Documents/fs0910d_ISA_transfer_form_T_class_web%201.pdf

innovate

Brand wrote: »

The Halifax ISA is not self-select (DiY) ISA but involves a Halifax managed fund sold by a tied advisor visiting the branch.

What Halifax ISA are you talking about? You can have a self-select one with shares and funds with Halifax, just like with any other big provider. You do not visit the Branch or talk to any advisor.

Brand

Brand wrote: »

The Halifax ISA . . ]

. . .that Paul has bought

Stuck1

I also have a Halifax ISA that was set up years ago. At the time Halifax had in house financial advisors (who advise on Halifax products only) so it was all explained and I've tracked the fund every so often. I also set it up as it was convenient and knew little about the funds. You used to be able to monitor it on the web, but they removed this function around 2009 and its never returned.

Halifax no longer have advisors and you have to phone the fund admin, who I think are no longer Halifax, maybe its Scottist Widdow? You can get a valuation over the phone and schedule in a chat to talk over your investment history, so you can get a good idea how the fund has performed. You can also request a paper copy of your invest history. You should receive a quarterly overview report, but it should detail your specific valuation.

Vladislavs

Just have a little question to people with S&S Isas. I m actually looking to open one, with around 15k £, and im interested only in stocks, and possibility to trade them.
So im looking for the cheapest platform and cheapest trade fees.

And one more thing, im planning to trade american stock. ie. like Apple stock for example. So any platform that allows to do so with american shares and not too expensive charges.

Ive been looking on monevator site as well, but i want some opinions from real people too, thanks!

Archi_Bald

£15K is a very small budget to start dealing in individual shares, unless you have a very high risk tolerance. I am of the view that unless you can put £10K into each of a minimum of 10 shares, i.e. have £100K, it is much better to stick with funds. Particularly if you want to trade regularly, your trading costs will eat into any returns.