Any general views on Equiniti?

kangoora

My company uses this service/company for handling their share schemes. They do this via a CSN (Corporate Sponsored Nominee scheme I believe).

I recently transferred out some shares from the CSN into an Equiniti ISA as it was the 'easy' option to creating the ISA. As part of the setup I got an Investment account created also. I've now moved all the rest of the shares to the Investment a/c as the CSN scheme charges a % of any sales (subject to a minimum fee which I don't have to hand at the moment but I think is £20) as opposed to a flat rate £12.50 per transaction charge in the Inv. a/c.

I've now added an Investment account for DW and intend to split all my shares in half so we can use both our CG limits.

A bit long winded, but what are peoples views on Equiniti and their charges? I can't see them on any of the comparison lists people have done which makes me suspect they aren't one of the cheapest around.

bowlhead99

kangoora wrote: »

A bit long winded, but what are peoples views on Equiniti and their charges? I can't see them on any of the comparison lists people have done which makes me suspect they aren't one of the cheapest around.

They're not really one of the big brokers/platforms for DIY investing. Most people who use them will have come across their services by them being a registrar of a company they'd invested in direct and had perhaps wanted to sell those paper shares in the past without bothering to find a separate cheaper broker (e.g. many used them to sell the Royal Mail shares soon after the IPO). Or people have used them because they're the house broker on a sharesave scheme or the like for their employer.

Although they do have online services for the general public now, they're not doing massive ad campaigns and at the end of the day they won't really start to appear on a best buy list or comparison chart if they don't have something special to offer on price or a superbly comprehensive service.

Compared to other banks or big brokers, £12.50 on the non-ISA account a trade is not extortionate. It's in the same ball park as Halifax, Hargreaves Lansdown, TD Direct, Youinvest and so on to name just a few. Some of those groups would also charge an inactivity fee or annual account maintenance fee. You could compare to £5.95 (also no annual fee) at an execution only specialist like X-O.co.uk.

If you aren't trading very often, that extra five or six quid a go will not make a massive dent in your finances. However those other brokers pricing in the £10-£12 range do have smartphone trading apps and wider features like the ability to trade overseas markets, multicurrency accounts, probably trade more shares yourself online without needing to revert to the premium telephone dealing service, and also have a fund platform allowing you to diversify your holdings across a massive range of OEICs and Unit Trusts for an annual percentage fee. So you can pay lower fees elsewhere, or pay similar fees but find a fuller service for your money.

Their 'regular investment service', if you were looking to make monthly investments is a nice feature you don't get at a bargain bucket shop like X-O. It's not exactly market leading, as it's generally just FTSE350 plus 'selected other' shares, and they charge 0.5% of a trade with £1.75 minimum (so the cost will be bigger than the £1.75 for trade size of £350 or more). TD or Youinvest or HL just have a flat rate £1.50 and all have a wider service that can include some ETFs or ITs as well as funds; not just the FTSE350 shares.

Then if you look at the ISA product, the annual admin fee is 0.5% with minimum of £25 up to max of £75, with VAT on top so it's really £30-90. X-O would be zero, Youinvest would be zero, TD would be £30 but they waive it if you use regular investing or have an account balance over £5.1k (which is only a third of one year's ISA allowance). Even the relatively expensive Hargreaves Lansdown is a bit cheaper for an ISA account, at 0.45% and capped at half the level of Equiniti, £45.

So in summary yes you can get more for your money,and yes you can pay less money. But you can keep the accounts at Equiniti without too much trouble, as the fee on their unwrapped investment account isn't going to break the bank and it's only a few quid to sell.

If you've yet to create an ISA for your wife and are going to do that with £10-15k, you might as well do it at Youinvest or TD, as there is zero admin fee for that level of holding while Equiniti are charging you £50-75, plus VAT! Also if you wanted to use the ISAs to diversify from just holding shares in your employer (which is a good thing to do from a risk perspective), both Youinvest and TD have a decent Funds offering at 0.2% or 0.3% platform fee respectively (the cheaper one charges transaction fees on fund transactions while the other doesn't). There are of course lots of other rival providers as you've no doubt seen in the comparison tables, but I'm qualified to recommend either of TD or Youinvest as I use them both.