Cavendish or Fidelity

AlanP_2

My wife is about to open up a Self Managed Personal Pension or SIPP with an initial investment of ~£6k with another £9k lump sum in early January.

This will be topped up by monthly payments of £200-£400.

Initial investment will be into a Vanguard Life Strategy Fund (or similar).

To diversify things a bit we will also be opening an ISA which is likely to have 3/4 funds in it that focus on specific regions and/or asset classes e.g. commodities.

A SIPP seem to be a bit more expensive than a PP in terms of ongoing fees but gives more flexibility to hold shares etc.

Is that the fundamental difference between the two, or would we be missing out on something else?


Looking at charges it seems that Cavendish are slightly cheaper than Fidelity for the PP option.

As a "first timer" at online investing what can I expect from both those platforms in terms of management information on the investments?

I have read that going through Cavendish gives you access to a "lite" view of the Fidelity management screen / dashboard but not having seen either I have no idea what I am comparing.

Essentially I want to be able to track the investment performance over time (Quarterly or Annually say) and ideally see what has occurred month/month over that period.


Thanks

Orwell

Fidelity appear to have abolished all sundry fees other than the standard annual charge of 0.35% on the first £100,000 or 0.20% on larger amounts.

You want to look at the small print to see what Cavendish charges.

AlanP_2

Orwell wrote: »

Fidelity appear to have abolished all sundry fees other than the standard annual charge of 0.35% on the first £100,000 or 0.20% on larger amounts.

You want to look at the small print to see what Cavendish charges.

Thanks Orwell.

Cavendish charge 0.3% (plus fund fees) on their new(ish) PP offering so slightly less than Fidelity.

TBH the overall difference is fairly small in £££s between the two over say 10 years, my concern is more focussed on whether I would get "more / better" management information by paying a bit extra and going via the Fidelity route.

Has anyone experience of either / both interfaces and could offer a viewpoint?

Not forgetting my PP or SIPP query as well of course

amandajc

I set up what will only ever be a smallish SIPP with Fidelity this year in order to enable me to retire early and defer my LGPS pension to avoid actuarial reduction. I have been very pleased with the customer service, web interface and ability to manage the account online. There are no charges for buying or switching funds, monthly payment plans can be easily changed (although the changes can take 10 working days to take effect), full documentation of every transaction is available and there are plenty of tools for analysing and monitoring your investments.

I have no experience of Cavendish, although I do have some of Interactive Investor where I keep my ISA. Fidelity's web interface is more sophisticated with better developed, built-in tools for portfolio analysis. However, II has the advantage in that you can change monthly payment plans and investment choices right up to the day before the payment/buy is due, a greater range of investment products to choose from and linked family accounts.