iWeb opening fee increase

R34GTT

Just a heads up for anyone considering opening an account with iWeb, you may want to do it before the 16th March:

Changes to the account opening charge

From 16th March we are increasing our account opening charge from £25 to £200 for new customers. This does not affect existing Share Dealing Account or ISA customers.

Archi_Bald

£200!!

Seems they don't want new customers any longer.

bowlhead99

Ah, that's more like it. Providing platform access for accounts of unlimited value at only £5 a trade and zero ongoing inactivity fee is probably not a sustainable business model if you see what their peers are charging.

I guess that puts X-O and SVS on their own among the cheap bucket shops for share-only ad-hoc accounts without regular monthly purchases, and then if you want funds you're looking at paying 0.2%+ a year or perhaps a flat fee place for larger values.

If they're not introducing ongoing annual fees, their one-off £200 would still be cheaper than iii or Alliance Trust if you were sticking around a few years.

Chickereeeee

Archi_Bald wrote: »

£200!!

Seems they don't want new customers any longer.

Less than the first years' annual charge for most other cheap platforms for holdings >£100K, and then it is free for subsequent years..

Big jump though.....

C

jimjames

Wow that's a big jump.

Any reason you can't open an account now and fund it later with a transfer?

Chickereeeee

jimjames wrote: »

Wow that's a big jump.

Any reason you can't open an account now and fund it later with a transfer?

Nope. I had one open for 5 months before funding went in

C

Rollinghome

There was a post on the increase yesterday from TCA here , post 30 in this thread https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5183462

Seems probable that the numbers aren't working for them and that by charging a larger account opening fee they hope to increase revenue without the flood of demands for free transfers out they'd get if they increased trading or other fees.

The question must be how many people will stomp up £200 in advance, £400 for a couple or partners, without first being able to try the service first. Presumably they're content for new client numbers to fall so would be interesting to know their longer term intentions for the service.

Chickereeeee

Or maybe they had lots of dormant accounts, opened by people who wanted to try (for £5) before moving, and did not move for some reason.

Head office: "How do we stop that happening?"
Marketing guy: "well, here's an idea......."

C

Chickereeeee

Or maybe they had lots of dormant accounts, opened by people who wanted to try (for £25) before moving, and did not move for some reason.

Head office: "How do we stop that happening?"
Marketing guy: "well, here's an idea......."

C

draper29

It's worth opening one up(at the cheaper £25) if you are going to use your ISA allowance for 2015/16 and they have the funds you want.

I opened one up a few years ago and didn't use it for ages when comparing Annual costs for Fidelity, Hargreaves and IWEB

Hargreaves £15,240 + annual charge of .45% of fund = £68.58
Fidelity £15,240 + annual charge of .35% of fund = £53.34
IWEB £15,240 + NO annual charge

If you are going to hold funds for a period of time you will save the above charges EVERY year. Even if you pay the dividend reinvestment fee of 2% it is still more cost effective than the examples above.

DominicH

Do they have a good range of funds, e.g. the Vanguard ones? I can't see a way of listing available funds without logging in, nor on Halifax Sharedealing, which I presume is the same platform.