Recommended platform for monthly Vanguard LS ISA contributions...

Temrael

Hi there,

We opened ISAs a couple of months back with Fidelity to aallow regular monthly contribution to Vanguard LifeStrategy (60%).

It would appear that I might have been a bit hasty, and didn't research the fees fully - their 0.35% annual fee (in addition to the LS fund fee obviously) isn't that great when compared to some other platforms. :doh:

I know iWeb's account opening fees are about to shoot up next Monday and I've had a look here (though I'm not totally sure I get whether Vanguard LS counts as a Fund, an IT or an ETF - which affects the results!) and here. It's all a bit confusing though as at some places monthly contributions are just seen the same as any one off fund purchase and at others they are handled differently with discounts for regular contributions.

We're looking to move to a platform that is low cost for monthly Vanguard purchases within an ISA. We probably won't make ad-hoc trades, but the platform and company obviously needs to be competent and reliable.

Any recommendations?

Does anyone else just use a platform for monthly ISA contributions? If so which one did you choose and why?

Cheers,

jimjames

iWeb charges £5 per trade so you'd be paying £5 for every monthly payment. Only you know if that is worse than 0.35%.

One option if you open an iWeb account is to use Fidelity for your current years monthly payments and move previous years ISAs into the iWeb one.

That will minimise the monthly investment fee and also minimise the amount you are paying 0.35% on.

Something I'm looking at doing for my ISA.

EDIT - if you re-register your ISA via Cavendish it remains with Fidelity but then gets the lower Cavendish fee of 0.25% making it comparable with other % based charging platforms.

AlanP_2

VLS60 is a fund.


If you put the correct numbers into comparefunds it will give you a increasing cost list based on your profile.

So no Shares /ETF's dealings just funds via monthly £x's.

For me it came out as Cavendish who charge 0.25%.

Ryan_Futuristics

*Ahem*

A diving platform

... thank you

Totton

If concentrating on overall costs then you also need to factor in the balance of your holdings, some platforms have capped charges whilst some have not. For me, I'm more interested in the level of service and whether that is worth it, hence I am very happy with Hargreaves Lansdown but at 0.45% uncapped you would probably want somewhere cheaper, especially if assets exceed around £25k.

Temrael

Cheers guys, I was all set to move to iWeb but then got a bit further confused by reading that they have apparently made regular monthly investing a bit harder lately. Their website doesn't have much in the way of detail on it certainly.

The CompareFundPlatforms site seems to give some funny figures. Apparently in the first year Fidelity will "cost" me minus 0.16% in fees. I'm almost certain they're not paying me to hold a fund through them though at it also says it will cost me £17.

That said, in the first year it will actually be cheaper to stay at a platform with an annual % fee while our holdings are still small. I might look to do what JimJames suggests and stay at Fidelity or Cavendish and then move to a per purchase platform next year.

Thanks again for all the contributions!