S&S ISA or not?

Archi_Bald

Perhaps the way MSE should handle S&S ISAs is by saying that they are a savings, not an investment, expert website and refer people to a smartened up version of the "Recommended reading" thread?

kidmugsy

noggin1980 wrote: »

not sure if they all offer isas, certainly the vast majority do includeing Hargreaves Landown, they are quite expensive though 0.45% per year

I'm struck by the detail. In an HL ISA if you stick to shares (including ITs, ETFs and, I assume, Gilts) the fee is capped to an annual £45 , which means that after the first £10k the rest of the capital is fee-free. That strikes me as pretty good, especially given their excellent level of service. But for "funds" it's 0.45% p.a. up, and up, and up. I'd buy funds elsewhere. Similarly, the fee for shares in their SIPP is capped at £200 p.a. i.e. it's noticeably more expensive than their ISA. Their other SIPP fees, though, look pretty darn good to me.

P.S. My views are probably coloured by the fact that (i) we rarely trade, and (ii) we plan to hold some foreign shares.

noggin1980

kidmugsy wrote: »

I'm struck by the detail. In an HL ISA if you stick to shares (including ITs, ETFs and, I assume, Gilts) the fee is capped to an annual £45 , which means that after the first £10k the rest of the capital is fee-free. That strikes me as pretty good, especially given their excellent level of service. But for "funds" it's 0.45% p.a. up, and up, and up. I'd buy funds elsewhere. Similarly, the fee for shares in their SIPP is capped at £200 p.a. i.e. it's noticeably more expensive than their ISA. Their other SIPP fees, though, look pretty darn good to me.

P.S. My views are probably coloured by the fact that (i) we rarely trade, and (ii) we plan to hold some foreign shares.

Yes I was talking mostly about funds in an isa as I believe thats the best place to start (especially passive funds) for someone who doesn't know what they want or have much knowledge, such as the person I was replying too, once they get more knowledge they may or may not chose to branch out into other things in the future.

You are absolutely right though of course that there is no one size answer for everyone and it may well be the case that HL is the perfect fit for you.

I'm sure you know but in case others don't you are of course you are still paying dealing fees for ETF's and shares at HL, the £45 cap is for the isa platform fee (when holding shares/etfs/IT's) you still pay £11.95 per trade

bowlhead99

noggin1980 wrote: »

I'm sure you know but in case others don't you are of course you are still paying dealing fees for ETF's and shares at HL, the £45 cap is for the isa platform fee (when holding shares/etfs/IT's) you still pay £11.95 per trade

... and as I'm sure you know but in case others don't, you can reduce the £11.95 per purchase to £1.50 for uk FTSE350 shares and a selection of investment trusts, if you use their monthly regular investment scheme ... etc etc.

All of these 'small print' bits mean that it can be very impractical to have a snapshot guide on a website which tells people what would be the 'best buy' for them. It's not like a current account where for a known balance you get a known fee and a known rate of return. Well actually it is like that, because the fees for every circumstance can be listed, it's just that the person using the guide is going to need to know exactly what their own circumstances are likely to be, before they can judge, and if the circumstances turn out differently they might have been better off with something else!

Like I have a bank account with Lloyds, and maybe my credit balance fluctuates between £1-6k over the time between paydays, so sometimes it's paying me high interest and sometimes low interest and sometimes nothing on an incremental pound, and maybe I might accidentally go overdrawn one month which changes the rules, and maybe I think I'll make use of the free cinema tickets but only if I want to put myself out to go to a cinema a few times a year which gives a worse experience than my usual cinema, and so on and so on. The features and benefits and pricing is known, but the exact circumstances requires some assumptions.

The monevator link you posted is pretty good as an overview (way better than what MSE would cover in a few scant lines of text), as is Archi's but when there are 15-20 companies with their own personal take on what makes a good fee structure for their target client base - anyone who wants to use it is going to have to put in their own personal legwork to see what it is they really want.

When someone is starting out, they don't necessarily know how many funds they will hold, or whether after a year they'll add an investment trust or two as well, or what the balances will be, or how many of them they will actually feed each month, and whether it really matters that the fund they originally wanted isn't actually available and they have to pick the next best instead which is probably just as good but might not be...

All I can say is, I'm glad I'm not starting out in investments just now. It was way easier before the internet, when you pretty much just got what you were given and then made incremental improvements when you became aware of new options which became available in the market. Back when it were all fields, jumpers for goalposts, things were built to last, etc etc etc. Now, bah humbug, the "youth of today" can just read a website and be up and running with a full DIY solution in no time at all.

Given the scope for things to go wrong and the disparity of fee structures which the typical punter can't be bothered to review fully because they just want to know "the answer to what's the best ISA" it's perhaps a blessing and a curse.

Rollinghome

kidmugsy wrote: »

In an HL ISA if you stick to shares (including ITs, ETFs and, I assume, Gilts) the fee is capped to an annual £45 , which means that after the first £10k the rest of the capital is fee-free.

The power of competition perhaps, and recognition that several other stockbrokers make no ISA or account charge at all: most notably SVS and XO who as well as no ISA/account fees also charge only half the dealing fee of HL - both less than £6 a trade.

Suggests that funds are probably still more profitable than stockbroking and costing most of us more to hold than they should.

Comparing the cost of buying 2x £5k lots of stocks and holding them for 5 years: with SVS would cost £11.50 and with HL would cost £248.90. (HL would then make a further charge if you chose to close your account.) Nice website but not exactly a bargain except when compared with what they charge for funds.

noggin1980

bowlhead99 wrote: »

... and as I'm sure you know but in case others don't, you can reduce the £11.95 per purchase to £1.50 for uk FTSE350 shares and a selection of investment trusts, if you use their monthly regular investment scheme ... etc etc.

Not sure if this is a dig because you think I was being patronising? If so It wasn't my intention to sound that way, I just thought it was easy to see the fee is capped at £45 for shares in an isa and not realise that is only part of the story but on the other hand I realised perhaps that was obvious, I wasn't sure how to be helpful without being patronising and perhaps I failed. The internet is hard

bowlhead99 wrote: »

All of these 'small print' bits mean that it can be very impractical to have a snapshot guide on a website which tells people what would be the 'best buy' for them. It's not like a current account where for a known balance you get a known fee and a known rate of return. Well actually it is like that, because the fees for every circumstance can be listed, it's just that the person using the guide is going to need to know exactly what their own circumstances are likely to be, before they can judge, and if the circumstances turn out differently they might have been better off with something else!

Like I have a bank account with Lloyds, and maybe my credit balance fluctuates between £1-6k over the time between paydays, so sometimes it's paying me high interest and sometimes low interest and sometimes nothing on an incremental pound, and maybe I might accidentally go overdrawn one month which changes the rules, and maybe I think I'll make use of the free cinema tickets but only if I want to put myself out to go to a cinema a few times a year which gives a worse experience than my usual cinema, and so on and so on. The features and benefits and pricing is known, but the exact circumstances requires some assumptions.

The monevator link you posted is pretty good as an overview (way better than what MSE would cover in a few scant lines of text), as is Archi's but when there are 15-20 companies with their own personal take on what makes a good fee structure for their target client base - anyone who wants to use it is going to have to put in their own personal legwork to see what it is they really want.

When someone is starting out, they don't necessarily know how many funds they will hold, or whether after a year they'll add an investment trust or two as well, or what the balances will be, or how many of them they will actually feed each month, and whether it really matters that the fund they originally wanted isn't actually available and they have to pick the next best instead which is probably just as good but might not be...

All I can say is, I'm glad I'm not starting out in investments just now. It was way easier before the internet, when you pretty much just got what you were given and then made incremental improvements when you became aware of new options which became available in the market. Back when it were all fields, jumpers for goalposts, things were built to last, etc etc etc. Now, bah humbug, the "youth of today" can just read a website and be up and running with a full DIY solution in no time at all.

Given the scope for things to go wrong and the disparity of fee structures which the typical punter can't be bothered to review fully because they just want to know "the answer to what's the best ISA" it's perhaps a blessing and a curse.

I agree with all that but I also think that perhaps trying to give someone perfect advise might be worse than giving them good advice if it ends up scaring them off. Of course everyone is different and some people are going to be helped more by getting every bit of information and others are going to be helped more by getting something more manageable.

anoncol

Cheers for all the info, I have so much reading to do. I messaged axa to ask if they accept transfers of my existing shares and they told me don't even do share dealing any way.

Which of the companies will allow me to transfer my standard life shares into an isa wrapper?

masonic

anoncol wrote: »

Which of the companies will allow me to transfer my standard life shares into an isa wrapper?

If you want to transfer in the shares and invest in both shares and funds, then AJ Bell and Charles Stanley Direct are worth looking at. You'll pay a platform fee based on a percentage of your money invested. There are no charges to buy or sell funds with CSD.

However, if you only want to invest in shares (including investment trusts and ETFs), then you could go for X-O or SVS Securities and you'll pay no platform fee and a low trading fee.

bowlhead99

noggin1980 wrote: »

Not sure if this is a dig because you think I was being patronising?

No, I'm just easily amused

As kidmugsy mentioned there is a lot of detail. Do x,y,z if A holds true, but do r,s,t if B holds true.

Except just to give the punters more of a headache, you come in with "you know this but just in case others don't, need to be aware that C could hold true, in that case, a,b,c".

And then I instantly thought, "you know this, but just in case others don't, what about D, in which case j,k,l"...

No doubt there is an E and an F which someone else could think worthy of mention too, all the time each of us in a queue is politely acknowledging that each of us before them knows the full story but only wanted to give a little bit of it to avoid putting off the target audience, but we think 'X' is worth mentioning as well :rotfl:

I wasn't sure how to be helpful without being patronising and perhaps I failed.

I'm sure I do that all the time - there isn't an obvious smiley for it, so what the heck, they'll either get it or they won't, and everyone on the internet should have thick skin in this day and age.

I agree with all that but I also think that perhaps trying to give someone perfect advise might be worse than giving them good advice if it ends up scaring them off. Of course everyone is different and some people are going to be helped more by getting every bit of information and others are going to be helped more by getting something more manageable.

Yes there are times when I lose half the audience by trying to give them an 8/10 when a 7/10 would have done pretty much the same job and a 5 would have got them to find their own answer quite quickly if they're smartish and actually interested in it.

The thing to avoid is a 2 or a 3 as imho "a little knowledge is dangerous" so I try to tell at least half the story, so that it's their fault for not understanding it properly rather than mine for not telling them