Experiences with SelfTrade?

gterr

I am thinking of moving my S&S fund (unwrapped) and my S&S ISA to SelfTrade. I understand their charges but I'd be interested to hear about their customer service standard, speed of producing CTVs etc. etc? (You might not be surprised to hear that it's III that I'm seeking to leave.)


Thanks for your time.

bigfreddiel

Wher from? Why are you moving? I use TD Direct, no charges, suits me!

fj

gterr

bigfreddiel wrote: »

Wher from? Why are you moving? I use TD Direct, no charges, suits me!

fj

Moving from III.


(And unless I'm mistaken TD Direct charge a platform fee of 0.3% on funds. For my portfolio size I'm wanting a platform that offers a flat fee.)

ed44

Have a look on the Motley Fool Selftrade forum, and you may think twice.

I left Selftrade this year, in part due to the problems before and after the Equitini take over, but also because I expect fees to rise towards that of Equitini.

For shares, ETFs, I'd go with TD, and for funds, iWeb.

Shmo

Isn't Selftrade basically Equiniti at this point? I transferred out from Equiniti Shareview this year (at great expense) after having a pretty bad experience with them.

I wouldn't consider them now on the basis of transfer out fees alone which are £15 per holding. Plenty of other providers that don't charge for this. including TD mentioned above, and IG who I am with now.

bigfreddiel

gterr wrote: »

Moving from III.


(And unless I'm mistaken TD Direct charge a platform fee of 0.3% on funds. For my portfolio size I'm wanting a platform that offers a flat fee.)

You are correct, but in my case I do not invest in funds

fj

grey_gym_sock

selftrade is now equiniti. i don't feel very favourably towards them, partly due to the mess before the transfer of the business to equiniti.

i have been tranferring an acount (which only contains shares) from selftrade to td direct, partly because i can temporarily (due to the transfer of business to equiniti) leave without paying an exit fee, and because td direct don't have exit fees. it's taking them a long time to send the last bit of cash over.

however, for funds rather than shares, i might consider using selftrade, if there were a reason to leave iweb - with whom i currently hold funds.

darkidoe

Is the regular investment facility counted as trading to avoid the inactivity fee?

Playing_with_Fire_2

I use SelfTrade and find them tolerable but no better. Some of the staff who reply by email are great - and you can generally email back one individual who seems competent and they will deal with your query. The one time I spoke to them on the phone they were really grumpy and used 'security procedures' as an excuse for being rude.

The website is functional but clunky. For funds (Unit Trusts and OEICs), the price is right though.

Regular investment does count as activity, regular deposit does not.

darkidoe

Playing_with_Fire wrote: »

I use SelfTrade and find them tolerable but no better. Some of the staff who reply by email are great - and you can generally email back one individual who seems competent and they will deal with your query. The one time I spoke to them on the phone they were really grumpy and used 'security procedures' as an excuse for being rude.

The website is functional but clunky. For funds (Unit Trusts and OEICs), the price is right though.

Regular investment does count as activity, regular deposit does not.

Are you then able to time regular investment as quarterly investments rather than monthly? If that's the case, if u are able to set up regular quarterly investments for £1.50X4=£6.00 per year with no other platform fees, inactivity fees, it shall be by far the cheapest platform out there.

grey_gym_sock

darkidoe wrote: »

Are you then able to time regular investment as quarterly investments rather than monthly? If that's the case, if u are able to set up regular quarterly investments for £1.50X4=£6.00 per year with no other platform fees, inactivity fees, it shall be by far the cheapest platform out there.

you can't set up a quarterly regular investment, only a monthly 1. however, you can change the setting every month, so it is possible to avoid the inactivity fee with only 4 trades per year.

does that make selftrade the cheapest platform of all?

well, is that for funds or for shares? for shares, there are a number of platforms with no inactivity fees and no annual/quarterly/monthly charges; so you can cut that £6 per year to nil.

for funds, selftrade actually charge nothing for purchases (but £12.50 for sales), and i think (from reading their terms - but i haven't tried this) that free funds purchases count as activity (for the purposes of avoiding the inactivity fee). providing you will buy a fund every quarter, and very rarely sell, then they may well be the cheapest option of all.

1 thing to consider: if you're not going to buy a fund every month using automated monthly dealing (and the range of funds for monthly dealing is rather restricted), are you sure you'll log in every quarter to make a purchase?