Stocks and Shares ISA provider - jump now or wain't?

msralmjs

Hi all

I confess that whilst I'm fairly comfortable with most of the concepts and warnings around investments, I'm fairly new to S&S ISAs.

I'm determined to diversify into S&S ISAs this calendar year. But I haven't worked out who I would seek to go with. What would the befits/risks be of starting with a provider this tax year, and then starting with another provider in the next tax year... Maybe two supermarkets that I could compare over a 6 month period (compare range and services and fees, not returns).

Thanks

colsten

An S&S ISA is just a tax wrapper for investments. If you understand investments, it's easy to put £15,240 a year into an S&S ISA for your investments.

Some S&S ISA providers do offer pre-picked portfolios for those who are not experienced / not interested in creating their own portfolio. Such ready-made S&S ISAs are generally hugely overpriced as you pay the S&S ISA provider to pick your investments, without even knowing anything about your risk profile.

If you need help with picking your investments, you could try an IFA, or at least a robo-advisor. Either is likely to be cheaper than a pre-packaged ISA.

There is no need to start a new S&S ISA each year. Umpteen different S&S ISAs would also make it harder to manage a balanced portfolio. May be you would benefit from reading a bit more about investing, and how to construct a balanced portfolio? http://monevator.com/category/investing/passive-investing-investing/

ChemistDude

iWeb is great. They're owned by Lloyds so won't go bust anytime soon I would hope.

£5/trade

Buy ETF's

Snakey

I've just sent off the transfer forms to (finally, after much dithering) put my cash ISAs into stocks and shares. I decided to go with Halifax (£12.50 a year and £12.50 per trade/£2 for regular monthly purchases) as I have a reasonable amount to invest and the only trades I'm planning are regular monthly purchases.

I'm still feeling my way though. This'll be my first time investing (other than through a pension, where it's all done for you) and I have no idea what the steps are to get from opening the account to being invested in the funds and I'll probably have to call them and feel stupid while they hold my hand through it.

colsten

I just remembered, there's an Investment ISAs For Dummies book - it's by an investment house and may not be bang up-to-date with ISA allowances but last time I looked at it, it was pretty a pretty good grounder. Just ignore their sales spiel at the end.

badger09

Snakey wrote: »

I've just sent off the transfer forms to (finally, after much dithering) put my cash ISAs into stocks and shares. I decided to go with Halifax (£12.50 a year and £12.50 per trade/£2 for regular monthly purchases) as I have a reasonable amount to invest and the only trades I'm planning are regular monthly purchases.

I'm still feeling my way though. This'll be my first time investing (other than through a pension, where it's all done for you) and I have no idea what the steps are to get from opening the account to being invested in the funds and I'll probably have to call them and feel stupid while they hold my hand through it.

Once the Cash ISA to S&S ISA transfer is complete, you will have a sum of £xxx sitting in your Halifax S&S ISA account. You then simply:cool: decide how you want to invest this.

This is IWeb's version, where you can search for the funds/shares etc that you are interested in.

https://halifaxiweb.digitallook.com/home

If you haven't already decided what to invest in, you should do some research PDQ, otherwise your ISA cash will be earning less than it was before you transferred it:(

This is a reasonable place to start that research

http://monevator.com/category/investing/

Good luck:)

Plus

If you're unsure, put money into an easy-access cash ISA before 6th April.

Come April 6th, that becomes 'old' money, which you can transfer and subdivide however you like. 'New' money you pay in after 6th April has to stay together.

This means that, if you want to open two S&S ISAs it's much easier to do it with old money which you can transfer however you like. If you only have a 'new' ISA from the current year, you can't have two S&S providers.

You could of course put money into a S&S ISA this year, and wouldn't risk anything if it wasn't invested. But S&S ISAs can be a bit more complicated to set up and some have transfer fees for cash, so a cash ISA is reasonable as a temporary holding strategy.

There's another strategy to get two S&S ISAs from the current year. That requires you already have an accessible cash ISA from a past year. You initiate a transfer of 'old' money to a second S&S ISA provider, while paying in the same amount of 'new' cash into the cash ISA. Result is the cash ISA balance is the same, but you have two S&S ISAs one from new money and one from old.

Also, don't worry too much about losing interest for a few weeks: the intra-day market noise can be more than that. What is more of a risk is the market going up while you delay - but of course the market could equally go down.

jimjames

msralmjs wrote: »

Hi all

I confess that whilst I'm fairly comfortable with most of the concepts and warnings around investments, I'm fairly new to S&S ISAs.

Can you explain what investments you already have? Is there a reason why they're not already in the ISA wrapper as that's normally worth using for any investments.

badger09

jimjames wrote: »

Can you explain what investments you already have? Is there a reason why they're not already in the ISA wrapper as that's normally worth using for any investments.

Pension perhaps?

barak

badger09 wrote: »

.....
This is IWeb's version, where you can search for the funds/shares etc that you are interested in.

https://halifaxiweb.digitallook.com/home

You can search for a fund - but you may not find it, as although Halifax/IWeb use the Cofunds platform, they don't deal in all funds available on that platform - until, that is, you ask them politely to consider adding a particular fund to their system sometime soon; and I'm talking about popular retail funds run by well known managers, not obscure ones.

One example is the recently well publicised launch of the Jupiter Asian Income Fund which is on Cofunds but not currently available through Halifax/IWeb. It has been available elsewhere during the initial fixed price offer period from 15th February prior to its launch on 2nd March.