AJ Bell YouInvest - refugee destinations

EdSwippet

Futuristic wrote: »

For SIPP maybe BestInvest?

Most Youinvest refugees will probably be unit trust or OEIC investors. And unfortunately for these folk, Bestinvest's fund platform fees are even worse than the newly increased fees at Youinvest.

ETA: For full disclosure, as well as being a Youinvest refugee I am also a Bestinvest refugee! I transferred my Bestinvest SIPP to Alliance Trust -- at no charge, it should be noted -- when Bestinvest introduced percentage-based charges for unit trusts and OEICS.

rockingdane

Hi,
I have funds worth around 6K and shares worth 3K with A J Bell. I haven;t used up my ISA allowance this year . Can we move to another platform in the same year? Where do we go from here?
Dane

talexuser

Futuristic wrote: »

For SIPP maybe BestInvest?

I looked at Best for relatively low value SIPPs (I can only put in 3k6 a year since already retired). The administration fee is very competitive, and free switching worthwhile, but transfer out is £125 plus £25 per fund, unless you stay for longer than 2 years, at least when I last looked. The fee free SIPP looked good until you looked at the underlying investments with charges of 1.5% or more - too much for the performance in my opinion. The up to £500 for transfer fees could be worthwhile for Bell leavers.

talexuser

rockingdane wrote: »

Hi,
I have funds worth around 6K and shares worth 3K with A J Bell. I haven;t used up my ISA allowance this year . Can we move to another platform in the same year? Where do we go from here?
Dane

You can move to another platform at any time to save money, it does not affect your ISA allowance for the current tax year, either invest this years allowance with the old before transfer or the new after, whichever is the cheaper. Before I moved away from Fidelity I re-balanced the portfolio because had free switching, moved to Bell with switching fees, but overall worthwhile because a saving on administration fees (until the current dance, now moving again).

grey_gym_sock

not everybody would be better off leaving youinvest. clearly some people - mainly, people holding large amounts in funds with youinvest - would be. but don't assume it applies to you without looking at your situation - i.e. account type (SIPP/ISA/taxable), and type of assets (funds or not funds), and size of assets.

in general, youinvest remain decent value for small accounts, and for large accounts that don't hold (much in) funds. it's only for large holdings in funds that they're suddenly a lot more expensive.

grey_gym_sock

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

some options for taxable accounts with no holding charges when you don't hold funds:

- bank of scotland share dealing
- equiniti (shareview) investment account
- fidelity (only offers a restricted range of ETFs and ITs)
- halifax share dealing
- hargreaves lansdown
- idealing (no fee if you opt for the "admin free" tariff, which has slightly higher dealing fees)
- iweb (except that there is now a fee of £200 to open your first non-SIPP account with iweb)
- saga share direct (only available to over 50s)
- sharedeal active
- shareprice.co.uk
- svs xo
- td direct (no fee if you meet any of a number of criteria, e.g. if the account is worth £15,000)
- x-o.co.uk

that's for a taxable account. but if you're looking for an ISA with no holding charges when you don't hold funds, there are fewer choices:

- iweb (except that there is now a fee of £200 to open your first non-SIPP account with iweb)
- saga share direct (only available to over 50s)
- svs xo
- td direct (no fee if you meet any of a number of criteria, e.g. if account is worth £5,100)
- x-o.co.uk

yaddayadda

I've been looking at X-O for my low volume share dealing account since the price hike was announced - any other good options for low volume share dealing? Seems to me that having no platform charge likely suits my needs best...

rockingdane

talexuser wrote: »

You can move to another platform at any time to save money, it does not affect your ISA allowance for the current tax year, either invest this years allowance with the old before transfer or the new after, whichever is the cheaper. Before I moved away from Fidelity I re-balanced the portfolio because had free switching, moved to Bell with switching fees, but overall worthwhile because a saving on administration fees (until the current dance, now moving again).

thanks, so where are you moving to. What are the charges to move out?
Dane

talexuser

rockingdane wrote: »

thanks, so where are you moving to. What are the charges to move out?
Dane

Going to iweb, £200 to open the account, £200 to leave youinvest funds and £200 to leave youinvest dealing account but still much cheaper than staying at youinvest for a single year. Everyone's mileage will vary according to amounts and splits.

bowlhead99

rockingdane wrote: »

thanks, so where are you moving to. What are the charges to move out?
Dane

Dane - from October, Youinvest's annual charges on your £3k share portfolio are 0.25% which is £7.50, and charges on your £6k funds portfolio are 0.25% which is £15. So £22.50 total. Before the change, your current charges are 0.2% on the funds side which is £12.

So, the new fee scale will have you paying about a tenner more in fixed annual charge per year ; but if over the course of the year you did three ad hoc fund sales or purchases at the new £1.50 rate instead of the old £4.95 each, you would be paying about a tenner less for that bit.

To me, it seems like it is not really worth the cost and hassle to switch in an effort to get your new charges back to the old level which was not substantially cheaper for you than the new rates.

For example:
- no point going to iweb because it costs £200 to join them let alone the £25 per holding which it costs to transfer out of youinvest.

- no point going to x-o.co.uk because they don't do funds

- might not be a lot of point going to TD direct (I have an ISA with them, and they're decent) because although they don't charge you anything for the shares, their funds charge is higher at 0.3% instead of 0.25%, so that's still an annual fee for you of approaching £20, with the benefit of free funds transactions but the cost of more expensive shares transactions. And that's before the costs to transfer out of youinvest.

So you might find it is simpler to just leave your existing holdings with youinvest, avoiding any exit charges, and then put your next year 2017/18 ISA allowance with someone else if you can find someone cheaper than youinvest for small accounts. You're not the type of person that really got 'hurt' by the Youinvest price rises and so it's difficult to move and make annual savings greater than the exit costs.

Mainly the complainants are the people who have £100k+ of funds, who have lost the £200 cap on their funds platform fee and would be paying hundreds more per year if they stayed.