Reinvesting dividends in the UK: best platforms?

tombland

bowlhead99 wrote: »

The OP is comparing that $50 reinvested via his US broker (likely through a company sponsored DRIP scheme) with what he gets in his UK ISA account operated by HL.

He is saying that he doesn't want to be charged for HL reinvesting his share of the dividend proceeds which they receive in their ISA nominee account in buying new shares for him in the same company. Well, tough, they're going to charge him for that, as would another typical UK broker in the same position.

Thanks bowlhead99, and everyone else for the comments here.

It seems that HL's fees are lower than I thought they were, so despite free automatic dividend reinvesting not being the norm in the UK, as one of the many comments mentioned it's still not too bad in the grand scheme of things. It begs the questions though – why is this the norm in the USA and not in the UK, and why are more customers not screaming for free automatic dividend reinvesting in the UK?

I'm still pretty torn as to which approach to take:
A] choose dividend reinvesting and lose a small amount of that dividend in fees.
B] choose cash, let the cash grow, and manually reinvest annually.

I suspect that A makes more sense, but on the flipside it could be nice to have a pile of cash to reinvest at an opportune time in the market. Sadly I missed the 'Brexit Bounce'!

Anyway, thanks again.

grey_gym_sock

note that, with HL, you can change the minimum amount of cash from dividends that is accumulated before dividends are reinvested. to avoid paying more than 1% in dividend investment charges, you could set it to £100. by default, it is £10 minimum, which means you could pay up to 10% for reinvestment, which would be silly.