TD Direct sold to Interactive Investor

EdGasketTheSecond

If I want to transfer out to another S&S ISA provider, will I have to sell everything in TD / ii and then buy it back in the new provider or can I just transfer my account 'as is' with all the holdings free of charge?

TCA

You can transfer "as is" without any selling.

bowlhead99

You can transfer it "as is" if you just want your holdings to appear at the other place without being out of the market along the way.

However, that assumes the platform to which you want to move it to can handle all the different holdings you have. For example TD Direct can handle shares listed on lots of different foreign markets. TD Direct can handle REITs and PAIFs that stream their income into different types. TD Direct offer open ended funds which are non-UCITs qualifying (NURS) or have the ability to charge initial fees (even if they don't exercise that option).

So for example if you have some holdings in a mainstream share listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange like Tencent and then you have a mainstream PAIF like M&G's Property Portfolio, or a popular multi asset fund such as L&G's Multi Index 5 or Blackrock Consensus 85, or a Lindsell Train Global Equity, and you want to move to IWeb because you heard they were cheap, then good luck with it but they don't offer any of those types of holdings.

So the only solution would be to sell and get cash in the ISA and transfer the resulting ISA'd cash proceeds to the other platform, and buy whatever they'll let you buy that their systems can handle, but you will be out of the market while it happens. Of course, that would just be the fault of the "bargain basement" provider not offering a broad selection of investment products, rather than a failure of TD.

grey_gym_sock

so there are no transfer out charges until the end of september 2018, but after that they'll start charging £10 per line of stock, with a minimum of £30 and a max of £250, to leave.

i will probably be moving my td direct ISA to ig group, who have no transfer out charges. i only hold LSE-traded shares in this account, and they are all on ig's list (including a few small caps & ETFs).

iweb would have been a possibility, but i have other accounts with them, and prefer to use a few different providers. and they don't have all the ETFs i want (or didn't when i lasted checked).

there's no way i'd be using £90 of trading credits in a year. however, moving is not going to save me a huge amount, as a percentage of the account value. perhaps i'm being a bit petty

EdGasketTheSecond

Is a spread-bet company a good choice to move general investments to?

grey_gym_sock

EdGasketTheSecond wrote: »

Is a spread-bet company a good choice to move general investments to?

it is something i've wondered about. but i can't come up with any real reason why not. the usual rules about keeping your assets separate from the provider's own asset apply. ig group will probably be disappointed with how infrequently i trade. but then, if they hike their charges, i can leave for free.

EdGasketTheSecond

Should one consider who the nominee is when moving platforms or are they all assumed 100% safe?

philng

Well I have completed the application to switch to IWEB for both mine & wife TD account.

I was surprised how easy the completion of IWEB application and transfer was.

IWEB account already up and running without having to wait for letters & paperwork through the post etc.

Just await transfer of our ISA & NON ISA share accounts from TD.
£25 opening charge but no other annual charges thereafter & dealing costs £5 rather than III £10 & ex TD £12.50. So will soon cover the opening charge.

Reasons for transfer:

1) Just didnt want to be tied to a £22.50 quarterly charge as I wouldnt usually make 9+ deals per year to cover the cost.

2) Also had issues with III previously with dividends sometimes delayed by 3 to 5 days which was annoying.

3) Financial backing of Lloyds Bank (£48bn company) who own IWEB - not even sure who owns III?

bowlhead99

EdGasketTheSecond wrote: »

Should one consider who the nominee is when moving platforms or are they all assumed 100% safe?

No nominee company is 100% safe. Though in theory they do not have any of their own assets and are not doing any business activities - just passively holding assets on behalf of others - so there is little that can go wrong from a 'that specific company in my service provider's group structure has gone bust' viewpoint.

You don't even need a licence to provide a basic nominee service in the UK - you could set up EdgasketII Nominees Limited tomorrow, and offer me an agreement whereby it legally holds my shares in its own name while I retain beneficial ownership of income and disposal proceeds and the ability to vote the shares together with the rights and obligations of share ownership.

Your financial statements would be empty - a dormant company - because unless you are charging me a fee, there are no transactions for your own account. Everything to do with the shares belongs to me. So, you can't evaluate the ability of a standalone nominee company to provide a great secure service just by looking at its financial statements and having a discussion with its directors. It's a shell company, a special purpose vehicle which exists to hold things for other people. If we use its service really what we are buying is the services provided by the group of companies / businesses within which it sits.

So, really you are relying on the overall group (rather than the specific special-purpose nominee company they create) having financial strength to survive ups and downs in the economy and stay in business, while being run by smart people with good systems who don't make mistakes, and no potential large-scale fraudsters among them, and who have good-enough customer services to keep you happy if you want them to do something out of the ordinary.

The idea that IWeb is ultimately owned by Lloyds and TDD/ii are ultimately owned by a private investment fund controlled by JC Flowers, does not really give you any more or less 'safety' with one platform versus the other. Either platform could be wound down or divested by its owners if they no longer want to keep it. Just like TD Direct was sold by TD to ii, Iweb could be sold by Halifax to someone else - and if something goes titsup, each of the brokers are sufficiently ring-fenced from their parents operations (eg JCF's funds, or Lloyds banking group parent) that the parents do not have to step in pick up liabilities to individual customers if they decide they don't want to.

cloud_dog

Have received confirmation that that the final bits of the transfer (to iWeb) will all be completed by 30 October, so very happy.

The transfer was elongated unfortunately by a couple/three weeks due to a) the OH not mentioning there was some post (docs to be signed), and b) we were away for a couple of weeks.