What are your S&S ISA charges?

jdw2000

Mine seems a bit pricey. How does yours compare?

This is an Aegon Retiready ISA. It's invested in BlackRock Volatility Strategy IV fund:

- 0.5% a year of your first £50,000
- 0.4% a year of your next £50,000
- 0.3% a year for anything above £100,000

bowlhead99

There are oodles of threads talking about platforms and a whole bunch of platform comparison sites.

http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/ is one (not necessarily the best but you have been to monevator already)

http://www.langcatfinancial.co.uk/white-paper/directplatformguide2016/ would be another.

At the moment you are paying your tiered fee starting at 0.5% for access to the investment platform and then on top you have the 0.3-0.4% running costs of the Blackrock fund which are paid out of the fund's assets.

So to pull out examples of how that differs elsewhere, just skimming down the first link:

- interactive investor (ii) currently charges £80 a year plus a fee each time you buy or sell a fund investment

- Alliance Trust Savings currently charges £90 a year plus a fee each time you buy or sell a fund investment

- iweb currently charges £200 to open the account and nothing ongoing apart from a fee each time you buy and sell (smaller than the ones above)

- Youinvest charges 0.25% a year plus an even smaller fee each time you buy or sell; the 0.25% drops to 0.1% after £250k

- Charles Stanley Direct and Cavendish Online charge 0.25% up to half a million and no fee for buying and selling

There are obviously a bunch of others too, but depending on the level of investments you have and how much money you are putting in or taking out each month, all of these could be significantly cheaper as a platform than somewhere that charges as much as 0.5% on the first £50k.

Note the phrasing 'currently charges' as there is no guarantee they will stay that way forever, however it's unlikely that someone charging 0.25% in a competitive market is suddenly going to double it to 0.5%. Someone charging nothing per year and a small fee to buy and sell might find it becomes difficult to operate depending on what type of customers they attract, so nothing is set in stone.

If you went to a different platform you could select a different fund from thousands of choices if you wanted (a managed fund or tracker product from Blackrock or someone else) which would have a different level of management fee / running costs and a different objective. Of course that gives you some decisions to make on researching the thousands of choices with limited experience. The attractive thing about simple products like Retiready, is that although you are paying through the nose (relatively speaking), you do not need to do much thinking, because they are not offering you many choices.

jdw2000

bowlhead99 wrote: »

There are oodles of threads talking about platforms and a whole bunch of platform comparison sites.

http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/ is one (not necessarily the best but you have been to monevator already)

http://www.langcatfinancial.co.uk/white-paper/directplatformguide2016/ would be another.

At the moment you are paying your tiered fee starting at 0.5% for access to the investment platform and then on top you have the 0.3-0.4% running costs of the Blackrock fund which are paid out of the fund's assets.

So to pull out examples of how that differs elsewhere, just skimming down the first link:

- interactive investor (ii) currently charges £80 a year plus a fee each time you buy or sell a fund investment

- Alliance Trust Savings currently charges £90 a year plus a fee each time you buy or sell a fund investment

- iweb currently charges £200 to open the account and nothing ongoing apart from a fee each time you buy and sell (smaller than the ones above)

- Youinvest charges 0.25% a year plus an even smaller fee each time you buy or sell; the 0.25% drops to 0.1% after £250k

- Charles Stanley Direct and Cavendish Online charge 0.25% up to half a million and no fee for buying and selling

There are obviously a bunch of others too, but depending on the level of investments you have and how much money you are putting in or taking out each month, all of these could be significantly cheaper as a platform than somewhere that charges as much as 0.5% on the first £50k.

Note the phrasing 'currently charges' as there is no guarantee they will stay that way forever, however it's unlikely that someone charging 0.25% in a competitive market is suddenly going to double it to 0.5%. Someone charging nothing per year and a small fee to buy and sell might find it becomes difficult to operate depending on what type of customers they attract, so nothing is set in stone.

If you went to a different platform you could select a different fund from thousands of choices if you wanted (a managed fund or tracker product from Blackrock or someone else) which would have a different level of management fee / running costs and a different objective. Of course that gives you some decisions to make on researching the thousands of choices with limited experience. The attractive thing about simple products like Retiready, is that although you are paying through the nose (relatively speaking), you do not need to do much thinking, because they are not offering you many choices.

Thank you very much for that. Much appreciated. I think I will stick to the BlackRock product. It's expensive, but at the same time it's doing my thinking for me at this stage in my learning process. And it also keeps my pension and S&S ISA in the same place which makes things easier for now.

jdw2000

Just called up and checked the charges on my current AEGON pension and S&S ISA and was quite surprised by the results.

Do these figures look right?:

Pension: platform fee 0.89% annual. investment charge 0.38% annual = total of 1.27% annual charge.

S&S ISA - platform fee 0.89%. investment charge 0.35%. = total of 1.24% annual charge.


This compares to TDDI (for example), who charge 0.5% a year for their SIPP and 0.3% per year for their ISA.

bigfreddiel

All I pay are dealing charges and stamp duty with td directinvesting

Other charges absolutely zilch

Cheers fj

System

And, TD Direct have no exit charges.

dunstonh

Aegon retireready is a non-advised platform offered by an insurer. You dont expect that to be cheap. They are effectively adding on the the 0.5% an adviser would take to their own charge because they are the ones doing the work rather than a third party adviser.

Aegon have just bought Cofunds. Cofunds charge 0.29% (with tiers to make it lower). You can see how yours sits in comparison to that.

jdw2000

Thanks very much all.

I'm now in the process of moving my pension and ISA from Aegon to TD. I will have my pension, ISA and other investments all with TD from now on.

Cheaper, and everything in the same place.


We'll get there eventually!

RobStaffs

bowlhead99 wrote: »

There are oodles of threads talking about platforms and a whole bunch of platform comparison sites.

http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/ is one (not necessarily the best but you have been to monevator already)

http://www.langcatfinancial.co.uk/white-paper/directplatformguide2016/ would be another.

At the moment you are paying your tiered fee starting at 0.5% for access to the investment platform and then on top you have the 0.3-0.4% running costs of the Blackrock fund which are paid out of the fund's assets.

So to pull out examples of how that differs elsewhere, just skimming down the first link:

- interactive investor (ii) currently charges £80 a year plus a fee each time you buy or sell a fund investment

- Alliance Trust Savings currently charges £90 a year plus a fee each time you buy or sell a fund investment

- iweb currently charges £200 to open the account and nothing ongoing apart from a fee each time you buy and sell (smaller than the ones above)

- Youinvest charges 0.25% a year plus an even smaller fee each time you buy or sell; the 0.25% drops to 0.1% after £250k

- Charles Stanley Direct and Cavendish Online charge 0.25% up to half a million and no fee for buying and selling

There are obviously a bunch of others too, but depending on the level of investments you have and how much money you are putting in or taking out each month, all of these could be significantly cheaper as a platform than somewhere that charges as much as 0.5% on the first £50k.

Note the phrasing 'currently charges' as there is no guarantee they will stay that way forever, however it's unlikely that someone charging 0.25% in a competitive market is suddenly going to double it to 0.5%. Someone charging nothing per year and a small fee to buy and sell might find it becomes difficult to operate depending on what type of customers they attract, so nothing is set in stone.

If you went to a different platform you could select a different fund from thousands of choices if you wanted (a managed fund or tracker product from Blackrock or someone else) which would have a different level of management fee / running costs and a different objective. Of course that gives you some decisions to make on researching the thousands of choices with limited experience. The attractive thing about simple products like Retiready, is that although you are paying through the nose (relatively speaking), you do not need to do much thinking, because they are not offering you many choices.

Very informative and its got me thinking. I am with HL at the moment with around 75k invested over 10 funds. Sites such as Interactive Investor look appealing but I am slightly concered regarding the charges for each sale or purchase. How does this fit with monthly payment plans for fund purchases? Would there be a trade charge every time? Also HL do offer a discount on a number of ongoing charges from fund managers. I have always wondered if I am getting the best deal and would probably consider changing. What is probably appealing about an annual charge platform is when you are not buying or selling funds for long periods your investment is not being eroded by percentage based charges.

Why would anyone use HL for larger investments but still incur the 0.45% charge ? This is a bit of rhetorical question but as I am seriously considering moving some of my funds would appreciate your view.

george4064

£45 admin charge per annum.
£11.95 dealing charge
£1.50 dividend reinvestment charge.

All are fixed.

bigfreddiel

george4064 wrote: »

£45 admin charge per annum.
£11.95 dealing charge
£1.50 dividend reinvestment charge.

All are fixed.

Who is the above referring to?