Coolly Comparing Investment Platform charges - SnowMan's spreadsheet

TBC15

Top marks for all the effort put into this very useful tool.

purple_rose

Thanks for the spreadsheet. Tis great. Just to let you know i spoke to club finance - they are charging 0.05% for the platform and theres a sliding 0.23 ish % charge for the platform from cofunds. Making 0.28% in total.



Ive modified the spreadsheet to calulate setup charge ( buying in new funds) and the maintenance ( regular investing) of a portfolio.


calculating over 10 years was quite eye opening and more accurate then the websites - that are not that sophisticated.


I added on exit charges to each platform.



Works well


One key factor is the fund charges.



Although in most cases the fund is exactly the same.



For fund x - If platform A charges say 0.6% OCF and the same fund on Platform B is 0.9% OCF



Plus a initial charge of 1% that you dont have to pay on platform B - it actually makes a huge difference.


Iam not sure how widespread this difference is but L&G definitely support it.


Your probably aware of this, but i just thought i would state it as i then modified the spreadsheet to say on average iam paying 0.04% extra for a fund over 10 years.


Holy moly it worked out quite alot. making the more expensive platforms look more attractive.


So, in short i think theres this whole game we are not really seeing - where we might pay less for the platform, once we are captured we pay more for the funds and we are guided to the more expensive funds by certain platforms.




This is a hunch, does anyone have any further info on this?


The other thing i would mention is fund choice. Once you buy into a platform you are stuck with their range of funds. does anyone know how one would rank platforms.


Would ge good if anyone could enlighten me on



1) How to assess fund ranges on platforms just in terms of breadth.
2) How to assess the premium you would pay on certain platforms for a identical fund.


3) and finally:) How to obtain a accurate total annual cost of a fund.


I noticed on the Web Gina Miller ( anti brexit lady) had a campaign running in 2014 to make it compulsory for funds to calculate total return examples.

Shame that the wools still being pulled over our eyes.

cloud_dog

Hi Snowman

Many thanks again for your excellent spreadsheet.

Just to advise you that X-O (Jarvis) are changing their fees for their SIPP from 1 August 2018.

stphnstevey

cloud_dog wrote: »

Hi Snowman

Many thanks again for your excellent spreadsheet.

Just to advise you that X-O (Jarvis) are changing their fees for their SIPP from 1 August 2018.

Do you have a copy of the previous fee schudule?

cloud_dog

stphnstevey wrote: »

Do you have a copy of the previous fee schudule?

I don't have a fee schedule for previous but I thought of moving a SIPP to them at the beginning of this year and I believe their SIPP platform fee was £118.80 (that may have included VAT but not 100%), and that the £118.80 was charged but then refunded as long as you had an X-O dealing (GIA) account with them.

Shedman

At a quick glance it looks like the big change is that they are only now going to refund only the 1st years SIPP fee whereas I believe that currently their terms were refund of fee for as long as an X-O trading account was open.

I was going to move to the new Gaudi XO SIPP from my Liberty XO SIPP due to the SIPP account fees being refunded but was put off by the annual drawdown fee (there is none on Liberty SIPP). Now glad I didn't move it (especially as XO/Liberty seem to have forgotten to charge me management fees for last 2 quarters :j )

I do wish they would stop keep moving the goalposts though - makes them seem quite untrustworthy.

cloud_dog

I have my GIA and ISA S&S accounts with X-O and was looking at moving a SIPP to them (as I would have no platform fee) but looking back they seemed to have had a history of changing their fee structure quite often so, that put me off (as they have now demonstrated).

Went with Fidelity in the end. I invest via ITs and ETFs so their platform fee is only £45pa and I believe they do not make a charge for drawdown.

londoninvestor

Thanks for doing this. Have you considered adding Lloyds? (£40 per year, £1.50 per fund trade, so attractive to people who frequently trade funds.)

Or are you only including providers who offer a SIPP as well? (You're of course quite entitled to do so!)

stphnstevey

Queried and confirmation from X-O:

The change of SIPP fees applies to new accounts opened on and after 1st August 2018 and will not affect clients who opened a SIPP account before this date. You will not have received any communication regarding the fee changes as they will not apply to your accounts.
We will always contact existing clients if changes are to be made to their accounts.

sabretoothtigger

purple_rose wrote: »

Thanks for the spreadsheet. Tis great. Just to let you know i spoke to club finance - they are charging 0.05% for the platform and theres a sliding 0.23 ish % charge for the platform from cofunds. Making 0.28% in total.

Just got a letter from clubfinance to say they will be putting through new charges for stock accounts at least. Not sure overall on their range of accounts as they been taken over by another firm I think and havent looked at all the details.

Is there anywhere that makes it easy to transfer and handles the fees and general hassle given by the last provider.

The phrasing used by clubfinance is they are closing the old low fee account but you can choose to now pay a 200 a year in addition to fees previously levied.
Hence they will charge 25 per stock if you dont agree within a month, seems a bit underhand to me.


I will check myself but anyone have recommendations ?:money: besides just staying put with the 200 min fee account, I realise some here are paying alot more then that but its only a small traded account hence I dislike the min quarterly fee approach.

I also have a SIPP separate with HL which is generally no hassle for me with no min fees levied, I prefer that for now