Halifax S&S ISA - fund codes?

Snakey

I'm seeing a financial adviser later this week and they've asked me to find the Citi or Sedol code for my VLS60 investment in my ISA. This is so they can double-check/confirm the fee I am paying.

When I log in to my Halifax account I cannot find either of these codes. The code given by Halifax next to my investment is VVLFST, which isn't in the same format as the Citi or Sedol codes the FA gave me, and there isn't a drill-down page within that (it looks clickable but isn't) - it's as far as I can go.

I was under the impression (and I have read all the small print I can find) that Halifax S&S ISA charges £2 per regular investment plus an annual fixed fee, and nothing else. I'd be disappointed to discover that there's a hidden Halifax percentage fee/commission wrapped up within what I believed to be the actual investment itself (I do understand that Vanguard charges a fee, obviously). But why else would it be a completely different code?

Does anybody know how this works? Is the FA asking the wrong question? Or am I being stupid/looking in the wrong place?

Thanks for reading!

dunstonh

I'm seeing a financial adviser later this week and they've asked me to find the Citi or Sedol code for my VLS60 investment in my ISA. This is so they can double-check/confirm the fee I am paying.

As VLS60 only has one share class, that seems pointless. They only need to know if its inc or acc units. If they cant work it out for themselves then you would have to question their knowledge.

Although to be fair, most people will have a lot of funds and that was probably a generic/standard text request.

In your case, just let them know if its the inc or acc units you have.

bowlhead99

Snakey wrote: »

I'm seeing a financial adviser later this week and they've asked me to find the Citi or Sedol code for my VLS60 investment in my ISA. This is so they can double-check/confirm the fee I am paying.

Does anybody know how this works? Is the FA asking the wrong question? Or am I being stupid/looking in the wrong place?

You are right, with Halifax you have fixed fees you pay directly to Halifax for giving you access to the fund, plus the cost of running the fund itself (management fees, accounting, administration, other operating costs) which is taken out of the fund assets and reflected in the fund asset value.

The reason for the IFA asking the question is that for a lot of funds there are a large number of classes which each have their own fee scale, minimum level of subscription etc. However, as Dunstonh points out, Vanguard only have one class of that fund for each of the INC or ACC variants. As there is only one class, there's no need to worry that the one Halifax has given you is cheaper or more expensive than the best one you could find on the market.


ACC is Citi: ACDQ or Sedol: B3TYHH9 or ISIN: GB00B3TYHH97 or Bloomberg:VGLS60A or MEX ID:VVLFST

INC is Citi: ACDS or Sedol: B4R2F34 or ISIN: GB00B4R2F348 or Bloomberg: VGLS60I or MEXID: VVLFSY

Looks like the identifier that Halifax quoted to you in their listing is the MEXID which is I think is assigned by Financial Times. The Sedol system is operated by London Stock Exchange (although it is not an exchange traded product). The ISIN is an international version of a Sedol containing country code. Citi and Bloomberg are proprietary to them.

greenglide

According to trustnet it is

Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% Equity A Acc ACC GBP 164.75 20 Jan 2017 1.33 ACDQ B3TYHH9 GB00B3TYHH97

Snakey

Thanks guys. I was worried because I had a similar lack of understanding over my Standard Life pension investments - when I tried to find funds within the SL website it didn't recognise any of the codes and when I tried to find out more about this somebody suggested that it was because there was a layer of charges in between me and the ultimate investment that got creamed off in between i.e. when you think you are investing in Fund X you are in fact investing into Standard Life Skin X and the effect of this is that you're being charged by SL without knowing how much. I never did get to the bottom of it after getting three different people at SL who told me three different things about how they charged (making me think maybe I was asking a nonsense question). So when I couldn't match up the codes on Halifax either, it made me think back to that.

I'm quite looking forward to this meeting. I can easily imagine I've been badly invested for years now and am sitting on a chunky increase only through dumb luck/because a rising tide lifts all boats. It's only to run through a cashflow forecast initially, but presumably they also tell me how much else they can do if I engage them on an ongoing basis to manage my funds otherwise they wouldn't be asking for the details.

bowlhead99

You are right, life insurance and pension companies often have their own 'versions' of funds operated by other managers.

So through your pension plan you might have (e.g.) the special Standard Life version of Blackrock Consensus 85 as a pension fund, with a different price than buying into the plain vanilla investment fund as an open ended investment company which is open to retail customers through fund platforms.

In the case of the Lifestrategy 60, it is the same on all the fund platforms. Of course if you say to someone "I have VLS60 at Halifax" rather than "I have the Accumulation version of Vanguard Lifestrategy 60% Equity Fund at Halifax", some readers/listeners might still say "hmm, VLS60 is not a recognised Sedol code or Epic, please can you find out the proper details".

dunstonh

Remember that the IFA is paid to find this sort of info out. They are just (not unreasonably) trying to make it easier.

When the IFA does an agency transfer on the SL product, their back office software will almost certainly be able to get a valuation feed direct from SL which will give them the fund data.

So, don't be too concerned if you cant match the funds.