Good Passive Multi Asset Trackers / Funds?

Hutchch0920

It didn't occur to me that transferring an ISA would be a big deal The rest of banking seems easy to switch relatively.

dunstonh

Hutchch0920 wrote: »

It didn't occur to me that transferring an ISA would be a big deal The rest of banking seems easy to switch relatively.

Banking and investing being two very different things.

Investing in an ISA gives you about 30,000 different investment options with a near infinite number of variations.

There are not many bank accounts and the data you have to research is very little.

I decided to use AXA's ISA platform as MSE has a deal on where it's free to use for the first year....seemed like a sensible choice given that I basically didn't know what I was doing so being able to use it for free while I learn the ropes was a big draw.

On £15240.......A small saving of around £48 over 12 months whereas getting the investments wrong could cost closer to £1000. When investing, the primary concern are the investments. Charges are secondary.

bowlhead99

Banking switches are easy because cash is simple to hold.

If I'm a bank and you have an account with me, I am simply using the cash you gave me within my banking business with a note in my system as to how much I owe you and whether I owe you any interest on it. If you want the cash I can send it to you or to a new ISA provider to hold for you instead. I might charge you an interest penalty if you demanded I send the money straight away when it wasn't supposed to be an instant access account, but it is relatively simple for me to ping money from your account with me to your account with someone else.

With investment products it's different. As an investment ISA manager, unlike a bank, I don't have your cash within my business ready to pay you.

Instead what I am holding for you is potentially a whole range of financial instruments:

- cash in a bank account with a different institution;

- bonds and shares in other companies, for which my nominee company is the registered owner in the records maintained by the registrar of the company who issued the shares to me, but I'm only the legal holder and they beneficially belong to you, my customer;

- Units in open-ended funds of a specific class which can be held on my investment platform but might not be able to be held on other ISA providers' platforms;
Etc.

If you want to transfer to another provider it is not just as simple as me pinging the money I owe you to another provider. For any spare cash you have, I have to go and get it out of the bank to send over for you, but I also have to consider what you want doing with all the investments. I could sell them and get you cash to make for a relatively easy transfer but that is an inefficient process that leaves you "out of the market" while it happens and it might cost you more to buy back the investments at the other end than I got you when selling. So I could try to transfer all the ownership rights of all the individual investments over to your new provider.

However, that involves me filling out transfer documents to move some of the holdings into the name of the new ISA manager for all of the underlying companies who issued me shares to update their records to reflect your new ISA manager as the new owner from an agreed date. For your holdings of funds it is a similar process but in some cases the receiving platform manager isn't allowed to hold and offer those exact shares to you as his customer because they are (say) Class X units and the new ISA manager does not already have £50 million invested in that share class of the fund so is unable to take your £5000- worth and add it to his holdings - he's only allowed to hold Class A which is not what you have...

So that part of the transfer is unworkable and fails and then an alternative solution must be sought like agreeing to move you from Class X to a more expensive Class A before transferring so you're never out of the market. Or selling out for cash after all, and transferring that instead after some delay and agreeing with you that you'd like to do that. And then after working out what final work they ended up doing, and deciding how much you to bill you for that work, they can settle the bills and move your remaining cash. And then two months later the dividend income from company ABC plc arrives in the old ISA manager's account because you qualified for it before selling up or moving, and the cash and dividend voucher information must be transferred to your new manager to apply to your account. And then a tax reclaim from a bond fund which had been in progress with HMRC arrives in the old account too and that has to be passed on too.

Finally at some point down the line the old ISA manager can say *now* I'm finally done with this old investor.

badger09

Hutchch0920 wrote: »

It didn't occur to me that transferring an ISA would be a big deal The rest of banking seems easy to switch relatively.

As is invariably the case, bowlhead99 is correct, if a little verbose;).

However, it is possible to transfer an S&S ISA and many of us have done so.

Clearly it isn't as straightforward for the ISA manager as a cash ISA transfer, and you might have to be 'out of the market' while the transfer takes place, but if there is a compelling reason for doing it, it can indeed be done:)

AlanP_2

badger09 wrote: »

That's a bit extreme:p

For the OP or the Dog? :beer:

Wasn't meant to be harsh, and the OP subsequently explained why he went with AXA and the reason has a sensible basis so all good.

badger09

AlanP wrote: »

For the OP or the Dog? :beer:

Wasn't meant to be harsh, and the OP subsequently explained why he went with AXA and the reason has a sensible basis so all good.

I think you missed my feeble:o joke.

You typed 'why are you sueing the Axa platform'. Which I suggested was a bit extreme. I didn't think your post was harsh:)

Moving on...

Fatbritabroad

badger09 wrote: »

I think you missed my feeble:o joke.

You typed 'why are you sueing the Axa platform'. Which I suggested was a bit extreme. I didn't think your post was harsh:)

Moving on...

"Mike drop" :rotfl:

AlanP_2

badger09 wrote: »

I think you missed my feeble:o joke.

You typed 'why are you sueing the Axa platform'. Which I suggested was a bit extreme. I didn't think your post was harsh:)

Moving on...

Specsavers for me next time then - :j