Consolidating family finances- best platform for ISA, SIPP & JISA?

resilie

I've been put in charge by the husband to sort out our finances while on maternity leave (a monumental task as it turns out) and after taking stock and doing some reading I have decided to transfer my cash ISA into a S&S ISA, opened a JISA for the offspring (currently a cash ISA at 3%- thinking of moving it to a S&S) and opening a SIPP. Ideally I would like to run all the S&S elements off the same platform for ease and (hopefully) for a discount. We are looking to max out ISA contributions this year (did the same for last tax year) so will have 45k for S&S ISA, potentially 8k for JISA to invest as lump sums. SIPP is probably not getting started till next year when I am a higher rate tax payer again post mat leave. So overall investment would currently be around 50k but likely to go up with another lump sum next year and then steadily growing with regular contributions. Initially I was thinking about using a % fee platform but if our pot outgrows 50k quite rapidly this might not be the best option and I'm not sure how much hassle it would be to shift everything to a flat fee platform in a few years time. Also with regards to the lump sums I was thinking about drip feeding at least some of it to spread risk- so any recommendations for funds with regular purchasing options would be welcome.
Can anyone recommend a platform that would work well for multiple ISAs and a SIPP; that is % based and allows easy drip feeding?

I have uncovered many many skeletons in my husbands financial cupboards but they will need a different thread all together...

bowlhead99

I've been with Youinvest for my SIPP for the last five years or so, they're fine. They have the facility to let you give permission for another family member to have either view-only or full trading permissions on your account so one person could see the accounts of their parents, spouse and child through one login once the relevant paper form had been signed.

They are at 0.25% custody/platform fee for funds. They do have a transaction fee which is £1.50 for funds purchased or sold any time, and same price for shares /investment trusts / ETFs purchased through their monthly regular purchase facility.

So, it's not pure percentage-based but the percentage element is the lowest you'll get in the market and the transaction fees won't wipe you out.

The "regular investment" facility is quite neat, you can just set it to buy whichever investments for whatever amounts you want to spend and it will execute on the 10th of every month but only if you have enough money in the account.

So if you set it to buy £500pm of Investment ABC, and you were only direct debiting £250pm into the account and didn't have other spare money from dividends or other ad-hoc contributions or tax relief they'd collected from HMRC, the purchase wouldn't trigger and would just wait to try again the next month. And you can log in and edit the investments or the amount up until the night before it is due to get processed. So you could feed money on a regular basis but only actually go through with purchases when you really want to and control the fees you're paying. And obviously if you are whacking a £20k lump into the account all at once, the £1.50 transaction fee is nothing significant.

Although you can view multiple accounts, you can't share the respective cash pots between the accounts for obvious reasons. If you have a large amount to transfer in from another provider they will cover your transfer-out fees, within reason. You can also "refer a friend" to get some free money when your OH signs up after you

Rollinghome

If you haven't found it yet then you may like to look at SnowMan's interactive spreadsheet which is updated to show costs for most platforms for specified levels of funding: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5583030

Switching platforms isn't (or shouldn't be) much hassle but can be expensive especially if you have a large number of different investments.

As you'd expect, the wizzier the features, the higher tends to be the cost. Most people seem to think that Hargreaves Lansdown is the easiest to use, especially for those new to investing and would do all you want, but is horribly expensive for funds made worse by a habit of charging for services that other providers do free - although their sipp is good value and small OCF discounts on selected funds.

IWeb (from the Halifax stable) is extremely good value for larger sums but less so for regular puchases and accounts can't be linked. Just £5 per trade and no platform charges.

Cavendish/Fidelity is a good value % based platform that, possibly uniquely, charges nothing for transferring out to another platform, can have linked accounts, have helpful support staff, but is only for funds, not shares or ITs. Also has discounts on some funds.

Sean473

Have a look at TD Direct..

AnotherJoe

The big downside of HL (which I have) is that it doesn't consolidate across account types, eg if you have SIPP, ISA and fund accounts, you pay three separate sets of charges. So for what you wanted "and (hopefully) for a discount" its probably not best.