Opinions/Experience with Hargreaves Lansdown?

jimjames

DennisTenus wrote: »

I cant post links yet so just to confirm iweb is iweb-sharedealing dot co dot uk right?

Yes it is the correct one. However you need to compare overall costs. Iweb is cheap for me because I'm not actively adding to my portfolio with them but if you are, then each trade costs £5 whereas with HL it's free for funds. That can make a significant difference.

Others to consider are Fidelity/Cavendish and Charles Stanley

DennisTenus

Yes I will check that, thanks.

Tom99

Halifax has plenty of funds, maybe 2,000 or more also you can buy shares, ETFs, corporate bonds, overseas shares etc.

You can invest for as little as £2 trading charge (not a live deal), or the once a month offer at £3.95 a deal (live buy or sell)

DennisTenus

Tom99 wrote: »

Halifax has plenty of funds, maybe 2,000 or more also you can buy shares, ETFs, corporate bonds, overseas shares etc.

You can invest for as little as £2 trading charge (not a live deal), or the once a month offer at £3.95 a deal (live buy or sell)

I did have a look at HFX but could only find a standard set of 3 low, medium and high risk funds to invest in... maybe i'm looking at wrong place. Is it on a separate fund/stocks and shares site?

Cheers

Superscrooge

This article has an interesting graph showing the relative sizes of the various fund platforms. Hargreaves Lansdown is by far the largest and about four times larger than the 2nd largest, so I guess they must be doing something right!

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/diyinvesting/article-4782286/Fund-best-buy-lists-add-value-investors.html

Most forum comments I read about HL can perhaps be summed up as 'More expensive than most platforms. But excellent customer service'.

DennisTenus

Superscrooge wrote: »

This article has an interesting graph showing the relative sizes of the various fund platforms. Hargreaves Lansdown is by far the largest and about four times larger than the 2nd largest, so I guess they must be doing something right!


Most forum comments I read about HL can perhaps be summed up as 'More expensive than most platforms. But excellent customer service'.

Thats very interesting. Thank you!

Chordeiles

Superscrooge wrote: »

This article has an interesting graph showing the relative sizes of the various fund platforms. Hargreaves Lansdown is by far the largest and about four times larger than the 2nd largest, so I guess they must be doing something right!

I won't argue with the data presented in that article. But I can take it a bit further and work out where the bigger investors go.

Last time I looked (earlier in 2017) Hargreaves Lansdown boasted of managing £70 billion for 876,000 clients. That makes their "average client" worth about £80,000.

At the same date Interactive Investor's claim was that they looked after £30 billion for 140,000 clients, that's £210,000 per client. Can you see where the bigger (maybe smarter) money is ?

I'm aware that my figures for Interactive Investor differ hugely from those quoted in the article linked from the previous post - but that article was written before Interactive Investor took over the business previously operated as "TD Direct". If you factor that in then they are about right, though it does look as though Interactive Investor have grown a bit faster than HL since the article was published.

To be fair, one of Hargreaves Lansdown's selling points right now is that they are "big and safe and will be there forever", which might appeal to any customers of TD Direct who had never wanted to be customers of Interactive Investor (I'm not sure how that new relationship is working, maybe not so bad ?).

On the other hand, I love this quote from Mark Laurence (COO of Fundsmith) "If my financial adviser was listed in the FTSE100 I'd be a little concerned that they are doing a little bit better out of the relationship than I was". This from the 2017 Fundsmith AGM, which is on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qNZa-77YXY
No, of course you won't want to watch all 2 hours of this, but I urge you to take a look at about 6½ minutes of it (from 1:42:30 to 1:49:05) which gives a unique insight into the relationship between Hargreaves Lansdown and Fund Managers. This is not necessarily a plug for Fundsmith - I am enthusiastic about it, invested in it, but to invest directly via the Fundsmith organisation seems to be part of an "all eggs in one basket" approach (and I do like to spread the risk a bit !).

Tom99

DennisTenus wrote: »

I did have a look at HFX but could only find a standard set of 3 low, medium and high risk funds to invest in... maybe i'm looking at wrong place. Is it on a separate fund/stocks and shares site?

Cheers

Yes you are looking in the wrong place

http://www.halifax.co.uk/sharedealing/

Plenty of investment options

http://www.halifax.co.uk/sharedealing/investment-options/default.asp

Over 2000 funds if thats what you want

https://www.halifaxmarketwatch.co.uk/fund-centre/

Chordeiles

DennisTenus wrote: »

For interest why are Alliance Trust rubbish?

That's a good question, sorry about delay in answering it.

To answer the question exactly as as you wrote it, the answer has be be "I don't know". If I'm allowed a guess then I'd say that they had hoped that once the platform software was written then the operation could work with very few staff, but they are now finding that the reality isn't quite as easy. Or to give them the benefit of the doubt let's say they are temporarily deluged with folks transferring from Hargreaves Lansdown because of the high fees at HL (of course this said with "tongue in cheek" but I actually have reason to believe there is some truth in it).

But I think your words were shorthand for "what experience do you have with Alliance Trust that leads you to say they are rubbish". Well, very little really, if I'm honest, just a transfer in of a SIPP that is still not done after 23 weeks, with Alliance Trust dropping the ball at every opportunity. Also bad at answering the 'phone, bad at answering emails. But (after a formal complaint) quite good at looking at themselves in the mirror. There are plenty threads elsewhere on the MSE forums that tell a very similar story, so I knew what I was getting into.

I live in hope that when the transfer is complete and I'm dealing with their software and not their staff then life will be rosy

DennisTenus

Chordeiles wrote: »

On the other hand, I love this quote from Mark Laurence (COO of Fundsmith) "If my financial adviser was listed in the FTSE100 I'd be a little concerned that they are doing a little bit better out of the relationship than I was".


This from the 2017 Fundsmith AGM, which is on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qNZa-77YXY

No, of course you won't want to watch all 2 hours of this, but I urge you to take a look at about 6½ minutes of it (from 1:42:30 to 1:49:05) which gives a unique insight into the relationship between Hargreaves Lansdown and Fund Managers. This is not necessarily a plug for Fundsmith - I am enthusiastic about it, invested in it, but to invest directly via the Fundsmith organisation seems to be part of an "all eggs in one basket" approach (and I do like to spread the risk a bit !).

Wow, that is eye opening. Thank you very much for showing me this. I did watch quite a bit of it - not all - but interesting that Fundsmith are the only fund that has an AGM! They made some very good points there that I'm not sure HL could argue against effectively. I had wondered about HL's Wealth 150 list and whether it was all they said it was.


So few questions about this...


Fundsmith are a fund, just like JPMorgan Emerging Markets for example?


I could invest in Fundsmith using HL but then obviously still subject to HL's fees?


They seem to have 2 income funds and 2 Accumulation class I and T of each? I'm investing for growth so would go for Accumulation but which out of I or T?


I assume I could move my ISA from HL to Fundsmith? Why do you suggest not invest directly because then I'm only investing in 1 fund and that could be risky and doesn't spread it across funds because they only have one you can invest in?


Thanks again, given me a lot more to think about!