More Than One S&S ISA? AJ Bell and Vanguard

JSCB

Hi everyone,

I currently hold around £8k in a few different individual firms in a S&S ISA with AJ Bell which I plan to hold. I opened this in the previous tax year, 16-17, but have invested into it this year.

However, I also want to begin investing into one of the Vanguard LS funds and was planning on opening another ISA on their platform for this, to keep it separate and make the most of their lower platform fees.

BUT, I've read that while I could open another ISA this year as my other one was opened last year, you can only invest into one ISA per year as well? Is this right and does this mean you can only really use one provider?

Seems a bit silly to me since as far I'm aware you can put money into both a Lifetime ISA and a seperate cash ISA along as the totals don't go over the 20k limit for the year.

Am I right or wrong? What would you suggest I do now instead? Just buy through AJ Bell and pay the higher fees of a 0.25% uncapped platform fee, plus £1.50 per purchase, as apposed to just a 0.15% platform fee capped at £250 p/a with Vanguard?

Thanks everyone :j

Alexland

Yes you can only contribute to one ISA of each type in each tax year. However there is nothing stopping you moving your current and/or past year ISA contributions to another provider.

If you want to keep your investments with AJ Bell then it's only a few months now until the next tax year starts and you could open a new ISA with Vanguard. I have been with both platforms and they are both good but as you say if you now only want to invest in Vanguard (and friends) managed funds its cheaper direct.

Personally I wouldn't want the risk of holding individual company shares so would invest it all in funds such as VLS to get my target asset allocation.

Ps the Vanguard platform cap is £375 but you would be better moving to a fixed price platform and paying occasional trade fees before getting anywhere near the £375 cap.

Audaxer

JSCB wrote: »

Hi everyone,
I currently hold around £8k in a few different individual firms in a S&S ISA with AJ Bell which I plan to hold. I opened this in the previous tax year, 16-17, but have invested into it this year.

£8k in AJ Bell means a platform fee of £20 per year. If you were to put another £8k in Vanguard it would cost you another £13 a year, so it would save you a whole £5 per year and you would be restricted to adding to only one of the ISAs per year. If I was you I would continue to invest with AJ Bell with the VLS fund and consider moving to a second platform when your investment gets much bigger and the savings are significant.

JSCB

Hi Alex,

I see, so you can open and invest in 1 S&S Isa and 1 cash ISA in a year but not two cash ISA's for example?

In terms of my S&S, my plan is to keep the individual shares I have for now with AJ Bell, I quite like and think it does me well and keeps me interested with it all to research, follow and dabble with the odd select firms like National Grid, but to put the vast majority of the money I invest from now on into a VLS80 for the foreseeable future.

JSCB

Audaxer wrote: »

£8k in AJ Bell means a platform fee of £20 per year. If you were to put another £8k in Vanguard it would cost you another £13 a year, so it would save you a whole £5 per year and you would be restricted to adding to only one of the ISAs per year. If I was you I would continue to invest with AJ Bell with the VLS fund and consider moving to a second platform when your investment gets much bigger and the savings are significant.

Thanks Audaxer, I guess you're right.

While the difference between 0.15% and 0.22% looks like a lot, since the 0.07% is an extra 50% on top of 0.15%, in actual monetary charges it's really not that much and actually less than I'd even thought about. I guess even with a few £1.50 purchases, it might only add up to £10 extra per year per £10000k invested, which is made up by the fact it's £8.50 per purchase cheaper to buy funds than individual shares anyway!

As you suggest, I'll stick with AJ Bell for now. Thanks

Alexland

JSCB wrote: »

I see, so you can open and invest in 1 S&S Isa and 1 cash ISA in a year but not two cash ISA's for example?

In terms of my S&S, my plan is to keep the individual shares I have for now with AJ Bell, I quite like and think it does me well and keeps me interested with it all to research, follow and dabble with the odd select firms like National Grid, but to put the vast majority of the money I invest from now on into a VLS80 for the foreseeable future.

Yes you can contribute to one of each top level types of adult ISAs each year. It gets a bit confusing as a HTB ISA is actually a Cash ISA (and you can have both with a Split Cash ISA) and you can invest either cash or shares in a Lifetime ISA.

When I was in my late 20s I got caught up in a National Grid rights issue in which they would dilute my proportion of the company unless I gave them more money. Although I am interested in individual companies I definitely wouldn't want to directly own them anymore.

VLS80 is a good fund and has made me healthy returns in previous years.

Alex.

Audaxer

JSCB wrote: »

Thanks Audaxer, I guess you're right.

While the difference between 0.15% and 0.22% looks like a lot, since the 0.07% is an extra 50% on top of 0.15%, in actual monetary charges it's really not that much and actually less than I'd even thought about. I guess even with a few £1.50 purchases, it might only add up to £10 extra per year per £10000k invested, which is made up by the fact it's £8.50 per purchase cheaper to buy funds than individual shares anyway!

As you suggest, I'll stick with AJ Bell for now. Thanks

It's 0.25% with AJ Bell but still minimal difference. You are paying more for each individual share purchase than for the difference in annual platform fees. I really think you would be better sticking with funds rather than individual shares.