Transfer woes, iWeb...

coyrls

Don't hold your breath with the FOS, I made a complaint in September 2016 and the latest update from them in July this year was that I should get a ruling towards the end of this year.

JohnRo

iWeb have just got back to me via email as they said they would so that at least is progress.

It's labelled confidential so won't post here but they're acknowledging there's been a lot of confusion, somewhat short of accepting they've made a mistake, and that they have indeed registered the wrong ETF.

My options at this point as far as they're concerned are send it back to WOSC on IG or hold ZPRS with them... great.

My response FWIW is here..

Hello, thanks for responding

It finally looks like some progress is being made and we're on the same page then, after three months of chivvying. There are however still several issues remaining unaddressed here.

From your point of view..

..Firstly and perhaps most importantly this entire situation has only come to light because I have had to make iWeb aware of it after three months of apparent ignorance.

..There are six ETF variants of the underlying fund in question afaict. The SSGA SPDR ETFS E 2 MSCI WORLD SMALL CAP UCITS USD ETF is listed on various exchanges in Europe.

..London lists two ETF variants of the underlying fund LSE:WOSC (GBP) and the underlying fund itself LSE:WDSC (USD)

..For some reason known only to yourselves iWeb can only offer one ETF listed in Germany (of all places) on the XETRA exchange which settles in EUR, that variant is XTER:ZPRS (EUR) SEDOL BF5S809

..A re-registration of the wrong ETF has apparently, somehow, succeeded. However ZPRS is not WOSC and it should not have happened.

From my point of view..

..Not happy, this mismatched ETF issue should have been identified and resolved months ago, on day one ideally.

..IG have not, as you seem to imply, tried to transfer XTER:ZPRS (EUR) SEDOL BF5S809 to yourselves, why would they?

..IG have in fact tried continually to send the correct ETF which is WOSC.L (GBP) SEDOL BF5S810 and have been knocked back on several occasions by iWeb as mismatched.

..The reason for this is now obvious, the bottom line is that iWeb have tried, endeavored and somehow, successfully re-registered the wrong ETF.

..On multiple occasions the discrepancy has not even been identified, much less addressed.

..I have been led a merry dance, given false and misleading information on multiple occasions by iWeb and ultimately had to get to the bottom of this myself.

..If I had not identified and raised this matter nothing would have happened and I'd be holding the wrong ETF.


I have the IG email transcript so I can see what was communicated when, it's clear that as far back as 25th May iWeb were arranging to receive the wrong ETF.

This has already caused me considerable stress and consumed far too much of my time, far too much.

The dilemma now is that a transfer back to IG and restoration of WOSC will resolve the ETF issue but it won't resolve the platform issue, which is that IG have just introduced a passive £24 quarterly charge. This is the only reason the transfer to iWeb was initiated.

It leaves me stuck between a rock and a hard place as to what to do for the best, obviously ZPRS will incur FX settlement fees, which is unacceptable under the circumstances, yet a move back to IG will incur hefty quarterly platform fees.

I don't completely rule out holding ZPRS as it has the same underlying fund priced in USD as WOSC does but there are obvious FX issues that make it undesirable.

I'm minded to let the FOS have this and see what they make of it all because it's an avoidable mess that much is clear and it has caused significant disturbance.

Are you prepared to offer anything that might remedy this ridiculous situation before I escalate to FOS?


regards,

awaiting a response.