Advice on Cheapest ISA platform

Fozzie_Bear

Over the years I have acquired a number of Shares through bank takovers etc e.g. Lloyds, TSB, Santander etc. These were held by Equinity Shareview. On the advice of our FA I bedded these shares into 1 ISA with a value of approximately £15k. I am being charged a 6 monthly fee of £39.79. The only activity on the account is re-investing the dividends into the ISA. I am not purchasing or selling shares etc. These fees seem to be excessive and almost outweigh the tax benefits of the ISA. Can anyone recommend a cheaper platform where i can transfer this ISA
Many thanks

eskbanker

Assuming the fee you refer to is the platform itself, rather than a charge from your FA, then you'll easily beat that, check out better options at http://monevator.com/compare-the-brokers/

Also worth repeating the usual guidance on here that owning individual shares (unless as a small part of a much larger diversified portfolio) is highly risky, with your eggs in a very small number of baskets. If you'd held your Lloyds shares since before 2008 then you'll know how much they plummeted in value around then, never to recover (yet), so consider investing in collective funds instead....

jimjames

I think you'll struggle to find much cheaper than iWeb at £25 opening and no ongoing fees if it's just a buy & hold investment.

Fozzie_Bear

Firstly apologies for delay in replying.
Thanks eskbanker yes this is the platform charge not our FA charge. Also we have a very wide portfolio of investments. These particular shares were not purchased they were free to existnhg customers when banks were taken over e.g. TSB taken over by Lloyds and NatWest taken over by Santander. We were advised to bed the shares in an ISA to take advantage of the tax allowances and to use up our remaining personal ISA allowance for the year.

Thanks jimjames iWeb looks good except for the £25 per stock transfer out fee if I decided to move the Isa elsewhere.
The ideal solution would be to transfer these ISAs to our other investment platforms but not sure if thats doable.
Fozzie

Alexland

Is the right portfolio to be holding going forwards? If you didn't get them free would you want to invest £15k of hard earned money in banks? Not my idea of a good investment.

Suggest you consider selling them and diversifying into broader geographic and multi sector funds. Banks are usually one of the first shares to tank when the economy goes south.

Alex

eskbanker

Fozzie_Bear wrote: »

The ideal solution would be to transfer these ISAs to our other investment platforms but not sure if thats doable.

If you have other investment platforms (already holding your 'very wide portfolio') then surely the ideal approach would be to ask them?

After benchmarking the costs associated with these other platforms versus the market of course, as per the Monevator link above, assuming you choose to measure platforms by cost....