VCT's - cheapest place to buy / hold

masonic

Marine_life wrote: »

In the UK we use the share centre for our regular investments and are just about to open SIPPs with AJ Bell. Neither offer VCTs. (or not that I could find!)

No, I don't think either offer VCTs. You should see if your chosen VCT(s) offer a significant amount of trail commission that you could get rebated. If not, then the platform fees will probably consume most of the commission. This can usually be found on the application form. If the trail commission can be waived and that leads to you being charged less in AMC, then it will be cheapest to go direct and hold the share certificates until you want to sell.

bigadaj

I use wealth club who took over club finance. Typically rebate some initial and half of the trail, just paid in my annual cheque.

mostwelcome

+1 for wealth club. Fees low and it's easy to apply because they've put it all online now. As mentioned above you get share certificates not nominee, but you can view this and other similar investments in their portal. Helpful on the phone too bc this is the main thing they do, it's not a sideline like the big firms.

bowlhead99

mostwelcome wrote: »

+1 for wealth club. Fees low and it's easy to apply because they've put it all online now. As mentioned above you get share certificates not nominee, but you can view this and other similar investments in their portal. Helpful on the phone too bc this is the main thing they do, it's not a sideline like the big firms.

I've done most of mine through wealth club (formerly club finance) too. Their rebate of initial commission is generally better than going direct although their rebate of ongoing trail isn't as good as it used to be - though anything is better than the nothing you usually get going direct, or via an intermediary like HL who would keep it all.

Online application is handy to save you an envelope though can be confusing if you're applying for more than one product at once and their 'back' button sometimes causes errors in the process if you wanted to go back and check something, and then you have to start again. Best just to plod through them one at a time

The online 'monitoring' investments table is handy as a reminder of what you bought, but is very basic and you'll want to keep your own records of all your transactions anyway to go with the share certs you'll get it in post. For example if you put £5000 into a VCT and want to split it half this tax year half the next, it'll show you the shares that were issued multiplied by the current bid price, but compare it to the total contributed (including the amount that won't actually be issued until April) giving you a huge paper loss - much larger than what you'd get from the NAV spread.

As I'm not really too fussed about online applications or remembering a password to log in more than once a year, those things don't get major negative marks from me. I'll have to send the subscription monies direct to the VCT manager and will get my paper certificates back from the manager. If you are DIYing, the only reason to use a middleman / intermediary / broker really is to reduce the initial fee or get a small amount of trail commission back.

Marine_life

bowlhead99 wrote: »

I've done most of mine through wealth club (formerly club finance) too. Their rebate of initial commission is generally better than going direct although their rebate of ongoing trail isn't as good as it used to be - though anything is better than the nothing you usually get going direct, or via an intermediary like HL who would keep it all.

Online application is handy to save you an envelope though can be confusing if you're applying for more than one product at once and their 'back' button sometimes causes errors in the process if you wanted to go back and check something, and then you have to start again. Best just to plod through them one at a time

The online 'monitoring' investments table is handy as a reminder of what you bought, but is very basic and you'll want to keep your own records of all your transactions anyway to go with the share certs you'll get it in post. For example if you put £5000 into a VCT and want to split it half this tax year half the next, it'll show you the shares that were issued multiplied by the current bid price, but compare it to the total contributed (including the amount that won't actually be issued until April) giving you a huge paper loss - much larger than what you'd get from the NAV spread.

As I'm not really too fussed about online applications or remembering a password to log in more than once a year, those things don't get major negative marks from me. I'll have to send the subscription monies direct to the VCT manager and will get my paper certificates back from the manager. If you are DIYing, the only reason to use a middleman / intermediary / broker really is to reduce the initial fee or get a small amount of trail commission back.

Thanks, that's helpful

JasonPr

Marine_life wrote: »

have no brought forward allowance (was living overseas)

This should probably go into a new thread but are you absolutely sure about this? I'm not certain but I believe you only have to be a member of a registered pension during those years (which you would have been from previously working in the UK) to bring forward unused allowances. I don't think it matters that you didn't live in the UK during the last 3 years.


Again, I'm not 100% certain about this but something you may want to investigate. (Probably best to post a new thread though.)