Fidelity for SIPPS

lollynerd

I have sometimes felt a little negativity towards Fidelity on this board, compared to say AJ Bell or Hargreaves Lansdown. Part of my pension plan is a Fidelity SIPP. I picked them because:

a) They seem to charge lowish management fees
b) The web site seems pretty good for my pension info
c) The people on the phone seem more knowledgeable than some others (e.g. Aegon)
d) Someone recommended them.

Have I got "Fidelity fever" just because I picked them?
Are there any other reasons that AJB, HL, etc would be a better choice for a SIPP?
Very interested in more experienced views.
Thanks

justme111

I am not sure question as it stands can be answered - I believe all those platforms have different pricing structure on different amount that would suit different types of investors depending on what is the product that they want to buy and at what time.
Usually the advice is to choose the investment first and then find which platform is best to hold that investment.

philng

I use Fidelity for my SIPP as the annual fee is capped at £45 if you hold only Investment Trusts and there are no drawdown fees.

Never had an issue with them though account site is fairly basic it suits me at a low cost.

Albermarle

I have just opened my first SIPP , with a view to transferring in an older ex employer personal pension with Aviva, which has a relatively high charge and no drawdown facilities for the future. Looked at the Aviva SIPP and then the various other low cost sipps like HL, AJ Bell, II and Fidelity .
Despite the sometime comments on here about clunky software I have gone with Fidelity. Main reason was the very simple charging structure, and there seems to be a lot of software update activity anyway. The 0.35 % platform charge is not the lowest, but with no charges for many things like drawdown, or leaving. If you are lucky enough to get to £250K then charge drops to 0.2% over the whole lot , not just on over £250K. Also all investments on the site SIPP + ISA etc count and benefit from the lower charge
Registered last weekend on line with min lump sum ; welcome pack arrived in post Friday. Log on details arrived Monday and no problems to log on. Have called them once , and they answered the phone immediately. Nice guy told me to delay transferring my pension as in the next few days there will be cashback offer for doing so .
However not really tested it yet , will probably know more in 6 months. Good or bad ...

Albermarle

I have just opened my first SIPP , with a view to transferring in an older ex employer personal pension with Aviva, which has a relatively high charge and no drawdown facilities for the future. Looked at the Aviva SIPP and then the various other low cost sipps like HL, AJ Bell, II and Fidelity .
Despite the sometime comments on here about clunky software I have gone with Fidelity. Main reason was the very simple charging structure, and there seems to be a lot of software update activity anyway. The 0.35 % platform charge is not the lowest, but with no charges for many things like drawdown, or leaving. If you are lucky enough to get to £250K then charge drops to 0.2% over the whole lot , not just on over £250K. Also all investments on the site SIPP + ISA etc count and benefit from the lower charge
Registered last weekend on line with min lump sum ; welcome pack arrived in post Friday. Log on details arrived Monday and no problems to log on. Have called them once , and they answered the phone immediately. Nice guy told me to delay transferring my pension as in the next few days there will be cashback offer for doing so .
However not really tested it yet , will probably know more in 6 months. Good or bad ...

nrsql

I opened a SIPP with Fidelity as I was restricted to the brokers I was allowed to use and have been reasonably happy.
It was a bit of a problem starting it up as the forms needed to be posted to me and weren't very clear. Took a couple of weeks as opposed to a few days for others. Some of their info is a bit ambiguous.
Once up and running it was fine though and could handle what I wanted to do.
They are happy to handle issues and even unwound a contribution for me when I made a mistake about tax years.
Not as slick as h-l but ok and I don't have problems with their software.

Tom99

Go via Cavendish and get the Fidelity SIPP for 0.25% rather than the 0.35% by going direct.

Albermarle

Go via Cavendish and get the Fidelity SIPP for 0.25% rather than the 0.35% by going direct

Cavendish do not offer drawdown .

Tom99

Albermarle wrote: »

Cavendish do not offer drawdown .

That's true but if you don't need to drawdown for a few years just move when you do.

barnstar2077

Don't just look at platform charges. I just compared a few of the funds that I use in my HL SIPP to see how much the same fund would cost to run on the Cavendish site and the difference was more than the platform cost difference in HLs favour as HL offer discounts on some funds.

Strongly suggest people find a few funds they are interested in and do a running costs comparison too before they decide on a platform.

Mr.Saver

lollynerd wrote: »

a) They seem to charge lowish management fees

Go for Fidelity via Cavendish and you can get 0.25%, even cheaper than the 0.35%

But Cavendish doesn't have drawdown, so if you are already retired, this won't work for you.

lollynerd wrote: »

b) The web site seems pretty good for my pension info

I would not agree. The information available on Fidelity SIPP website is one of the worst I've seen. If you think this is "pretty good", then you definitely haven't tried any real good platforms.

lollynerd wrote: »

c) The people on the phone seem more knowledgeable than some others (e.g. Aegon)

I tend to agree on this. The people on the phone are definitely well trained for their job. But I don't know how other platforms are doing. I don't have much experience with other platforms on the phone, because I use online chat whenever it's available.

lollynerd wrote: »

d) Someone recommended them.

I don't see Fidelity as one of the platform being recommended frequently on this forum. People seem to recommend others like AJ Bell and HL more often.