Investment platforms?Ease ?Halifax vs HSBC

petaling

I am new to investing in the UK and would welcome any advice re trading platforms.
To meet the tax deadline , I opened an HSBC Investdirect acct+ISA SS acct, since I am already with HSBC.


I find their platform not easy to use eg I cannot set a limit price order for let say 1 month period. I cant set a GBP amount as opposed to actual number of shares that I want to buy.I phoned HSBC and they say I can do that over the phone if I want these features and I wont be charged telephone trading fee just GBP10.50 the same as online trading fee.However I think online order are more precise, what if they heard CUKS instead of CUKX etc!



I considered Halifax and wonder if any users of this platform can advise re their TradePlan experience.Is it better than HsBC?
Also HSBC does not seem to have online chat insider the platform.
I dont mind keeping both accounts if Halifax sharedealing is easy to use.
My SIPP is with AJBELL(orphaned by TDDirect), would it be worthwhile to keep it inside Halifax Sipp which is managed by AJBell anyway?



Thanks

Rheumatoid

I have always found HL easy to use and provides lots of information and options. Some would argue they are expensive but for me its worth any extra.

petaling

as I have a lump sum investment , I would prefer flat fee rather than a percentage-fee platform. I buy only etfs . I was burnt by mutual fund fees in the past.


according to
Compare the UK’s cheapest online brokers

short_butt_sweet

for somebody only holding ETFs, HL are effectively fixed fee (or rather: have low caps on annual fees, which is similar). they have percentage fees for funds (with no caps until you're already paying them too much).

the same applies to AJBell.

so you may not find that much difference in overall charges for you between HL, AJBell, HSBC and Halifax. you'll have to figure it out from your total amount invested, how often you trade, whether you can use a cheaper "regular dealing" scheme, and account type.

if you're looking at Halifax, you might also look at IWeb, which is Halifax under another name, and with a slightly different charging structure (Halifax is often better if you will be trading every month, IWeb if you'll only be trading once or twice a year).

(i don't think i've ever used limit orders, so can't help with that part.)