multi-asset managed funds (for SIPPs or ISAs)

medindexer

Thanks all of you for being so helpful as I negotiate my way through the investment maze.
I've learned a lot from your replies, so I need to digest what you've all just written since my last set of queries.
I will have to consider switching to another investment provider other than Best. I guess I could just stay with Best and replace my managed funds with vanguard/l&g/blackrock (funds like AJ Bell's I guess can only be bought direct from them)
I know I should be able to work this out, but what are Bests management charges from Best when buying these cheap funds compared to other service providers. Are they significantly higher to make it worth moving to another provider?

adatherton

Very good advice there and all correct. However, I tend to ignore all that and just look at the historical performance chart of the fund, against the performance charge of passive index funds, ie the market as a whole. (Passive funds have tiny charges). Picking the right fund makes much more difference than the charges.

Multi-asset are theoretically safer, provided the asset selection is right. Another safety approach is low-beta (don't go down or up as much as the market overall) share funds. I look for charts where the line is smoothly up.

bowlhead99

medindexer wrote: »

I know I should be able to work this out, but what are Bests management charges from Best when buying these cheap funds compared to other service providers. Are they significantly higher to make it worth moving to another provider?

Bestinvest's platform fees are 0.40% on first £250k for an ISA account
https://www.bestinvest.co.uk/stocks-and-shares-isa/isa-charges

or 0.40% on first £250k for a general investment account with no tax protection
https://www.bestinvest.co.uk/our-service/investment-account

or 0.30% +£120 a year on first £250k for a pension account
https://www.bestinvest.co.uk/pensions/sipps/low-cost-sipp-charges

If you compare that to AJ Bell Youinvest's platform fees:

0.25% on first £250k plus £1.50 per investment purchase or sale for an ISA
https://www.youinvest.co.uk/isa/charges-and-rates

or 0.25% on first £250k plus £1.50 per investment purchase or sale for a general investment account with no tax protection
https://www.youinvest.co.uk/dealing-account/charges-and-rates

or 0.25% on first £250k plus £1.50 per investment purchase or sale for a pension account
https://www.youinvest.co.uk/sipp/charges-and-rates


If you compare that to Vanguard's platform fees:
0.15% on first £250k for an ISA account
https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investing-explained/stocks-shares-isa

0.15% on first £250k for a general investment account with no tax protection
https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investing-explained/general-investment-account

No pension account available and they only offer Vanguard funds.

If you compare that to IWeb's platform fees:

£25 to open the account and £5 per purchase or sale transaction for an ISA account
https://www.iweb-sharedealing.co.uk/products/self-select-stocks-and-shares-isa.asp

£25 to open the account and £5 per purchase or sale transaction for a general investment account with no tax protection
https://www.iweb-sharedealing.co.uk/products/share-dealing-account.asp

£25 to open the account and £90 or £180 a year (depending on whether less or more than £50,000 account value), plus £5 per purchase or sale transaction for a pension account
https://www.iweb-sharedealing.co.uk/products/self-invested-personal-pension.asp

So yes, you can find cheaper providers than Bestinvest if you are not looking for a proprietary Bestinvest-only investment fund. If you have a large amount and are not going to do much buying and selling of investment funds throughout the year, IWeb is probably cheapest. If you have a small amount, using a percentage-based provider may not really be much more expensive, and their range of investments might be broader. At £1000, a 0.2% saving is only £2 a year. At £100000 it's £200 a year.

Other providers are available of course - there are loads of threads on platform comparisons, or websites such as https://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/ , or search "Snowman's spreadsheet" on this forum - the forum user Snowman created his own spreadsheet where you can put in the value of funds you intend to hold and the total amount you want to invest and the number of purchases or sales you are likely to do, and it will tell you which of the mainstream services is cheapest.

Having written that, I see Dr Syn's response above already linked a couple of platform comparison sites.

badger09

bowlhead99 wrote: »

.............

If you compare that to IWeb's platform fees:

£25 to open the account and £5 per purchase or sale transaction for an ISA account
https://www.iweb-sharedealing.co.uk/products/self-select-stocks-and-shares-isa.asp

£25 to open the account and £5 per purchase or sale transaction for a general investment account with no tax protection
https://www.iweb-sharedealing.co.uk/products/share-dealing-account.asp

£25 to open the account and £90 or £180 a year (depending on whether less or more than £50,000 account value), plus £5 per purchase or sale transaction for a pension account
https://www.iweb-sharedealing.co.uk/products/self-invested-personal-pension.asp
..............

SIPP:
1st bullet point in that link:
• There is no account opening charge



£25 account opening charge for ISA/Share Dealing Account applies only to the 1st account opened, not to each account.

So IWEB is even cheaper:)

medindexer

DrSyn et al. V interesting Kroijer and Indexfunds-the movie
I'm now thinking of looking for looking at world tracker funds (which I presume is synonymous with global) and government bonds. As I wish to keep lower risk than 100% am I right in thinking that funds like the Vanguard LFs and similar ones would fall into that category (tho they do have near to 50% in UK. If so, I will now check out Vanguard.L&G/Blackrock that have been mentioned. Could you give me some examples of funds that are government bonds to start my search. I guess I may have more questions!

arnoldy

medindexer wrote: »

The annual management charge (AMC) is 0.75%.
Ongoing charges figure (OCF) 1.54%

The OCF wont include a single dealing cost or stamp duty, so real costs much higher.


Just be aware that with Multi-Manager they usually come with layering of charges and only the 'top level' is disclosed.
Eg the fund might have a charge of 1.54% but the funds this fund invests in could equally have an OCF of 1.54%.

medindexer

You said:
Firstly, if you have followed the above, you should realise that Best are NOT charging you 2.3% for access to their fund. You got that by adding 1.54% OCF which already includes 0.75% management fee, to the 0.75% management fee. They appear on the same factsheet but you don't need to add one to another.

Can you let me know where you deduce this from. It's amazing how difficult it is to find out. I found a page on BInvest at https://www.bestinvest.co.uk/our-service/charges
but there was no mention of OFC or AMC

ColdIron

medindexer wrote: »

am I right in thinking that funds like the Vanguard LFs and similar ones would fall into that category (tho they do have near to 50% in UK.

You can halve that for Vanguard's LifeStrategy 100 which has 25% UK equities. VLS 60 has 15%. You can find this information by reading the factsheets from Vanguard

DrSyn

medindexer

If you go to Trustnet and type in what you are looking for you can generally find it (though you may need to search around).

1. For instance the breakdown of the VLS 60% share/40% bond fund is;-

https://www.trustnet.com/factsheets/o/acdq/vanguard-lifestrategy-60-equity-a-acc

While for the HSBC Global Cautious Portfolio C Acc you get:-

https://www.trustnet.com/factsheets/o/g1hf/hsbc-global-strategy-cautious-portfolio

2. For different Treasury Bond funds you get:-

https://www.trustnet.com/fund/search/treasury%20bond%20funds

OR

you could try the HL website where you find the VLS 60/40 shown as:-

https://www.hl.co.uk/funds/fund-discounts,-prices--and--factsheets/search-results/v/vanguard-lifestrategy-60-equity-income


3. With the VLS fund you reduce the risk by choosing the one with lower shares & higher bond content such as VLS 20/80.


I hope this answers you questions.

bowlhead99

badger09 wrote: »

SIPP:
1st bullet point in that link:
• There is no account opening charge

Yes you are right, my mistake.

£25 account opening charge for ISA/Share Dealing Account applies only to the 1st account opened, not to each account.

So IWEB is even cheaper:)

Yes, though we don't know what kind of account the OP wants and he didn't mention wanting multiple accounts. If he wants to open an ISA account he should compare the cost of an ISA account there against the cost of an ISA account elsewhere. And likewise if he wants an unwrapped account, or a SIPP account. You are right that in some cases with some providers it costs less per account if you have multiple account types, because for example with IWeb you only pay the 'opening fee' on the first account. Similarly with some of the percentage based ones I mentioned a percentage on the first £250k but if you are using two accounts you do not need to have £250k in both accounts to start getting fee reductions.

The solution is to use a platform comparison tool when you know what you want, though it is the last stage of the process; the first stage is to know what you want to invest in.

arnoldy wrote: »

The OCF wont include a single dealing cost or stamp duty, so real costs much higher.

Such 'real costs' are not *much* higher in the grand scheme of things.

Just be aware that with Multi-Manager they usually come with layering of charges and only the 'top level' is disclosed.
Eg the fund might have a charge of 1.54% but the funds this fund invests in could equally have an OCF of 1.54%.

Well, that sounds completely contradictory to what I wrote in my post when I explained that the OCF of the top level fund *includes* the OCF of the lower tier funds in which the top level fund invests.

And it's not me that's wrong.

medindexer wrote: »

You said:

Firstly, if you have followed the above, you should realise that Best are NOT charging you 2.3% for access to their fund. You got that by adding 1.54% OCF which already includes 0.75% management fee, to the 0.75% management fee. They appear on the same factsheet but you don't need to add one to another.

Can you let me know where you deduce this from. It's amazing how difficult it is to find out. I found a page on BInvest at https://www.bestinvest.co.uk/our-service/charges
but there was no mention of OFC or AMC

The page you have linked on Bestinvest is a page talking about the service fee for giving you access to their investment platform service (the platform through which you are able to buy investments in shares or in the fund or funds of your choice.

That page is not going to talk about the Ongoing Charges Figure for a specific fund or the Annual Management Charge for a specific fund, because they are just talking about their general fees for the platform service. The different funds you choose to buy will all have their own OCFs. The Ongoing Charges Figure for running that specific fund can be found on the factsheet for the fund that you choose to buy.

You have not chosen to tell us here on this forum what fund you had decided to buy through Bestinvest. In my earlier post I guessed from the OCF that you had quoted that perhaps you were invested into the IFSL Tilney Bestinvest Conservative Portfolio Fund - which coincidentally has an OCF of 1.54%, including 0.75% AMC - and invests your money in a variety of other funds such as the Lindsell Train Uk Equity fund, the Henderson Uk Property fund, the M&G Property Portfolio fund, Twentyfour Absolute Return Credit Aqg etc etc, so I started talking about that fund as an example, but I don't know that is the fund you actually hold, because you didn't choose to tell us.

In that particular example, the OCF of 1.54% quoted on the factsheet of the Tilney Bestinvest Conservative Portfolio fund includes the ongoing operating expenses (including fund management fees) of running both the Fund itself and the funds in which it invests (Lindsell Train, Henderson etc).