SVS Securities - shut down?

manorhouse

Thank you for explaining that masonic "The bias is towards the cheap UK brokers, but not the unsustainably cheap brokers who are either losing money or making money from you in other ways."
Out of interest who were the other two you said you had posted you would not use .

bowlhead99

manorhouse said:

Thank you for explaining that masonic "The bias is towards the cheap UK brokers, but not the unsustainably cheap brokers who are either losing money or making money from you in other ways."
Out of interest who were the other two you said you had posted you would not use .

Presumably the ones to avoid include the relatively new fintechs like freetrade, etoro etc who offer low cost or no cost trading. It's admirable for them to want to disrupt the market with bold aspirations that trading should be free to the consumer. But we know that in practice it costs money to put the technology and people in place to do it - and maintaining customer accounts and creating and settling stock exchange orders is not a zero cost activity.

The money has to come from somewhere or they are on a fast track to bust unless they can build a critical mass of customers and eventually sell out to a larger player.

If the money can sustainably come from cross subsidisation from other customers, willing to pay to get premium features or continually churn other products that make commissions but lose those other customers money (crypto, derivatives, leveraged trading etc), then yes you can have some customers trading at low cost. Especially if they don't mind having their trades pooled with others rather than transacting on demand, or who like the idea of holding a beneficial interest in fractional shares which can't be transferred anywhere because multiple customers have claim to the same unit of stock. 

But there are certainly traps for the unwary along with the wider issues that the disruptive/innovative models might not be financially sustainable and working through a broker liquidation can be a huge headache if the broker goes under - even if a protection fund exists.
 

olderbutnowiser

johnburman said:

thoughts on IWEB?  Owned by Halifax...so should be financially viable in the longer term 

"Cheap and cheerful" seems to sum up iWeb from reading comments elsewhere although I have no experience of them.

Sound enough since backed by one of the big banks and no platform fees so similar in that regard to SVS.  They appear a bit limited if you wish to hold foreign shares. For example I hold some Canadian shares in my SVS trading account but iWeb do not allow that.

pafpcg

olderbutnowiser said:

johnburman said:

thoughts on IWEB?  Owned by Halifax...so should be financially viable in the longer term 

"Cheap and cheerful" seems to sum up iWeb from reading comments elsewhere although I have no experience of them.

Sound enough since backed by one of the big banks and no platform fees so similar in that regard to SVS. 

From my experience with IWeb ISAs, I'd agree with "cheap", but not sure that "cheerful" would apply - always seem a bit depressed to me!  I'd suggest "Cheap but Effective".

However, for a dealing account, there is one issue that might make IWeb a non-runner for some - they don't allow joint accounts.  Needing a joint account is why I used SVS rather than IWeb for my dealing account - with hindsight, I should have used JarvisX-O.

masonic

johnburman said:

thoughts on IWEB?  Owned by Halifax...so should be financially viable in the longer term 

I essentially moved from SVS to iWeb a couple of years ago. They are fine, but I'd agree with others that it is a rather basic offering (which I have no problem with). There are some issues around them offering a more limited range of investments and they seem to have their own interpretation of what constitutes trail commission and adequate costs disclosure which rules out some open ended funds and ITs. Sometimes you will find Acc units of a fund, but not Inc units, or just one flavour of an ETF, but worth considering if they have everything you want to invest in.

manorhouse

Just one thing not been mentioned on I Web .
The £2 trade plan charge which can add up if you only like setting one day only limits .

johnburman

I have found the comments on the various 'discount' (but reliable and secure) XO brokers VERY interesting. 

Platform fees; exit fees; "inactivity" fees are all a no no in my book - I want full transparency on fees and charges. HL and iWEB seem to te the best.   Javis looks cheap and cheerful but it looks too 'SVS-like' . 

Could I say I am interested in XO only, no FX and quoted on the LSE only (although I wonder if that is too narrow).  Even so a number of my ETFs pay in $ or even EURO, and so no rip off exchange fees please (although I expect to bear a small 'conversion' fee - although why I expect to pay this I really do not know!)       

eskbanker

johnburman said:

I have found the comments on the various 'discount' (but reliable and secure) XO brokers VERY interesting. 

Platform fees; exit fees; "inactivity" fees are all a no no in my book - I want full transparency on fees and charges. HL and iWEB seem to te the best.   Javis looks cheap and cheerful but it looks too 'SVS-like' . 

Could I say I am interested in XO only, no FX and quoted on the LSE only (although I wonder if that is too narrow).  Even so a number of my ETFs pay in $ or even EURO, and so no rip off exchange fees please (although I expect to bear a small 'conversion' fee - although why I expect to pay this I really do not know!)       

Perhaps you'll succeed in finding an ultra-low cost provider with wafer-thin margins and correspondingly borderline (if any) profitability.

I mean, what could possibly go wrong....?

manorhouse

Yes lets keep the ideas coming not forcing anyone to go with them , and great to hear of dangers beforehand .
Like all things its a balance.
I keep hearing about another USA one Robin Hood  they appear to keep delaying there opening in the UK.

bowlhead99

johnburman said:

Platform fees; exit fees; "inactivity" fees are all a no no in my book - I want full transparency on fees and charges. 

So you want to pay nothing for the service of creating an account, keeping your assets in safe custody, customer services, periodic reporting and the handling of corporate actions, and simply pay incremental fees for incremental services on top and hope that those fees are sufficient to keep the broker in business. 

That's fine, and many brokers will offer a menu-based, pay-as-you go model with incremental services attracting incremental fees so that people who do not want those services do not have to cross-subsidise the people who do.

(although I expect to bear a small 'conversion' fee - although why I expect to pay this I really do not know!) 

Yes you do know. It is because you explicitly said you wanted a menu-based pay-as-you-go model with incremental services attracting incremental fees so that people who do not want those services do not have to cross subsidise the people who do. 

It is the way you prefer to engage with a service provider, having a cost for everything you might want to do as and when you want to do it. instead of some higher standard fee which funds services you might not use very often. So, don't complain when you pay something for fx conversion while I don't pay anything for fx conversion because I don't do any fx conversions.