SVS Securities - shut down?

My2penneth

The best way to complain is to get ones assets out ASAP.  There is a trail of information on ITI Capital now,  even on their own website. Besides being 'expensive ' ( see rate card) their customer service is inadequate.  There are cheaper,  better and more suitable platforms out there for myself and I would hazard a guess for the  majority of UK shareholders that were ex-SVS clients. 
Hats off to Leonard Curtis for the 6 months free transfer clause.

rugby7170

Has anyone bought or sold yet ? Yes or No !!

johnburman

rugby 7170 - not me
My2penneth - agree with every word.  But you have got me thinking about one thing.  You say:
Hats off to Leonard Curtis for the 6 months free transfer clause.
Not sure about "Hats off" but it is a good thing to we XO clients.  But it makes me think that LC knew from the outset that ITI would not be suitable for the majority of the XO clients, who want a simple cheap service. Also it meant thay could say to the judge (as they did say) if "clients do not like ITI and they are unsuitable they can leave free of charge. So no one is going to really object to the transfer to ITI"  And LC are right.

Mind you having a broker and not being able to trade (ha like SVS form the last 13 months!) is clearly problematic for the FCA.  For how long will they allow such a state of affairs to continue before they act?  Action must be to (at least consider) closing down said broker and force the transfer of shares to a yet another broker?  Which is why we must get the transfers done ASAP.    

sweeter_strudel

rugby7170 said:

Has anyone bought or sold yet ? Yes or No !!

Nope - two linked Phoenix accounts pending; and one separate Phoenix account live but no way of getting SVS shares into it.....

My2penneth

Latest email from LC.

"Dear Mr xxxxxx, Thank you for your email.  Have you now tried accessing your Phoenix account with ITI using the details that they issued to you on 6th August?  Hopefully you should start to see holdings/cash appear in this account now, as we have bene (sic) advised that once the Phoenix account linked to you as a client is created it can take up to a week for all your holdings to be manually transferred across on a line-by-line basis. If you are still not seeing anything on your Phoenix account by the close of business on Wednesday this week, please contact ITI on +44(0) 207 562 8001 or by emailing accountmanagement@iticapital.com to ask them to look into the matter for you."

They forgot to add

(and they won't bother to reply to your email and you won't get through on the phone- I have still internal msgs that are unanswered form July 24th).

Ah, it's in the wording - ITI said in their email titled "Phoenix Account Access Credentials" that "PLEASE NOTE THAT ACCOUNT ACTIVATION TYPICALLY TAKES 2 BUSINESS DAYS."  (ITI used capital letters).

What they mean is that it takes 2 days to open a PX account..no mention of up to 7 days to manually transfer our holdings line by line (we will need to check our accounts yet again!). 

Well, when and if the FCA look into this hodgepodge of affairs, they will have plenty of things to consider.

johnburman

Well, when and if the FCA look into this hodgepodge of affairs....,
They won't if we don't tell 'em ...

My2penneth

Just musing!
If there are 20,000 clients - how many have 2 accounts or more?
Now if they all have even 10 holdings in their accounts, that is 20,000 x 2 x 10 = 400,000 manual transfers.

I have actually just totted up my shareholdings - 85 in total so I would guess that 400k of manual transfers will
(i) be a lower estimate
(ii) there will be transpositional errors made if this is all done manually (tiredness will creep in).
(iii) How long will it take to transfer these lines into Phoenix ?  

snipkin

My2penneth said:

Following up - I'm glad to report that both sums of money withdrawn from ITI have arrived in my bank....early Monday morning. 

Same with me - finally my cash withdrawal of 5 August from ITI has appeared in my bank account - until today I have been overdrawn for over six months - so that's one small achievement but there's some way to go yet!
My Phoenix accounts are still 'pending' after 5-6 days so no dealing possible.... I wonder if anyone has managed to trade with ITI/Phoenix yet? I would like to sell one or two holdings before I transfer my accounts to other brokers.
My ISA account is still not shown as such - this is unacceptable - but I figure that complaining to ITI will just slow them down even more....

pafpcg

My2penneth said:

Just musing!
If there are 20,000 clients - how many have 2 accounts or more?
Now if they all have even 10 holdings in their accounts, that is 20,000 x 2 x 10 = 400,000 manual transfers.

What is an SVS "client"?  Are there:
- 20,000 individuals (or pairs in joint accounts), some of whom have multiple accounts giving an aggregate number of trading accounts well in excess of 20,000 (40,000 if the average number of accounts per client is two)
OR
- 20,000 trading accounts held by fewer than 20,000 clients (10,000 if the average number of accounts per client is two)?

We know (from the SVS client list published by LC in April) that the number of equity holdings is 73,830, so a one-by-one reconciliation is a maximum of 73,830.

That SVS client list should also be able to reveal the number of trading accounts, but that will take me a short while to analyse.

UPDATE:  From my analysis of the SVS client data, there are:
-  2,200 unique securities (based on the GBxxxxx codes).
-  10,851 unique accounts with one or more securities.  Whether these are "clients" (with one or more trading accounts sharing the same "Client Code"), or individual trading accounts (with several belonging to any one client), it's not possible to be certain without knowing the SVS definition of a "Client Code".  [When LC gave access to the SVS data to allow us to check our holdings earlier this year, did we all get just one code (eg C123456)? Or did those with multiple accounts get individual codes for each account?  I only have one account, so I don't know the answer.]

LEAR1

Halty2 said:

I can't remember if I ticked the boxes but I definitely remember pressing the red button. I printed off the page showing my holdings and did that before closing, if I go into that account now I can't seen my holdings just a message saying "closure in progress". They say they will transfer the cash out immediately, no sign of that yet, they also ask for the name of the new broker, in my case I've asked Hargreaves Lansdown  to transfer my shares to them and have filled in the HL form to do that.

I wonder whether selecting the 'transfer out' option will in any way expedite your process? Essentially, it sounds like you're coming at it from both ends - formally notifying ITI you're wishing to transfer out as well as doing the necessary transfer-in paperwork with the intended recipient broker. Like many others, I decided not to select that closure option when on-boarding as the general consensus seemed to be that it would be best to initiate everything through the target broker (also HL for me), but alas HL seem to be snowed with other transfer-in requests and my paperwork doesn't seem to be moving anywhere fast...
Have you spoken with HL to see if ITI have reached out following your election to close your account?