What % To Invest Myself Rather Than Use IFA? 20 August 2019 at 8:22AM edited 30 November -1 at 1:00AM in Pensions, Annuities & Retirement Planning 22 replies 1.9K views

atush

You running a significant portfolio in parallel destroys the balance you have paid the IFA to provide.

Not if the IFA has details of all your cash savings and investments.

If you want to play around, by all means set your won bond ladder of cash, and open a S&S isa/Sipp to make some of your own investments and let the IFA handle the rest. Just make sure all planning is based on all your assets.

bostonerimus

I'd usually say that you should DIY all of the inheritance, and everything else too, because I don't think IFA's are generally worth their fees. But you saying you would like to "take a punt on some shares" gives me pause. You need a plan with specific goals and a strategy to get there that minimises any gambling aspects. A good IFA should give you that; I have no idea of the quality of your IFA.

SonOf

I'd usually say that you should DIY all of the inheritance, and everything else too, because I don't think IFA's are generally worth their fees.

We recently took over the portfolio of a DIY investor (as we have many times before) and the charges were nearly half what he was paying previously. DIY does not automatically mean cheaper.


edit: word "not" missing. Thanks Bowlhead.

bowlhead99

SonOf wrote: »

We recently took over the portfolio of a DIY investor (as we have many times before) and the charges were nearly half what he was paying previously. DIY does automatically mean cheaper.

I think you mean *doesn't* in the last sentence

SonOf

bowlhead99 wrote: »

I think you mean *doesn't* in the last sentence

slight difference in meaning!!!!

bostonerimus

SonOf wrote: »

We recently took over the portfolio of a DIY investor (as we have many times before) and the charges were nearly half what he was paying previously. DIY does not automatically mean cheaper.


edit: word "not" missing. Thanks Bowlhead.

Sure, but employing an IFA definitely means paying their fee and if the DIY investor has a bit of common sense they should be able to run their portfolio at less cost than having an IFA do it for them. I weep when I compare my total cost in the USA to DIY of 0.07% to the costs of around 1% or more that many people pay in the UK...and also many people in the US who are still beguiled by financial industry advertising. I imagine the lowest cost you could get in the UK would be around 0.5% for fund and platform fees.

AnotherJoe

bostonerimus wrote: »

Sure, but employing an IFA definitely means paying their fee and if the DIY investor has a bit of common sense they should be able to run their portfolio at less cost than having an IFA do it for them. I weep when I compare my total cost in the USA to DIY of 0.07% to the costs of around 1% or more that many people pay in the UK...and also many people in the US who are still beguiled by financial industry advertising. I imagine the lowest cost you could get in the UK would be around 0.5% for fund and platform fees.

I'm getting about 0.4% on my SL SIPP and would be 0.26% if I didn't have one fairly expensive fund out of the three in it.
Too difficult to work out my HL fees because it's got a mix of funds, ITs ETFs and shares and whilst there's a max amount you pay on everything except funds, the rest have their own internal costs. Maybe one cold winter afternoon I'll have a stab at it.

P.s. when you say 0.07% I presume you are excluding fund fees because vanguard aren't that cheap are they?

bostonerimus

AnotherJoe wrote: »

I'm getting about 0.4% on my SL SIPP and would be 0.26% if I didn't have one fairly expensive fund out of the three in it.
Too difficult to work out my HL fees because it's got a mix of funds, ITs ETFs and shares and whilst there's a max amount you pay on everything except funds, the rest have their own internal costs. Maybe one cold winter afternoon I'll have a stab at it.

P.s. when you say 0.07% I presume you are excluding fund fees because vanguard aren't that cheap are they?

I own Vanguard funds on the US Vanguard platform and that means the platform costs are zero' it cost me nothing to buy and sell those funds. Th 0.07% is the weighted average of my fund fees, the lowest is 0.04% and the highest 0.16% for the actively managed Wellesley fund.

AnotherJoe

Wow. As you probably know they are about 3x that cost in the U.K.

SonOf

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Wow. As you probably know they are about 3x that cost in the U.K.

Economies of scale and higher costs of regulation.