IFA Sanity Check / Fund advice.

hyperhypo

I have my ex employment sipp with Aegon ARC presently at a discounted 0.23% platform fee, invested in a variety of multi asset funds and cash. I'm considering moving as i find the s/w difficult to manage (although they do split uncrystallised and crystallised assets which is helpful to me), and they make a fixed drawdown charge (£75 per annum for any number of withdrawals).

Personally i'm not averse to paying a bit more platform ..i'm looking at Fidelity at 0.35%..if it appears to offer better usability with no drawdown charge. On my level of savings this equates to comparing an annual platform fee of c. £535 (ARC) for £700 (Fidelity), including drawdown and i'm sure i could probably research other options too...but my point is that this doesn't seem a big disparity if it offers a better user experience.

I don't understand the gating system Aegon ARC use...both my uncrystallised and drawdown accounts are in Gate 3, and this seems to restrict access to different fund types, for no obvious reason (to me). I've not yet taken any drawdown income and am in process of making transition from acc to inc...i was surprised to find out that Investment Trusts, for example , aren't available in drawdown. Moreover the asset lists displayed in the high level list of ARC funds don't all seem to be available either....i was considering the ex Zurich now Embark Horizon funds for example, only to find i couldn't seem to self select as a choice. I've yet to make my mind up but a move off ARC is likely on the cards soon...

Albermarle

With Fidelity the 0.35% is capped for 'exchange traded products '= Investment trusts; shares & ETF's at £45.
So for example if you had £100K in funds ( OEIC's) you would pay £350 and £100K in Investment trusts only £45. So £395 + £10 a trade for exchange traded products . Fidelity have no other charges at all , not even for paper documents.
If you have over £250 K on the platform  you only pay 0.2% for instead of 0.35%
Hargreaves Landsdown and A J Bell ( youinvest ) have a similar type of charging system but not identical.
You could also look at a fixed charge platform like Interactive investor or a really low cost one like I web, although they have extra charges for drawdown to look out for.

[Deleted User]

The interactive investor tends to be put up as the cheapest platform but in reality you have to be careful. You get one free trade a month but they expire after 3 months. So when you use snowman spreadsheet or the compare the funds website you have to be wary of how you trade.
Having 12 funds and 12 trades will in effect cost you the £9.99 monthly account fee + the £10 a month SIPP fee, but if you do yearly rebalancing then you will only have three free trades available, the rest will cost £9.99 to sell and £9.99 to buy for each rebalance  (or go to one of the more expensive plans)

hyperhypo

Yes thanks both ..i'd been looking at II too, they have a  discount on one element of their fee at present too ! It's an added challenge to making move from acc to inc as well for me, everything up for review at the moment, including current both active and passive multi asset funds. I personally find the fees for different elements off putting and confusing.  There have been a number of really interesting threads on here recently on drawdown strategy , which have provoked me to review the whole disaster, which necessarily involves costs , method , and of course strategy ....

Albermarle

All the companies mentioned offer cashback for transferred pensions from time to time . £200K maybe would get you a few hundred quid, assuming these offers come around again/available at the moment.
It should not be the driving force behind any decision , but worth keeping in mind.