Which Non-AJ Bell SIPP Platform

Linton

I have a large anmount of money invested with II and have been with them for over10 years.  They have been fine, no problems.  There were a lot of complaints a few years ago, IIRC when HL put their charges up and thousands (a guess) of people tried to transfer at the same time which seemed to overwhelm their admin capabilities.  

Joey_Soap

I think Linton is correct there regarding II. I too moved from HL to II but waited almost a year to wait for the log jam to clear. I have SIPP experience with HL, Close Bros, AJ Bell and II. All of them I can recommend except for Close Bros who are fine but quite "Flintstone" in some respects so I can't recommend them without a caveat.

Chickereeeee

Can anyone telll me how well II handle the managemnt of a SIPP in drawdown? I.e. can crystalising funds, initiating tfls, etc be done online? Are crystallised and non- crystallised holding shown separately? Etc.
Thanks.

EdSwippet

Chickereeeee said:

Can anyone telll me how well II handle the managemnt of a SIPP in drawdown? I.e. can crystalising funds, initiating tfls, etc be done online?

Yes, and no, sort of. The process is paper-based, in that there are forms to fill in over a two or three stage process (request, answer government-mandated(?) questions relating to advice, send all past lifetime allowance used certificates and any protected lifetime allowance certificates and so on, receive and confirm projections of future values). However, post-Covid, you can complete this by downloading the forms, filling in with a PDF editor or similar, and then uploading the completed versions. So, emphatically not a 'one-click' operation, but no actual paper or snail-mail required.

One small additional irritant is that although you use Interactive Investor's web portal to interact with everything, Interactive Investor seem to have to forward most stuff on to Barnett Waddingham, with whom you have no direct contact, so a bit of extra delay there. Neither appeared to drag heels on anything, though. Interactive Investor initially estimated around four weeks end-to-end as the sort of timescale to expect, but the one I did in June took 17 days from start to finish, and of those, six were weekend days, and at least half of the remainder were my own delays in finding a usable PDF editor. Given that it's a 'heavyweight' process in general then, entailing several rounds of manual 'review' by the administrators, all handled about as well as one could realistically hope, particularly when you consider this was mid-lockdown.

While some will doubtless be smoother than others, I'm not sure any pension provider could make -- or perhaps, would bother making -- all of this a completely seamless online operation. It seems that there's too much overhead in the process, and also it's just not a high-volume activity worth investing a lot of time in making efficient. Of course, I don't have experience of many other pension providers. Only one, Aviva, and they ran this pretty much the same way.

So far I've only crystallised and taken the PCLS, so no experience of taking taxable pension withdrawals.

Chickereeeee said:

Are crystallised and non- crystallised holding shown separately?

No. Interactive Investor hold everything in one chunk, and maintain a percentage number that indicates the crystallised and uncrystallised portions. I understand that AJ Bell does the same. HL apparently splits them (as does Aviva, for what it's worth).

Unsegregated means that you cannot hold different things in crystallised and uncrystallised elements. That may or may not matter to you.

Alexland

Chickereeeee said:

- i moved from Fidelity a few years back because of the inflexible way they handled non-funds, their awful way of charging fees per month rather than quarter, and taking fees by selling holdings rather than from income (among other things)

We have Fidelity SIPPs and don't recognise this comment. If income has added to the cash balance they would use that before selling down holdings (they have never sold ours down) but obviously if there is insufficient cash leading up to the fees being charged there would have to be a "point of no return" on which they started selling down holdings to ensure there is sufficient cash in the account to pay fees. It sounds like you might have been trying to run the account with an insufficient cash float to cover the fees? Seems a shame to rule them out because of that as they can be very good value in the right circumstances. With quarterly divi reinvestment on a static lump sum ETF ours are costing £51 pa each.

One of the things that puts me off the II SIPP (in addition to the much higher charges for our near comatose usage pattern) is that 50% of the total ongoing charge (the non-SIPP charge covering ISAs etc) cannot deducted from within the SIPP account with associated tax benefits. We wouldn't get any benefit from the other inclusive account types as it would be too much money in one provider as the SIPP accounts are already many times over the FSCS limits.

Mutton_Geoff

Linton said:

I have a large anmount of money invested with II and have been with them for over10 years.  They have been fine, no problems.  There were a lot of complaints a few years ago, IIRC when HL put their charges up and thousands (a guess) of people tried to transfer at the same time which seemed to overwhelm their admin capabilities.  

I'm happy with Interactive Investor also. I have been with them for many years for my ISA and more recently added a SIPP. I now hold a large 7 figure sum with them and am impressed by their response time to messages, ease of use of the platform and app.

And £240 a year for an ISA and SIPP is offset by free trades and a fraction of what other platforms charge for large holdings, especially if charging on a % basis.

shinytop

Another vote for II.  Once you get used to the process, taking income via flexi drawdown isn't hard and no worse than HL with whom OH has a SIPP.   They are responsive to queries and helpful on the phone.  As Ed points out you can do it online via PDFs but it's a bit of a convoluted process.  

coyrls

Alexland said:

Chickereeeee said:

- i moved from Fidelity a few years back because of the inflexible way they handled non-funds, their awful way of charging fees per month rather than quarter, and taking fees by selling holdings rather than from income (among other things)

One of the things that puts me off the II SIPP (in addition to the much higher charges for our near comatose usage pattern) is that 50% of the total ongoing charge (the non-SIPP charge covering ISAs etc) cannot deducted from within the SIPP account with associated tax benefits. We wouldn't get any benefit from the other inclusive account types as it would be too much money in one provider as the SIPP accounts are already many times over the FSCS limits.

I am at II and all my charges get deducted from within the SIPP.

LHW99

coyrls said:

Alexland said:

Chickereeeee said:

- i moved from Fidelity a few years back because of the inflexible way they handled non-funds, their awful way of charging fees per month rather than quarter, and taking fees by selling holdings rather than from income (among other things)

One of the things that puts me off the II SIPP (in addition to the much higher charges for our near comatose usage pattern) is that 50% of the total ongoing charge (the non-SIPP charge covering ISAs etc) cannot deducted from within the SIPP account with associated tax benefits. We wouldn't get any benefit from the other inclusive account types as it would be too much money in one provider as the SIPP accounts are already many times over the FSCS limits.

I am at II and all my charges get deducted from within the SIPP.

Are you an ex-TD or ex-Allieance customer? I have been with II some years, but they wouldn't take charges from the SIPP last time I asked.

Chickereeeee

Alexland said:

Chickereeeee said:

- i moved from Fidelity a few years back because of the inflexible way they handled non-funds, their awful way of charging fees per month rather than quarter, and taking fees by selling holdings rather than from income (among other things)

We have Fidelity SIPPs and don't recognise this comment. If income has added to the cash balance they would use that before selling down holdings (they have never sold ours down) but obviously if there is insufficient cash leading up to the fees being charged there would have to be a "point of no return" on which they started selling down holdings to ensure there is sufficient cash in the account to pay fees. It sounds like you might have been trying to run the account with an insufficient cash float to cover the fees? Seems a shame to rule them out because of that as they can be very good value in the right circumstances. With quarterly divi reinvestment on a static lump sum ETF ours are costing £51 pa each.

One of the things that puts me off the II SIPP (in addition to the much higher charges for our near comatose usage pattern) is that 50% of the total ongoing charge (the non-SIPP charge covering ISAs etc) cannot deducted from within the SIPP account with associated tax benefits. We wouldn't get any benefit from the other inclusive account types as it would be too much money in one provider as the SIPP accounts are already many times over the FSCS limits.

I had an ISA, rather th a SIPP, set to pay out income. Fidelity would pay out the income, then take fees by selling my largest holding, as there was zero cash balance. As it was an ISA, i could not add cash, even if i had wanted to. Twelve x fees, plus twelve x forced 'sells' per year, multiplied by the number of accounts i had with them got a bit wearing to track....
Aj Bell, once per quarter, deduct fees from income, and are prepared to wait for next divi if  no cash balance.