Lifetime ISA - EQi or AJ Bell

Speedbird676

I'm planning to open a LISA whilst I'm still the right side of 40. I've narrowed down my platform choice to EQi or AJ Bell. I'll be investing £4,000 as a lump sum into a fund each year. The fund I plan to use is available on both platforms.

What are people's experiences and/or recommendations?

csgohan4

given EQI will be taken over by II, 
https://monevator.com/broker-platform-consolidation/

it may increase fees, who knows, If I was starting out, I would choose Aj Bell, for the certainty anyways. I have an EQI LISA at present.  

Speedbird676

Thanks for pointing that out.

I already have my SIPP and ISA with ii, so if they began offering the LISA with no additional fee it would actually save me money.

Alexland

Speedbird676 said:

I already have my SIPP and ISA with ii, so if they began offering the LISA with no additional fee it would actually save me money.

In which case EQi might be worth a try and if it doesn't work out you can transfer to AJ Bell if still under 40. II were very anti-LISAs which is why they never launched one but I guess they will have no choice but to continue to run the LISAs they have bought with The Share Centre and EQi (unless they resell them to a competitor) although TSC have now stopped offering them to new customers so I would expect EQi to stop accepting new applications soon.

However you might prefer to have your investments spread across several unrelated platforms given the limits of FSCS protection.

For a lump sum annual contribution the AJ Bell charges of 0.25% and two £1.50 trades (one for the lump sum and another for the bonus) are reasonable. Remember to leave a small cash balance to cover fees with growth until you can next contribute. After 3-4 years once the account gets big enough consider switching to an exchange traded investment such as an ETF or IT to benefit from capped fees and still £1.50 trades (rather than £9.95) if you schedule them in advance.

tryingtogetmyheadaround

I have just transferred a little while ago to EQI and everything is fine. My worry now is ii is taking over and do not offer a LISA in their options!!! So after the take over what happens, could they stop serving this type of account and make you transfer or close it down. Being over 40 EQi was the only company I could find that would take on my cash LISA and set up a S&S LISA
If I was under 40 I would set up a new account with AJ Bell for this reason alone.

eskbanker

tryingtogetmyheadaround said:

I have just transferred a little while ago to EQI and everything is fine. My worry now is ii is taking over and do not offer a LISA in their options!!! So after the take over what happens, could they stop serving this type of account and make you transfer or close it down. Being over 40 EQi was the only company I could find that would take on my cash LISA and set up a S&S LISA
If I was under 40 I would set up a new account with AJ Bell for this reason alone.

There is a precedent in II's takeover of Share Centre, but (initially at least) II have retained LISAs among other accounts that they otherwise wouldn't have offered, as per https://www.share.com/ii

Still with The Share Centre?

• If you have a Child Trust Fund, Lifetime ISA, pension or any other account with us that you haven’t heard about moving to ii, your service continues as normal.

csgohan4

I only hope they don't increase the fees. If they do that would be annoying to sell my funds and convert to ETF's at AJ bell

Alexland

eskbanker said:

"Still with The Share Centre?

• If you have a Child Trust Fund, Lifetime ISA, pension or any other account with us that you haven’t heard about moving to ii, your service continues as normal."

Maybe II will not transfer these accounts onto their platform and resell/gift the stubs of TSC/EQi unwanted accounts to someone like Onefamily, etc who already run both products are hardly competition for them?