II confirm takeover of EQi

eskbanker

Yorkshire_Pud said:

eskbanker said:

ranciduk said:

Decades ago I got free HBOS shares

then a few years later I was contacted and to say that Equiniti was dealing with them and I was given a website address where I could log in and check my share values, statements, dividend preferences etc etc

Will this news affect me then?

No, LBG shares will continue to be maintained via the Shareview portal, which is separate from EQi.

Does the Shareview portal fall under the control of Equiniti? My paperwork for the Lloyds shares I hold says Equiniti.

Yes, Equiniti are retaining their Shareview product, while flogging their separate EQi offering to II.

Clicking the login button at https://www.shareview.co.uk/4/Info/Portfolio/Default/en/Home/Pages/Home.aspx brings up:

Select one of our services

Shareview Portfolio

• Login to your Shareview portfolio account to:

• Easily and securely manage your shareholdings online.

• Monitor your shareholdings and investments value all in one place.

• View a summary providing a complete view of your holdings and employee schemes.

• And much more...

• More information
  Login to Portfolio

  
  

ISAs and investment accounts are now on EQi

• Your Investment Account and / or ISA has moved to the EQi investment platform.

  To access your account, please log in on EQi.
More information

Login to your EQi account

anxiousnow

GPK10 said:

My LISA transfer from Onefamily to EQi has just gone through, pretty smoothly I have to say. I would not be impressed if they sold back to Onefamily!

When did you send the forms off to EQi please GPK10? 

csgohan4

I am already switching my LISAs to AJ Bell, means i will have to invest in ETF's/IT's to save some annual fees, but that's a small price to pay.

I want some certainty with my investments and not worrying about being at the mercy of the platform 

anxiousnow

csgohan4 said:

I am already switching my LISAs to AJ Bell, means i will have to invest in ETF's/IT's to save some annual fees, but that's a small price to pay.

I want some certainty with my investments and not worrying about being at the mercy of the platform 

Would do same if under 40. 

Alexland

csgohan4 said:

I am already switching my LISAs to AJ Bell, means i will have to invest in ETF's/IT's to save some annual fees, but that's a small price to pay.
I want some certainty with my investments and not worrying about being at the mercy of the platform 

Welcome to the AJ Bell LISA club. Since they slightly increased the fee cap on 1st Jan then I would hope the charges should be stable for at least a few years. They still write favourably about LISAs in their Shares magazine for which customers get free access each week assuming they have at least £4k in the account. I don't read Shares in detail but have a quick look if I remember. It's probably better to be with a provider that likes LISAs rather than one that is indifferent like HL or hates them like II seem to.

Which ETF/IT will you be using and will you be using the regular trading (then cancel after) feature to reduce costs?

GPK10

anxiousnow said:

GPK10 said:

My LISA transfer from Onefamily to EQi has just gone through, pretty smoothly I have to say. I would not be impressed if they sold back to Onefamily!

When did you send the forms off to EQi please GPK10? 

15th Feb. Transfer received by them on 8th March (ie in 3 weeks) and just waiting for funds to clear

holidaypro

I am am not happy with being forced to move my share dealing accounts to a broker with a more expensive charging structure. The 6 month fee promise is not convincing.
What gets up my nose is that II are paying approx £50M for 50000 EQI accounts i.e. £1000 per account. There is nothing in this deal for shareholders so I don't  want to move and end up paying  more. II state that they will review charges after 6 months and if you have paid more in fees than you would at EQI they will refund the difference. What happens after 6 months moving forward.
Currently EQi offset  all dealing charges against their custody fee. For me personally that means because I do a couple of deals per quarter I end up paying no custody charges at all. With II my custody fee will be £120 per annum.
Also EQI have flexible ISAs which means you can take out money and replace it without losing the ISA tax wrapper, Something II don't do.
I have since found out  that anyone who does not want to move to EQI  can move to any other broker fee free. It seems that Equinity are keeping their Shareview accounts which were migrated to EQI in January. Luckily as i have a Shareview account I can actually merge my EQI ISA account into my Shareview ISA account which means I can stay put on the same charging structure. 

ivormonee

holidaypro said:

 II are paying approx £50M for 50000 EQI accounts i.e. £1000 per account.

Not sure where II's business sense is then if this is the case - at £1,000 per account, with a charge of £120 per year, will take II 1,000/120 = 8 years, roughly, to recoup their cost of acquiring EQi customers. Obviously that's a simple, rough calculation and doesn't take account of dealing fees outside and beyond of the monthly trading credit. Even so, it does rather much look like a few years to recover their cost of takeover, so how does it make sense from a company/ business point of view?

Alexland

EQi customers tend to have high account valuations with the circa 50,000 migrating customers (assume this excludes LISAs then..) having circa £5bn of assets so around £100k each. I expect they have factored in some additional revenue from customers making adhoc trades in volumes above their monthly free trade credit but then that might be offset by people transferring out during the return period. Overall I agree they paid a high price but then Nutmeg seem to have been paying a couple of hundred quid (if you include the money the cashback sites keep) to acquire much less valuable customer accounts with lower ongoing revenue and the Fidelity cashback deals can sometimes cover 10+ years of fees if you use the account carefully. I think some of it's a 'whose got the highest AUM' contest trying to catchup with HL even though it's not that significant if your customers are paying fixed charges.

ivormonee

Alexland said:

it's a 'whose got the highest AUM' contest trying to catchup with HL even though it's not that significant if your customers are paying fixed charges.

The same thought crossed my mind. It does feel like they are all "chasing" AUM. And that feeds into a highly lucrative business model where the platform charges an ad valorem percentage (which seems to apply to nearly all platforms on their funds holdings, with the exception of one). I read the other day that HL's "AUM" is around £120bn, which is more than double the next biggest which, after the takeover of EQi will be II with £50bn according to an earlier post.

As II's charges are fixed for all investment types then it's still not clear what their rationale might be for such a hefty premium on the cost of buying up EQi. To break even after one year, each of the acquired customers would have to place around 122 deals to cover the acquisition cost per customer!