II confirm takeover of EQi

Alexland

ivormonee said:

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.

It's also worth remembering that some of the EQi customers have SIPPs so that's an extra £120 pa and for those who don't there's probably a good chance to upsell them into taking the SIPP if they are high worth and paying the base £9.99 anyway. The II SIPP isn't bad if you have a lot in funds and aren't cheapos like us holding an ETF on Fidelity.

holidaypro

You have to factor in all the additional trades that the new EQI customers will make not just the flat monthly fee.

holidaypro

The real problem is for customers that don't have a lot of money in their dealing account. My 18 yr old daughter had a stocks and shares child trust fund with EQI which is valued at £1100 as a child trust fund there were no custody charges. The money is invested in shares which pay dividends. The £120 flat fee structure would virtually wipe out any dividend payments she received. There is not enough money to make regular trades so the value of her fund will go down each year. I am now deciding whether to move her to another broker such as AJ Bell or just cash the ISA in. This is not the way to encourage young people to start investing. I think all the online brokers should have a minimum fund value  before any platform or custody charges kick in. £10,000 would be a sensible start point and thereby not kill the golden goose.

Alexland

holidaypro said:

The real problem is for customers that don't have a lot of money in their dealing account. My 18 yr old daughter had a stocks and shares child trust fund with EQI which is valued at £1100 as a child trust fund there were no custody charges. The money is invested in shares which pay dividends. The £120 flat fee structure would virtually wipe out any dividend payments she received. There is not enough money to make regular trades so the value of her fund will go down each year. I am now deciding whether to move her to another broker such as AJ Bell or just cash the ISA in. This is not the way to encourage young people to start investing. I think all the online brokers should have a minimum fund value  before any platform or custody charges kick in. £10,000 would be a sensible start point and thereby not kill the golden goose.

For that value on a S&S ISA (now she is an adult) she would be better on low percentage charges using Vanguard Investor etc. Alternatively she could use it to start building up a Lifetime ISA (in cash or s&s depending on when it might be used) with a 25% government bonus towards a qualifying property purchase. Certainly not worth paying fixed II charges.

ivormonee

Alexland said:

holidaypro said:

The real problem is for customers that don't have a lot of money in their dealing account. My 18 yr old daughter had a stocks and shares child trust fund with EQI which is valued at £1100 as a child trust fund there were no custody charges. The money is invested in shares which pay dividends. The £120 flat fee structure would virtually wipe out any dividend payments she received. There is not enough money to make regular trades so the value of her fund will go down each year. I am now deciding whether to move her to another broker such as AJ Bell or just cash the ISA in. This is not the way to encourage young people to start investing. I think all the online brokers should have a minimum fund value  before any platform or custody charges kick in. £10,000 would be a sensible start point and thereby not kill the golden goose.

For that value on a S&S ISA (now she is an adult) she would be better on low percentage charges using Vanguard Investor etc. Alternatively she could use it to start building up a Lifetime ISA (in cash or s&s depending on when it might be used) with a 25% government bonus towards a qualifying property purchase. Certainly not worth paying fixed II charges.

Yes, exactly. It would cost next to nothing to do it this way.

pje

I am going to end up paying more as I reinvest my dividends and that cancels my quarterly charge

and I like EQI as all my dealings are downloadable as PDF files

Not happy at all here

csgohan4

Alexland said:

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?

considering HMWO/ SMT and BG's other offerings as well. 

Alexland

csgohan4 said:

considering HMWO/ SMT and BG's other offerings as well. 

I switched our AJ Bell LISAs from LCWL to SWDA which we used to hold in the kids JISAs when they were with Jarvis X-O. That morning SWDA and our holdings in VEVE and HMWO were all down but the price on LCWL hadn't dropped for some reason (the profile the day before had been similar) so I tested the ability to get a real quote and was surprised that I was able to sell LCWL at the pre-drop price and buy into SWDA and the post-drop price so make a small gain even after trade costs. Later that day LCWL had dropped by about the same percentage as the others.

On balance I do prefer SWDA over LCWL as it's much more liquid and seems to have slightly better performance more often than not despite the charges difference possibly due to the tax advantages of being domiciled in Ireland, economies of scale and Blackrock's advanced asset lending scheme.

wakeupalarm

I haven't downloaded my messages before as everything was accessible online.  But looking through them now some of the messages produce error messages and others are missing.  I requested copies of these messages from EQI.

EQI are trying to charge me over £3600 to provide access to my online messages. £12 per message.  They made no mention of this outrageous charge when I initially inquired but are now demanding £3600+ for over 300 messages.

They are claiming its in their terms and conditions, but I haven't requested paper copies only access to the online messages.  Can they legally do this, surely it doesn't cost £12 per message to allow access to online messages?

eskbanker

wakeupalarm said:

I haven't downloaded my messages before as everything was accessible online.  But looking through them now some of the messages produce error messages and others are missing.  I requested copies of these messages from EQI.

EQI are trying to charge me over £3600 to provide access to my online messages. £12 per message.  They made no mention of this outrageous charge when I initially inquired but are now demanding £3600+ for over 300 messages.

They are claiming its in their terms and conditions, but I haven't requested paper copies only access to the online messages.  Can they legally do this, surely it doesn't cost £12 per message to allow access to online messages?

If it's in their Ts & Cs then I can't think of any legislation that would prevent them from charging this, although would agree it doesn't exactly sound like value for money!

Why do you need online messages anyway?  You presumably don't need all 300 but if there's anything there that's particularly significant to you then you might be able to secure copies of a reasonable subset via a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act?