Suggestions choosing a stocks and shares isa and platform?

maz_hartley

My husband currently has an isa portfolio with aviva. 

Aviva Investors Mlt-Asst Pl III 2 GBPAcc. Current value of 86k. This was done via an FA who he has ditched as he wants to go diy and pay cheaper fees. And obviously having a large sum he will need a flat fee platform. So can anyone recommend an cheaper alternative to the aviva investors isa and a cheap platform too?

MX5huggy

Review of platforms :- https://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

£86k can only be described as a medium sized ISA, Vanguard charge 0.15% so £130 per year which compares favourably with someone changing £10 per month plus trading fees. The negative for VG is you can only have VG funds.

Alexland

maz_hartley said:

he wants to go diy and pay cheaper fees.

If he is so interested in going DIY how come you are asking for him?

MX5huggy said:

£86k can only be described as a medium sized ISA, Vanguard charge 0.15% so £130 per year which compares favourably with someone changing £10 per month plus trading fees. The negative for VG is you can only have VG funds.

£86k is plenty enough for a fixed price ISA to make sense.

maz_hartley said:

So can anyone recommend an cheaper alternative to the aviva investors isa and a cheap platform too?

The platform provides the ISA wrapper and he would then need to choose suitable investments.
If he wants to stick to traditional funds then Lloyds Share Dealing charge £40 pa and £1.50 per trade. For extra types of investments including ETFs, Investment Trusts and individual company shares then iWeb at £100 setup and £5 per trade (no ongoing charge). Both are basic no-frills offerings run by Halifax Share Dealing. So it depends what assets he wants to own and how frequently he wants to trade.

grumiofoundation

maz_hartley said:

My husband currently has an isa portfolio with aviva. 

Aviva Investors Mlt-Asst Pl III 2 GBPAcc. Current value of 86k. This was done via an FA who he has ditched as he wants to go diy and pay cheaper fees. And obviously having a large sum he will need a flat fee platform. So can anyone recommend an cheaper alternative to the aviva investors isa and a cheap platform too?

What is he going to invest in, and will he be contributing regularly to this ? (caveating with the same question as first asked by Alexland above)

maz_hartley

Alexland said:

maz_hartley said:

he wants to go diy and pay cheaper fees.

If he is so interested in going DIY how come you are asking for him?

MX5huggy said:

£86k can only be described as a medium sized ISA, Vanguard charge 0.15% so £130 per year which compares favourably with someone changing £10 per month plus trading fees. The negative for VG is you can only have VG funds.

£86k is plenty enough for a fixed price ISA to make sense.

maz_hartley said:

So can anyone recommend an cheaper alternative to the aviva investors isa and a cheap platform too?

The platform provides the ISA wrapper and he would then need to choose suitable investments.
If he wants to stick to traditional funds then Lloyds Share Dealing charge £40 pa and £1.50 per trade. For extra types of investments including ETFs, Investment Trusts and individual company shares then iWeb at £100 setup and £5 per trade (no ongoing charge). Both are basic no-frills offerings run by Halifax Share Dealing. So it depends what assets he wants to own and how frequently he wants to trade.

grumiofoundation said:

maz_hartley said:

My husband currently has an isa portfolio with aviva. 

Aviva Investors Mlt-Asst Pl III 2 GBPAcc. Current value of 86k. This was done via an FA who he has ditched as he wants to go diy and pay cheaper fees. And obviously having a large sum he will need a flat fee platform. So can anyone recommend an cheaper alternative to the aviva investors isa and a cheap platform too?

What is he going to invest in, and will he be contributing regularly to this ? (caveating with the same question as first asked by Alexland above)

He doesn’t really fully understand the ins and outs of investments like me and can’t be arsed doing the research so he trusts me to help and I’ll run it by him before going ahead once I’ve got some ideas. He will be depositing a regular monthly sum into a ready made stocks and shares isa. His risk is medium high and he’s 53 years old. He’s basically after low fee platform and cheap s&s isa. I’d say the easiest option would be to go for a similar type of isa to the Aviva Investors Mlt-Asst Pl III 2 GBPAcc isa that is diverse as he wouldn’t have a clue if I asked him as long as the fees aren’t expensive.

Alexland

maz_hartley said:

He doesn’t really fully understand the ins and outs of investments like me and can’t be arsed doing the research so he trusts me to help and I’ll run it by him before going ahead once I’ve got some ideas. He will be depositing a regular monthly sum into a ready made stocks and shares isa. His risk is medium high and he’s 53 years old. He’s basically after low fee platform and cheap s&s isa. I’d say the easiest option would be to go for a similar type of isa to the Aviva Investors Mlt-Asst Pl III 2 GBPAcc isa that is diverse as he wouldn’t have a clue if I asked him as long as the fees aren’t expensive.

For a monthly deposit into an accumulation fund then Lloyds would be £40 pa plus £18 of £1.50 fund trades so £58 pa which would be a platform charge of under 0.1% of £86k each year.

If his risk appetite is medium/high that Aviva Multi Asset fund is pretty tame with roughly 40% shares, 15% bonds, 15% cash and 30% other and he could continue to hold it on Lloyds but Aviva's fund management cost of 0.59% plus internal transaction costs of 0.19% are rather expensive.

https://www.investments.lloydsbank.com/funds-centre/full-fund-range/details/GB00B581Z480

It's easy to find other lower cost multi asset funds from Vanguard, HSBC, Legal & General, etc that have less than 50% stock market exposure but the tricky bit is deciding what to do with the rest of the asset allocation as bonds are looking expensive and the Aviva fund is using the 'other' to broadly diversify the non stock market exposure which would likely lead to the higher management and transaction costs you are seeing. Assuming this is an investment for at least 5+ years it might be worth accepting more volatility and looking at funds with at least 60% stock market exposure accepting they may drop around 25% in a bad crash.

Albermarle

 into a ready made stocks and shares isa. 

Not quite sure what you mean by 'ready made'. With all S&S Isa's you have to choose the investment , It will not do it for you.

Although some ISA platforms make it easy for you and guide you to which investment to choose ( so called robo advisor platforms ) in the end you have to choose the investment.

maz_hartley

Albermarle said:

 into a ready made stocks and shares isa. 

Not quite sure what you mean by 'ready made'. With all S&S Isa's you have to choose the investment , It will not do it for you.

Although some ISA platforms make it easy for you and guide you to which investment to choose ( so called robo advisor platforms ) in the end you have to choose the investment.

Thanks. I meant a managed fund rather than ready made. And I’m just looking for for advice to get some ideas. And thanks for mentioning Lloyds. £40 is cheap for a yearly fee and I’m surprised that it’s not come up when searching investment company fees. I will take a look. 

Alexland

It's worth making some decisions about what he wants to invest in before starting the ISA transfer as some investments are not available on all platforms and for example Lloyds can be expensive for investing in things other than traditional funds.

grumiofoundation

maz_hartley said:

Albermarle said:

 into a ready made stocks and shares isa. 

Not quite sure what you mean by 'ready made'. With all S&S Isa's you have to choose the investment , It will not do it for you.

Although some ISA platforms make it easy for you and guide you to which investment to choose ( so called robo advisor platforms ) in the end you have to choose the investment.

Thanks. I meant a managed fund rather than ready made. And I’m just looking for for advice to get some ideas. And thanks for mentioning Lloyds. £40 is cheap for a yearly fee and I’m surprised that it’s not come up when searching investment company fees. I will take a look. 

As above decide it is generally suggested to decide what investment(s) to buy before deciding the platform (possibly the time to decide which investment(s) was before ditching the advisor!).

Obviously 'managed fund' could mean a lot of different things, presume you mean a managed multi-asset fund as that closely mirrors what currently invested in (whether or not underlying investments within the fund would be all/mostly/some passive trackers)? 

If alternatively if you mean managed as in 'active' management the costs could be significantly higher than for passive investments (which would seem to make it a strange choice as it appears cost was the main reason for ditching advisor?). 


As an aside you say he is 53 years old - why not invest via a pension?

maz_hartley

grumiofoundation said:

maz_hartley said:

Albermarle said:

 into a ready made stocks and shares isa. 

Not quite sure what you mean by 'ready made'. With all S&S Isa's you have to choose the investment , It will not do it for you.

Although some ISA platforms make it easy for you and guide you to which investment to choose ( so called robo advisor platforms ) in the end you have to choose the investment.

Thanks. I meant a managed fund rather than ready made. And I’m just looking for for advice to get some ideas. And thanks for mentioning Lloyds. £40 is cheap for a yearly fee and I’m surprised that it’s not come up when searching investment company fees. I will take a look. 

As above decide it is generally suggested to decide what investment(s) to buy before deciding the platform (possibly the time to decide which investment(s) was before ditching the advisor!).

Obviously 'managed fund' could mean a lot of different things, presume you mean a managed multi-asset fund as that closely mirrors what currently invested in (whether or not underlying investments within the fund would be all/mostly/some passive trackers)? 

If alternatively if you mean managed as in 'active' management the costs could be significantly higher than for passive investments (which would seem to make it a strange choice as it appears cost was the main reason for ditching advisor?). 


As an aside you say he is 53 years old - why not invest via a pension?

He already has a reasonable company pension started when he was 18. He trusts me to sort this and think would be better with an isa. He wouldn’t have any preference as long as the fund has good returns. So just a cheap decent fund with good returns and a low cost platform. My thoughts were something along the lines of maybe ii or iWeb and a diverse global/world fund and passive if active is dearer.