iWeb - seems one of the cheapest Stocks and Shares ISAs - any downsides?

GeoffTF

flopsy1973 said:

OldScientist said:

As others have said, iWeb is a no frills service

1) the website is adequate but not especially easy to navigate for some things
2) The research centre is not great although the info is mostly there, but occasionally difficult to dig out. I tend to use Fidelity for the same info, where it is more accessible (not that I do a lot of research nowadays since my set of funds is settled).
3) While they have a wide selection, some funds are missing (e.g. most of the Lindsell Train funds are not available)
4) Once opened, ISA and GIA accounts are cheap if you don't do much (I withdraw funds twice a year and rebalance based on limits, so not necessarily every year). I should probably whisper the next bit, they never did take the £25 fee, as it was then, for opening the account (I did ask customer services and they told me their accounts department weren't always on the ball! They weren't wrong). 
5) They do not pay interest on cash, which means if you do have a need for holding cash and want some return, then money market funds are the only approach (the overheads are not so bad now the SONIA rate is around 4%).

I have a large cash holding in isa on iweb waiting to deploy so could I use the met market funds you refer to to gain a bit while I'm deciding. ? 

Lots of discussion here and elsewhere, e.g.:

https://monevator.com/money-market-funds/#comments

pafpcg

Doc_N said:

....
Is there any downside to iWeb that I haven't spotted?  ....

It almost looks too good to be true! 

As a client of Iweb since 2015, the downside for me has been the fear that one day HBOS/LBG will decide that Iweb isn't delivering enough profit and hike the fees. 

And with such a large sum invested in our Iweb ISA accounts, my partner & I have always been careful not to do anything with our Halifax/BoS/Lloyds bank accounts which might lead to the dreaded letter informing us of their intention to close all our accounts.

The only operational niggle is the slowness of dividends being credited (a delay of a couple of days is not unusual) and funds from dividends can't be reinvested until the following day.

[Our general investment (non-ISA) accounts are held at Jarvis X-O to diversify away from Iweb.]

GeoffTF

pafpcg said:
The only operational niggle is the slowness of dividends being credited (a delay of a couple of days is not unusual) and funds from dividends can't be reinvested until the following day.

iWeb is relatively good from that point of view. Vanguard's own platform is much worse.

Alexland

If you hold a large amount in fund(s), rather than exchange traded assets, then also consider Lloyds Bank Share Dealing which is almost the same as iWeb but they only charge £1.50 to buy or sell a fund plus a fixed fee of £20 every 6 months. So if you regularly or adhoc invest in one fund a month that's £58 pa at Lloyds versus £60 pa on iWeb. Lloyds have a £1.50 regular invest rate on shares but the adhoc trades are expensive at £11. Crucially there's no setup fee at Lloyds and the cashback incentive ranges between £100 and £1,000 depending on transfer valuation.

https://www.lloydsbank.com/investing/landing-pages/transfer-offer.html