Which sipp platform?

dunstonh

Any update on how long the process will take? I am considering moving my investments from Quilter to ii, but I dont want to be out of the market for a long period of time.

If you use re-registration, you won't be out of the market at all.   If you use cash transfer, with Quilter being the ceding scheme, you will be out of the market for about a week.

L9XSS

Transferred from Pension Bee and AJBell to Vanguard (both cash transfers). Took 10 days maximum with decent updates from all three.

MoneySavingGerbil

Both my wife and I had\have SIPP/ISA and general trading accounts with AJ Bell. In contrast with other people's good opionions of them our experience was universally bad. So much so that I wonder if we were just unlucky. When Albermarle mentioned he used Fidelity and had a good experience we both decided to switch and have been very happy with the service. The fee structure seems much better in that if one persons assets with them comes to over £250K combined (i.e. ISA+SIPP+Trading account) then the management charge drops to 0.2% and anyone else with an account at the same address also gets that same rate. In contrast AJ Bell seem to tally ISAs + SIPPs independently meaning if your assets are split between pensions and ISAs or across you and your OH then it's more difficult to hit the lower charge bands.

Our experience with AJ Bell was that things often needed multiple direct messages to get actioned. When we'd finally had enough and initiated a transfer to Fidelity then AJ Bell's confirmation letter said they were transferring it to Hargreaves Lansdown Obviously a mistake, but did kind of confirm our decision to move as right for us.

Fidelity experience so far

• Phone app and web site are excellent
• Account linking is great. My wife can see my ISAs\SIPPs and I can see hers. As you'd expect we just can't action anything on each others accounts
  
• The wealth management service might prove helpful. We've had one free 30-40 min chat so with our assigned wealth manager. I'm not sure he told me anything I didn't know, but if anything happened to me then my wife might lean on them a bit more.
  

Albermarle

When Albermarle mentioned he used Fidelity and had a good experience we both decided to switch and have been very happy with the service. The fee structure seems much better in that if one persons assets with them comes to over £250K combined (i.e. ISA+SIPP+Trading account) then the management charge drops to 0.2% and anyone else with an account at the same address also gets that same rate.

Glad to be of assistance 

Probably worth pointing out that once you hit £250K across the whole platform, the 0.2% applies to all funds, not just the ones above £250K.

Unlike HL ( and AJ Bell ?) where I think you have to hit the £250K target at each account ( SIPPor ISA etc ) and the discounted rate only applies for the funds above £250K .

Of course if you invest mainly in ETF's & investments trusts, the fees drop further for all three providers.

dealyboy

I have found AJ Bell's platform poor, but customer service excellent let down by a number of technical flaws and inconsistencies in the website and operations.

AJ Bell SIPP for 4 years, performed OEIC purchases, PCLS and UFPLS.

arnoldy

I believe HALIFAX outsource their SIPP to AJB. Twice recently I tried to add to my SIPP and it was mired in confusion and delay, the impression I got were the staff were incompetent/inexperienced/struggling. Phone service is a death march, and the finger pointing between HALIFAX and AJB is a sight to behold when things go wrong. However I have a contract with HALIFAX  - not their subcontractors but when the wheels fall off HALIFAX blame AJB and probably vice versa but you dont really know if you are speaking to an Halifax or AJB employee when you do finally get through. I still dont know who was at fault. But I stick with it because the charges are low & inertia.

ian16527

arnoldy said:

I believe HALIFAX outsource their SIPP to AJB. Twice recently I tried to add to my SIPP and it was mired in confusion and delay, the impression I got were the staff were incompetent/inexperienced/struggling. Phone service is a death march, and the finger pointing between HALIFAX and AJB is a sight to behold when things go wrong. However I have a contract with HALIFAX  - not their subcontractors but when the wheels fall off HALIFAX blame AJB and probably vice versa but you dont really know if you are speaking to an Halifax or AJB employee when you do finally get through. I still dont know who was at fault. But I stick with it because the charges are low & inertia.

Thought it was II or Iweb as I thought they owned it or they could have sold it.
Aplologies if i have got it wrong

Albermarle

ian16527 said:

arnoldy said:

I believe HALIFAX outsource their SIPP to AJB. Twice recently I tried to add to my SIPP and it was mired in confusion and delay, the impression I got were the staff were incompetent/inexperienced/struggling. Phone service is a death march, and the finger pointing between HALIFAX and AJB is a sight to behold when things go wrong. However I have a contract with HALIFAX  - not their subcontractors but when the wheels fall off HALIFAX blame AJB and probably vice versa but you dont really know if you are speaking to an Halifax or AJB employee when you do finally get through. I still dont know who was at fault. But I stick with it because the charges are low & inertia.

Thought it was II or Iweb as I thought they owned it or they could have sold it.
Aplologies if i have got it wrong

Iweb also use AJB for their SIPP . I have no experience of this third party handling, but clearly it is an extra level of something to go wrong.
Personally I would be a bit wary of these type of setups.
II do their own pension admin AFAIK

dunstonh

ian16527 said:

arnoldy said:

I believe HALIFAX outsource their SIPP to AJB. Twice recently I tried to add to my SIPP and it was mired in confusion and delay, the impression I got were the staff were incompetent/inexperienced/struggling. Phone service is a death march, and the finger pointing between HALIFAX and AJB is a sight to behold when things go wrong. However I have a contract with HALIFAX  - not their subcontractors but when the wheels fall off HALIFAX blame AJB and probably vice versa but you dont really know if you are speaking to an Halifax or AJB employee when you do finally get through. I still dont know who was at fault. But I stick with it because the charges are low & inertia.

Thought it was II or Iweb as I thought they owned it or they could have sold it.
Aplologies if i have got it wrong

They have a white labelled offering that uses some of AJB back office software.
I don't know much about it but I suspect it is not dissimilar to an intermediary using AJB or any other provider.    i.e. the intermediary does most of the keying in of transactions but the platform provider does the processing.

Scrudgy

SouthCoastBoy said:

Scrudgy said:

I have just initiated a transfer from my employer scheme managed by WTW to ii. 

I am using a pension transfer service to manage the work for me as I had already engaged them for retirement planning and investing advice, and the transfer work was included in the one off fee. I was told to expect minimum 6 weeks, but probably 8-10 for the transfer to be completed. I don’t think he thought WTW were particularly speedy at responding to transfer out requests.

Thats interesting, disappointing but not surprising. 10 weeks out of the market is a long time

So I now have the transfer complete and my money hit the SIPP today.

The whole process took 12 weeks, but this was mostly a lot of behind the scenes faffing about by WTW it seems. However the actual time I was "out of the market" was 7 trading days lost in total. This was from the time the fund was sold, the time it took to settle the money and the BACS transfer. Not too bad I thought.