Platform choice for the move to DIY investing before retirement

DavidT67

Albermarle said:

DavidT67 said:

RichardS said:

Thanks @artyboy what was their cash back offer ?

Hargreaves Landsdown offer

https://www.hl.co.uk/features/register-cashback-c

Thanks for that. Bit strange that as a customer of HL ( for a small amount) they have not e mailed with the offer. Normally they are not shy about sending e mails !

Maybe you've opted out of marketing emails ?  They send us emails almost every day on some subject or other !

Albermarle

DavidT67 said:

Albermarle said:

DavidT67 said:

RichardS said:

Thanks @artyboy what was their cash back offer ?

Hargreaves Landsdown offer

https://www.hl.co.uk/features/register-cashback-c

Thanks for that. Bit strange that as a customer of HL ( for a small amount) they have not e mailed with the offer. Normally they are not shy about sending e mails !

Maybe you've opted out of marketing emails ?  They send us emails almost every day on some subject or other !

I have had about 7 or 8 in November, but no mention of transfer cash back.

OldScientist

RichardS said:

I’m hoping very soon to move into the world of DIY investing, basically passive investing with index funds.  I will have an ISA to transfer (value £26K) and a pension (value £203k). I will be continuing to contribute to these for the next 3-5 years and then at that point start some sort of drawdown, perhaps with portfolios (at least the pension pot anyway) split into some sort of cashflow ladder set up.

I would probably want to try and keep things very simple and just track some sort of global equity index and a bond index and perhaps one additional index of some sort so maybe 3 funds.

My problem is that I just can’t decide on what platform I should be looking to use and I get confused comparing all their different charging methods.  I’m looking at Vanguard, InvestEngine, Interactive Investor, trading212 etc etc.    Does anyone have any clear recommendations for a good platform for my particular use case or any I should avoid?  And should I use one for the ISA and one for the pension or is there a platform that would give lower charges if I used them for both?

As others have said

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

is a good start for comparing the various brokers.

In order to do a proper comparison of costs, you're going to need to have a think about how you are going to approach drawdown/UFPLS and how many funds you would have. For example,

With annual drawdown and three funds, you potentially have 3 transactions per year (a sale of each of the three funds).

With monthly drawdown (and three funds) you potentially have 36 transactions per year (although it would be unlikely that you would be selling each fund on a monthly basis).

With this sort of information, you can go through each broker and work out the approximate annual cost (remembering to include all the different costs, e.g., some platforms charge an annual fee for being in drawdown, others don't and some have fees caps for holding different types of investment, e.g. Fidelity and HL). As a group, brokers certainly don't make this easy!

Customer service might be another consideration - we've used iWeb, Fidelity, and Vanguard without any problems, but I suspect most established platforms are much of a muchness in this regard (they'll have good days and bad!). 

sausage_time

JohnWinder said:

Self management of an investment portfolio is far from easy.’

Yes, but how far? Thankfully not brain surgery far.

Bernstein, who writes very useful and entertaining investing books asserted you need four qualities: an interest; more maths than average (descriptive statistics and probability); knowledge of financial history, and discipline/courage. On the last, in his words, the investing world is littered with the bones of people who knew what to do but couldn’t bring themselves to do it.
Fortunately times have changed and investment products have been commodified in recent years, making it no harder to get good investments than going into a supermarket and choosing a soap from the unnecessarily large selection; they’re all much of a muchness. So, with diversified funds now it matters less what fund you buy when the alternative is choosing some alkali and a tub of fat to make the soap yourself. And although one of the commodities will turn out to have given better returns than a similarly risky commodity, even if the difference is bigger than we’d like there’s nought we can do about it since we don’t know when we first choose.
If one is not up to the task then get an advisor, but don’t let them charge you for making soap when a consistent product comes in one packet. A disciplined diy-er should be able to get better returns than an advised client because it'll cost less. You can help yourself with discipline by having a written plan, with reasons for the choices you’ve made and will in future make. Brain surgery will be in the far distance.

Love the soap analogy!   I prefer Wrights Coal Tar, my partner prefers hand made soaps costing orders of magnitude more.  Both keep me smelling nice.

CRAIGSVILLE1

artyboy said:

I've had £1250 from HL, £1250 from Bestinvest (including some via TopCashback), about £600 from II (multiple offers) £3000 from Nutmeg (with another £3000 to come with another xfr in progress), £350 to come from fidelity, £1500 to come from Charles Stanley. Plus a few other bits and bobs.

It's exceptionally lucrative if you can keep on top of the paperwork and do the sums in terms of net gain versus fees paid. Often holding ETFs rather than funds is the key to reducing platform charges. And if you can transfer in specie then you also remove the market risk - doesn't work with providers like Nutmeg but it's a risk I'm comfortable with.

Anyway good luck...

Do you know if you can do a partial transfer a pension to HL , or does it have to be the whole pension?
e.g £125K in one fund from a pension of £900K to get the £1500 cashback

Thanks

Albermarle

CRAIGSVILLE1 said:

artyboy said:

I've had £1250 from HL, £1250 from Bestinvest (including some via TopCashback), about £600 from II (multiple offers) £3000 from Nutmeg (with another £3000 to come with another xfr in progress), £350 to come from fidelity, £1500 to come from Charles Stanley. Plus a few other bits and bobs.

It's exceptionally lucrative if you can keep on top of the paperwork and do the sums in terms of net gain versus fees paid. Often holding ETFs rather than funds is the key to reducing platform charges. And if you can transfer in specie then you also remove the market risk - doesn't work with providers like Nutmeg but it's a risk I'm comfortable with.

Anyway good luck...

Do you know if you can do a partial transfer a pension to HL , or does it have to be the whole pension?
e.g £125K in one fund from a pension of £900K to get the £1500 cashback

Thanks

I did something similar to get a previous cashback from Fidelity. However the pension provider holding the £900K pension would have to allow partial transfers out.
Also from experience I would not try to transfer out exactly £125K, but increase it a little just to be on the safe side.

CRAIGSVILLE1

Albermarle said:

CRAIGSVILLE1 said:

artyboy said:

I've had £1250 from HL, £1250 from Bestinvest (including some via TopCashback), about £600 from II (multiple offers) £3000 from Nutmeg (with another £3000 to come with another xfr in progress), £350 to come from fidelity, £1500 to come from Charles Stanley. Plus a few other bits and bobs.

It's exceptionally lucrative if you can keep on top of the paperwork and do the sums in terms of net gain versus fees paid. Often holding ETFs rather than funds is the key to reducing platform charges. And if you can transfer in specie then you also remove the market risk - doesn't work with providers like Nutmeg but it's a risk I'm comfortable with.

Anyway good luck...

Do you know if you can do a partial transfer a pension to HL , or does it have to be the whole pension?
e.g £125K in one fund from a pension of £900K to get the £1500 cashback

Thanks

I did something similar to get a previous cashback from Fidelity. However the pension provider holding the £900K pension would have to allow partial transfers out.
Also from experience I would not try to transfer out exactly £125K, but increase it a little just to be on the safe side.

Thanks Albermarle 👍
It's ii that I would be transferring from. 
Will email them to see if they do 
Thanks again 

artyboy

Just to add to that, the only transfer bonus I've seen where the T&Cs explicitly said it had to be a 'full' transfer in, was from Bestinvest. 

And I only noticed that after initiating the transfer so I got in touch with them to cancel it, explained why, and they said they'd pay the cashback anyway... which they did.