Hold sipp with 2 providers?

Albermarle

artyboy said:

Somebody said:

artyboy said:

SouthCoastBoy said:

poseidon1 said:

Also worth considering the flat fee structure at  interactive investors. With a total of £1 million across sipp and isa, ii would charge a maximum of £21.99 across both accounts plus you could add an additional General investment account for no additional charge.

As with HL and AJ Bell, no charge for drawdown or UFPLS.

However,  ii does have additional bells and whistles such as £3.99 commission on trades, one free trade each month, £1 charge for automatic income reinvestment, ability to hold foreign stocks in their domestic currencies ( dollars, euros, Swiss francs etc - sipp and gia only ) , and receive and hold dividend income from such stocks in those currencies. As yet neither HL or AJ Bell permit holding foreign currency on their accounts. At present I have an active dollar account with ii receiving dollar dividends on US stocks.

Thanks £21.99 seems remarkably cheap. Is their customer service any good?

Very good in my experience - they are quick responding to secure messages (compared with other more expensive platforms), pick up the phone quickly, and are proactive in reaching out to check in on me - although possibly that's because I've got a fairly large sum with them.

Long term, once I've exhausted all the transfer bonuses, I'm probably going to centralise everything with II...

The prospect of much lower charges along with the recent decent II cashback offer made me move my ISA and SIPP from HL in February.  To be fair some of the HL charges was paid out of loyalty bonuses received.

I chose to have lines transferred in specie and converted where there was no direct match in the class of funds.  I had a couple of HL funds which had to be liquidated as they were not available on II.  The SIPP has fully moved across despite the ISA transfer starting earlier.  Ironically it's a Abrdn (who own II) fund in the ISA that is awaiting conversion and holding up the transfer.  

A couple of gripes:

- I've lost the historical cost information and therefore lost the total gain/loss per stock/fund

- II does not have a daily gain/loss line for the total holding unlike HL

I asked SWMBO to transfer her Standard Life ex-employer plan to II at the time to take advantage of the cashback and she ignored me.  It was only when showing the charges section on the recent SL annual statement received that opened her eyes. She's now waiting for the next cashback offer bettering the current standard £200 from II.  In the meantime I helped draft a note to SL requesting that they consider reducing the charges to 0.2% or below.  Will report back as to their response.

As has often been said here, with platform charges it's not just how much you hold, it's also what types of investment - purely on a charge basis, HL works well for me still as they cap their charges on ETFs (same deal with Fidelity and Charles Stanley)

For completeness.
 A J Bell do the same, Cap is £120 for SIPP and £42 for ISA 
HL is £200 for SIPP and £45 for ISA
Fidelity is £90 for the platform 
Could not find info for Charles Stanley ( not very familiar with them )