Hargreaves Lansdown S&S ISA. Over what period is the 0.45% yearly fee calculated?

vacheron

As per title, Can anyone provide any clarity on how often the HL recalculate and apply their ISA fees?


I'll explain my reason for asking. 

My wife has a Halifax S&S ISA for which she currently pays no annual fees, however making simple transactions on this account is excruciatingly slow, complicated and time consuming. 

This month, to protect against any possible CGT changes, we are considering Bed and ISA'ing some shares which are are currently in her Hargreaves Lansdown GIA, so it would make far more sense to Bed and ISA these shares to a HL ISA, then transfer the resulting HL ISA over to her existing (free) Halifax ISA.

If all goes smoothly, the funds will only be in her HL ISA for a month or so.

If the 0.45 annual charge is calculated monthly we might only pay about £7.50 in charges, but if they are calculated annually, or at the time of deposit, we could be looking at around £100.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Albermarle

I am pretty sure it is monthly.
Have you thought about looking for a S&S ISA provider that is cheaper than HL, but also with a good system/ software. ( There are plenty) 

eskbanker

Charged monthly:

https://www.hl.co.uk/investment-services/isa/savings-interest-rates-and-charges

vacheron

Thanks both for the super fast reply.

@Albermarle It's not the system per-se which causes the problems but rather my wife's dual nationality which, despite her being a British citizen with a UK Passport and having lived here exclusively for over 20 years,  apparently needs every purchase, withdrawal and enquiry through them (even £1) to be escalated to up to, and sanctioned by, the Halifax corporate compliance team before they will action it. Also all actions and trades must be done over the phone and not online.

They are the only provider of the many she has which seems to need all this palaver, but because of this they have agreed to waive all fees, both for telephone trades and for holding her ISA online which she is unable to access online!

DavidT67

vacheron said:

Thanks both for the super fast reply.

@Albermarle It's not the system per-se which causes the problems but rather my wife's dual nationality which, despite her being a British citizen with a UK Passport and having lived here exclusively for over 20 years,  apparently needs every purchase, withdrawal and enquiry through them (even £1) to be escalated to up to, and sanctioned by, the Halifax corporate compliance team before they will action it. Also all actions and trades must be done over the phone and not online.

They are the only provider of the many she has which seems to need all this palaver, but because of this they have agreed to waive all fees, both for telephone trades and for holding her ISA online which she is unable to access online!

Whilst HL charge and collect the platform fee monthly in arrears, I'd have thought it was calculated on the daily balance or average daily balance over a month, rather than a single point within that month.

Guess you are alluding to EU sanctions against RU & BY citizens ?  That's another Brexit bonus and wouldn't apply if we were all still EU citizens.

vacheron

DavidT67 said:

vacheron said:

Thanks both for the super fast reply.

@Albermarle It's not the system per-se which causes the problems but rather my wife's dual nationality which, despite her being a British citizen with a UK Passport and having lived here exclusively for over 20 years,  apparently needs every purchase, withdrawal and enquiry through them (even £1) to be escalated to up to, and sanctioned by, the Halifax corporate compliance team before they will action it. Also all actions and trades must be done over the phone and not online.

They are the only provider of the many she has which seems to need all this palaver, but because of this they have agreed to waive all fees, both for telephone trades and for holding her ISA online which she is unable to access online!

Whilst HL charge and collect the platform fee monthly in arrears, I'd have thought it was calculated on the daily balance or average daily balance over a month, rather than a single point within that month.

Guess you are alluding to EU sanctions against RU & BY citizens ?  That's another Brexit bonus and wouldn't apply if we were all still EU citizens.

Yes, that's the one. However Halifax seem to be the only one actively implementing anything, no one else seems to care! 

DavidT67

vacheron said:

DavidT67 said:

Whilst HL charge and collect the platform fee monthly in arrears, I'd have thought it was calculated on the daily balance or average daily balance over a month, rather than a single point within that month.

Guess you are alluding to EU sanctions against RU & BY citizens ?  That's another Brexit bonus and wouldn't apply if we were all still EU citizens.

Yes, that's the one. However Halifax seem to be the only one actively implementing anything, no one else seems to care! 

Nope, Vanguard, AJ Bell, and others will also refer sanctioned persons to telephone dealing with compliance team approval required.  I'd guess HL isn't aware of your spouse's second citizenship...

vacheron

DavidT67 said:

vacheron said:

DavidT67 said:

Whilst HL charge and collect the platform fee monthly in arrears, I'd have thought it was calculated on the daily balance or average daily balance over a month, rather than a single point within that month.

Guess you are alluding to EU sanctions against RU & BY citizens ?  That's another Brexit bonus and wouldn't apply if we were all still EU citizens.

Yes, that's the one. However Halifax seem to be the only one actively implementing anything, no one else seems to care! 

Nope, Vanguard, AJ Bell, and others will also refer sanctioned persons to telephone dealing with compliance team approval required.  I'd guess HL isn't aware of your spouse's second citizenship...

Useful to know, however it does make a bit of a mockery of the process when it can be circumvented by "just not telling them".

I'd imagine the oligarchs who they should be sanctioning could arrange that pretty easily while the compliance team are busy with the important job of rubber stamping permission to allow my wife (with no financial ties to her home country for over 20 years) to move £3K from her Halifax Stocks and Shares account into her Halifax ISA account. 

masonic

vacheron said:

DavidT67 said:

vacheron said:

DavidT67 said:

Whilst HL charge and collect the platform fee monthly in arrears, I'd have thought it was calculated on the daily balance or average daily balance over a month, rather than a single point within that month.

Guess you are alluding to EU sanctions against RU & BY citizens ?  That's another Brexit bonus and wouldn't apply if we were all still EU citizens.

Yes, that's the one. However Halifax seem to be the only one actively implementing anything, no one else seems to care! 

Nope, Vanguard, AJ Bell, and others will also refer sanctioned persons to telephone dealing with compliance team approval required.  I'd guess HL isn't aware of your spouse's second citizenship...

Useful to know, however it does make a bit of a mockery of the process when it can be circumvented by "just not telling them".

I'd imagine the oligarchs who they should be sanctioning could arrange that pretty easily while the compliance team are busy with the important job of rubber stamping permission to allow my wife (with no financial ties to her home country for over 20 years) to move £3K from her Halifax Stocks and Shares account into her Halifax ISA account. 

Financial institutions will ask about nationality on their application forms. This is on HL's initial page, for example. I don't know for how long they have required customers to provide this information when applying for one of their investment accounts.

They do rely on a level of honesty from dual nationals, but they also compare notes via Cifas, and if someone were caught making a fraudulent application, then that would likely result in trouble across all of their financial relationships.

vacheron

We've always put her dual nationality on everything we have applied for (and just her overseas nationality before she became a british citizen in 2013) but no other institution has applied any measures retrospecitvely so far except for Halifax, despite the 3 or 4 other financial institutions she currently uses all having this information on record.

Last week I transferred approx £50k of GIA shares from my HL account to hers in anticipation of the october CGT changes. All went through in 2 days without any questions being asked at all, however this account was opened well before the Ukraine invasion, but her correct info will still be on file.

masonic

Halifax does tend to take a harder line around compliance issues than other providers. For example, there were several funds they wouldn't let people hold due to them not having the correct cost disclosure document, while other platforms carried on trading them.