Vanguard: New Minimum Monthly Account charge

Section62

boingy said:

TheLastMongoose said:

I'm guessing a lot of us have left Vanguard now. 

I think that's mostly not true. A few vocal folks will have left, a few others will have said that they are leaving but not done so The vast majority of folks are unaffected by the change because they are already paying more than that minimum fee. Vanguard will have set that threshold very carefully.

How else would you explain Vanguard's change to the implementation date and minimum fee amnesty for those choosing to leave?

Seems fairly likely it is a response to a larger (than expected?) number of customers deciding to leave Vanguard and them not having the capacity to process the transfers before the original planned implementation of the new fee structure.  For people like myself still waiting to be moved, being charged an increased fee when I was prevented from leaving before the new fee was applied would be reasonsble grounds for complaint, and I rather suspect Vanguard's new generosity has something to do with not wanting the bad publicity that might come with a flood of complaints.

I don't think TheLastMongoose was referring to Vanguard's entire customer base when they said 'a lot of us'... more likely just those who were affected and/or those who frequent this forum.

And for those folks moving to the "new" providers like T212 or InvestEngine, what do you think they are going to do once they have plenty of customers? Yep, They'll start charging more because they need to stay in business.

At which point folks would be well advised to look around to see whether they can save money by transferring to a different provider.  This is MSE after all.

jimjames

Section62 said:

boingy said:

TheLastMongoose said:

I'm guessing a lot of us have left Vanguard now. 

I think that's mostly not true. A few vocal folks will have left, a few others will have said that they are leaving but not done so The vast majority of folks are unaffected by the change because they are already paying more than that minimum fee. Vanguard will have set that threshold very carefully.

How else would you explain Vanguard's change to the implementation date and minimum fee amnesty for those choosing to leave?

Vanguard were already slow at transfers before these changes, I suspect any increase would swamp them. They probably didn't have a lot of choice in the decision to delay implementing because if you've given notice of the increase, the person responds by requesting to move and you don't action it before the increase applies then I'd imagine that would be an upheld complaint.

I wasn't affected by the changes initially but saw an offer to move SIPP to ii so put that in motion. Then realised my ISA was below the threshold so am moving that away as well. Without the change I would probably have stayed and kept both ISA and SIPP so they've lost me as a result.

Slinky

I'm just attempting to set up my pension DD with my new Zopa account which gives 2% cashback on up to £1500 of direct debits a year. I don't have many other DD's which don't already have cashback, so that £30 will help offset the £48 charge.

Vanguard are being a bit slow at recognising Zopa as a UK bank - I think it's in someone's 'to do' pile.

MeteredOut

boingy said:

TheLastMongoose said:

I'm guessing a lot of us have left Vanguard now. 

I think that's mostly not true. A few vocal folks will have left, a few others will have said that they are leaving but not done so The vast majority of folks are unaffected by the change because they are already paying more than that minimum fee. Vanguard will have set that threshold very carefully. And for those folks moving to the "new" providers like T212 or InvestEngine, what do you think they are going to do once they have plenty of customers? Yep, They'll start charging more because they need to stay in business.

Have VG provided (or do you have) figures to back up that assertion?

Albermarle

TheLastMongoose said:

I'm guessing a lot of us have left Vanguard now. For those that have changed platform, have you stuck with Vanguard funds or made changes? As Vanguard have annoyed me with this move, I feel I might stop giving them preferential treatment when it comes to fund / ETF choice.

Try not to allow emotion to affect your investing decisions.
Vanguard made a simple business decision about their UK investment platform. In that it was costing too much to service their smaller customers.
As said in another post, T212, Invest Engine ( currently losing £5Million Pounds a year) will most likely eventually do something similar.
It is just business.

Hoenir

Albermarle said:

TheLastMongoose said:

I'm guessing a lot of us have left Vanguard now. For those that have changed platform, have you stuck with Vanguard funds or made changes? As Vanguard have annoyed me with this move, I feel I might stop giving them preferential treatment when it comes to fund / ETF choice.

Try not to allow emotion to affect your investing decisions.
Vanguard made a simple business decision about their UK investment platform. In that it was costing too much to service their smaller customers.
As said in another post, T212, Invest Engine ( currently losing £5Million Pounds a year) will most likely eventually do something similar.
It is just business.

The full impact of last year's budget is going to ripple far and wide. Ultimately be the consumer that foots the bill. 

Slinky

Hoenir said:

Albermarle said:

TheLastMongoose said:

I'm guessing a lot of us have left Vanguard now. For those that have changed platform, have you stuck with Vanguard funds or made changes? As Vanguard have annoyed me with this move, I feel I might stop giving them preferential treatment when it comes to fund / ETF choice.

Try not to allow emotion to affect your investing decisions.
Vanguard made a simple business decision about their UK investment platform. In that it was costing too much to service their smaller customers.
As said in another post, T212, Invest Engine ( currently losing £5Million Pounds a year) will most likely eventually do something similar.
It is just business.

The full impact of last year's budget is going to ripple far and wide. Ultimately be the consumer that foots the bill. 

I think you underestimate the level of apathy and the CBA factor that a lot of people demonstrate. There's millions, billions probably languishing in exceedingly low paying bank accounts. I for one CBA to move my Vanguard account elsewhere for the sake of the extra couple of pounds it might cost me per month.

boingy

MeteredOut said:

boingy said:

TheLastMongoose said:

I'm guessing a lot of us have left Vanguard now. 

I think that's mostly not true. A few vocal folks will have left, a few others will have said that they are leaving but not done so The vast majority of folks are unaffected by the change because they are already paying more than that minimum fee. Vanguard will have set that threshold very carefully. And for those folks moving to the "new" providers like T212 or InvestEngine, what do you think they are going to do once they have plenty of customers? Yep, They'll start charging more because they need to stay in business.

Have VG provided (or do you have) figures to back up that assertion?

Vanguard have the figures. That's how they decided on that threshold. They know that the change will drive away some customers but those customers will very much be in the minority because Vanguard are not daft. It's business. They need to make money.

london21

Happy with Iweb platform. Moved from Hargreaves Lansdown. 

eskbanker

boingy said:

MeteredOut said:

boingy said:

TheLastMongoose said:

I'm guessing a lot of us have left Vanguard now. 

I think that's mostly not true. A few vocal folks will have left, a few others will have said that they are leaving but not done so The vast majority of folks are unaffected by the change because they are already paying more than that minimum fee. Vanguard will have set that threshold very carefully. And for those folks moving to the "new" providers like T212 or InvestEngine, what do you think they are going to do once they have plenty of customers? Yep, They'll start charging more because they need to stay in business.

Have VG provided (or do you have) figures to back up that assertion?

Vanguard have the figures. That's how they decided on that threshold. They know that the change will drive away some customers but those customers will very much be in the minority because Vanguard are not daft. It's business. They need to make money.

Of course Vanguard have the figures but the question was do you have evidence of them to support the assertion that the vast majority are unaffected, which would signify that the vast majority of their customers have over £32K invested?

I do agree that Vanguard will have done the modelling and will know exactly what percentage of their customer base will pay more under the new fees, and in turn they'll have estimated the size of the subset of those who'll actually be motivated enough to take their business elsewhere, but the thread is full of vague terms about 'some', 'a lot', 'many', 'the majority', etc, and so it's not unreasonable to ask if posters can actually quantify any of these by reference to verifiable statistics, especially one asserting that "The vast majority of folks are unaffected by the change"....