Fidelity Cashback offer for transfer of ISAs, SIPPs or Investment accounts

incus432

Just noted that this generous cashback offer applies to SIPPs, ISAs and general investment accounts. Transfer must be started before 1 April 2025 and you have to stay for at least 18 months. 

Alexland

Wish there was a lower tier as my biggest accounts are already either with Fidelity or tied up in an II cashback offer.

I've done these Fidelity transfer offers before and they are incredibly good if you can transfer a large lump sum and use their £90 pa cap on holding exchange traded assets. Especially if you keep moving between providers to get this offer multiple times. Sadly I cannot do pension transfers without risking my Fidelity protected access age.

If you are going to pay 0.35% (or 0.20% for Wealth accounts) for 18 months to hold funds the offer is less attractive.

incus432

Yes the cap for ETFs is a really important on AJ Bell too.  Not offered on Charles Stanley who also have a current big cashback offer. I'm really happy with AJB so would be reluctant to move.  The other negative on Fidelity for me is that you can't hold individual gilts.

Alexland

incus432 said:

Yes the cap for ETFs is a really important on AJ Bell too.  Not offered on Charles Stanley who also have a current big cashback offer. I'm really happy with AJB so would be reluctant to move.  The other negative on Fidelity for me is that you can't hold individual gilts.

I'm a happy long term AJ Bell customer too and find the quality of service from both AJ Bell and Fidelity to be comparable as when I phone it usually gets answered by someone that is knowledgeable and they have always both treated me fairly. I am grateful to Fidelity for the free kids accounts.

I have found AJ Bell can be a bit slow with email correspondence but I am spoiled with Fidelity as their wealth manager usually replies within a few hours and has good access to their legal department which was really helpful when preparing the court paperwork for my pension sharing agreement and then later implementing the order. They are also good to talk to if you schedule a financial review and were happy to talk about investments elsewhere and there was no pressure to move more onto their platform.

Its stressful times like the final stages of a divorce negotiation when lawyers fees are clocking up and there was uncertainty on if I was even able to secure the house that Fidelity's quality of service mattered and they even applied no extra charges (my workplace scheme wanted a £1k fee so I didn't share that one). Amazing for £90 pa and 4x£1.50 divi reinvestments although I did get them a £10 trade (£7.50 now) to sell down some ETF units which broke my run of how many years I could go without trading that account - a small game I play with myself.

I did a modest Charles Stanley signup offer earlier this year but their fees are too high for anything serious.

clivep

Our SIPPS have been with X-O Jarvis. We received notification that Jarvis were pulling out of the SIPP market and we allowed the default action of transferring free of charges to AJ Bell which is scheduled to happen tomorrow.

When the transfer is complete I had planned to take advantage of the Fidelity cashback as the investments are all in shares and ETFs so Fidelity annual charges are good.

Thanks to an earlier post on here, I just looked up AJB's cashback offer and it appears that we should qualify for this so no need to switch to Fidelity (at least for 12 months!).

Edit: I've just checked the cashback offerings and Fidelity's is far more generous so we'll probably stick to the original plan.

Alexland

clivep said:

Edit: I've just checked the cashback offerings and Fidelity's is far more generous so we'll probably stick to the original plan.

Maybe check with AJ Bell you qualified and wait until they pay the cashback as they might not bother to claw it back even if the terms allow them to? Fidelity's offer runs for a while although theoretically they could end it early they never have to my knowledge in the past and they have been running this offer periodically for at least 5 years now so it must work for them.

incus432

Alexland said:

... find the quality of service from both AJ Bell and Fidelity to be comparable as when I phone it usually gets answered by someone that is knowledgeable and they have always both treated me fairly.

Good to know. Good customer service and the ability to talk to a knowledgeable person - not just a call handler - are really important and can be overlooked when studying tables of best brokers.  Hard to see the free/ app-based platforms doing well on that.

Alexland

incus432 said:
Good to know. Good customer service and the ability to talk to a knowledgeable person - not just a call handler - are really important and can be overlooked when studying tables of best brokers.  Hard to see the free/ app-based platforms doing well on that.

Yeah it's funny how you develop loyalty to a financial institution from them doing something great (or even only very competently) at a customer service level to help you on the journey of life. Although you need to be careful you are still getting a good deal.

I have a similar loyalty to Cumberland building society as they were the only lender willing to actually listen to how I wanted to organise my finances post-divorce - how I could manage the risk on a larger mortgage, how I expect to repay decades earlier than required and demonstrate the various assets I would have available to support me if I got into difficulties. Others lenders were just rejecting me for that loan amount on basic inflexible lending limits which assumed I had no assets and would have required me to cash in my ISAs and LISA early etc to secure the house.

Stargunner

Quite a bit of my Sipp with HL is in CSH2 which Fidelity don’t seem to offer, they don't seem to offer any Money Market ETF’s. They only offer funds, which would make them quite expensive to hold, due to the fees.

cloud_dog

Stargunner said:

Quite a bit of my Sipp with HL is in CSH2 which Fidelity don’t seem to offer, they don't seem to offer any Money Market ETF’s. They only offer funds, which would make them quite expensive to hold, due to the fees.

Tis the reason we aren't using them, or transferring to them, annoyingly.

I have enquired with them a couple of times over the last few years about offering CSH2, but no joy.

noclaf

Alexland said:

Wish there was a lower tier as my biggest accounts are already either with Fidelity or tied up in an II cashback offer.

This is the situation I am in...so can't take advantage of Fidelity's offer. SIPP/ISA/JISA all with Fidelity, just the LISA with AJBELL and work pension in employer scheme.

I just hope that other major platforms (the 'big' names) don't follow Vanguard in increasing charges.