Interactive Investor SIPP

Shimrod

Cobbler_tone said:

I have no choice but I like the L&G platform. I find it user friendly with a number of workplace funds at the moment. Surely, if you are a regular user (i.e. not the Wolf of Wall Street) there has to become a point when you are spoilt for choice. My fees last year for around £100k were £150. Once I retire I will certainly consider their products.

Your company might have negotiated better platform charges, especially if it has many members. I was paying around 0.2% on my L&G pension - around £700pa before I transferred. With ii I am paying £230 (or will be, I am still in my free year).

There was a limited choice of L&G funds - although fine for what I wanted, but if you wanted to use any other provider's funds, the fund charges were significant - so you were in effect limited to the L&G funds.

When it comes to withdrawing, the L&G workplace pension I had was limited - it supported UFPLS but if you wanted to do flexi-drawdown you only got one chance to crystalise funds - so if you chose to take only 10% tax free cash, the rest of the fund was crystalised and you lost the opportunity to take that other 15% tax-free.

Rich1976

jimjames said:

Rich1976 said:

Having used HL for almost 20 years without issue, whilst I am saving on charges , the rest of ii is a let down imho

There are a few quirks with ii but I wouldn't describe them as a let down. It's certainly a significant saving from HL though. For cash you can setup a regular monthly investment that doesn't cost. Means any spare cash will be invested but if not enough there then it won't try until the next month.

As I said it’s my opinion. Other people will have other views.

For me I just find it clunky. I don’t want to have to log in every month to invest the tax relief. I also don’t like that I have to pay £3.99 or whatever it is to invest it when the monthly direct debit is free.

Rich1976

jimjames said:

NoMore said:

Just to be clear the free monthly investing amount is not related to your contribution, you can set it to what you want, as long as you have enough cash available for that month to make it.

And the beauty of it is that if the money is there it will invest it, if it's not it won't do anything and won't try to so it's ideal for mopping up balances for free. You can even set multiple investments at different amounts and set the priority order for them to be executed if cash is available.

Fair enough but sounds a bit overly complicated .

maybe ii is not designed for people like me but to more active investors and maybe they are not the provider for me.

i just wanted a set and forget where I can just look at the fund value a couple of times a year.

Pat38493

Rich1976 said:

jimjames said:

NoMore said:

Just to be clear the free monthly investing amount is not related to your contribution, you can set it to what you want, as long as you have enough cash available for that month to make it.

And the beauty of it is that if the money is there it will invest it, if it's not it won't do anything and won't try to so it's ideal for mopping up balances for free. You can even set multiple investments at different amounts and set the priority order for them to be executed if cash is available.

Fair enough but sounds a bit overly complicated .

maybe ii is not designed for people like me but to more active investors and maybe they are not the provider for me.

i just wanted a set and forget where I can just look at the fund value a couple of times a year.

But you can do that by setting up what a couple of posters described above.  I suspect that if this happened automatically for you with Hargreaves, it was only because they have a similar setting which defaults to being switched on.

MetaPhysical

Rich1976 said:

I moved to ii a few months ago but not particularly keen on them. 

The big disadvantage for me is investing monthly into the Sipp by direct debit , I have only found out recently that they do not invest the tax relief and just leave it sitting uninvested as I have discovered about 4 months worth of tax relief sitting there doing nothing. I queried this with them to be told it is up to me to invest it, which I find strange considering other providers invest the tax relief in the same funds as the monthly contribution. I also have no way of knowing when the tax relief will arrive so don’t want to keep checking my account all the while.

i also find their online interface very clunky and too many menu options. It seems more geared to share investors with the Sipp functionality bolted on.

I also don’t like they sit on your monthly contribution for about 3 weeks until the first Wednesday of the following month.

Having used HL for almost 20 years without issue, whilst I am saving on charges , the rest of ii is a let down imho

The other thing is that you will pay a £3.99 trading fee to reinvest the money unless you regularly re-invest the dividends in which case it is free.

MallyGirl

So just use the free regular investment option. You never need to login once it is setup.