Lightyear Gilts

Money_Mad

I have just seen that the Lightyear platform is now offering a selection of Gilts. This might be of interest to some of you since most other platforms have a fee per trade where as here there are no fees and they seem to have a bigger selection than Freetrade

Has anyone else looked at this and have any comments on it?

masonic

A selection of 20 according to their announcement: https://lightyear.com/en-gb/blog/gilts-on-lightyear

It doesn't look like any are index linked.

FIREDreamer

Freetrade only has 7 by the look of it …

FIREDreamer

Lightyear might get the proceeds of my fixed rate bond with Hargreaves Lansdown Active Savings that matures in a fortnight.

Low coupon gilts might give a better return at 40% tax than another bond and there’s a decent selection on Lightyear.

Money_Mad

Here is the list of gilts on Lightyear

slinger2

I did actually sign up to Lightyear last weekend after reading this thread. Registering seemed straightforward (driving licence scan + selfie). Paid in £1 (via the Lightyear app), then £100 and claimed some free shares (£16 in my case).

I'm interested in low coupon gilts. 9 available up to 1%, none of them index-linked. Each year from 2028 to 2033 + 2035 + 2046 + 2061. Depositing money (via the app) very straightforward. Buying gilts easy too. You're only given the unit price and the total cost for the trade (which match up since there are no fees). Clearly this is the dirty price; you'll have to use giltsyield or similar to back out the clean price.

If you want interest on your uninvested cash you have to move it into a "vault". However, this is very simple. Currently paying 3.84% APY. Vault money is in BlackRock MMF, but there's no obligation to use the vault system.

Haven't tried selling anything yet and haven't received any coupons. I did withdraw my initial £1 which impressively was in my bank account before I could open the bank app. Whether it would be so quick for larger amounts I haven't tried.

Summary: So far so good. With no dealing fees it's obviously more tempting to deal in smaller amounts. Bought some gilts through Scottish Widows (SWSD) about a month ago. SWSD does offer the full range of gilts but charge £5 per trade. Not very impressed with the SWSD system (reminds me of the Halifax system I used years ago). The SWSD app rarely seems to work for me. May switch the gilts there over to Lightyear in the future, although It'd take a week or so to get the money out of SWSD.

GeoffTF

Not very impressed with the SWSD system (reminds me of the Halifax system I used years ago).

The Halifax and SWSD online systems are the same apart from the colour and some minor differences. They are both run by Halifax Share Dealing Limited, which is owned by Lloyds Banking Group. I have not had any serious problems in over fifteen years. I have not tried the app.

PixelPound

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82153916#Comment_82153916

Freetrade had more when they first added gilts, but some have matured and not be replaced. A couple of those left mature in 2028, and I wonder if they will be down to just 5 then.

PixelPound

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82170911#Comment_82170911

Lightyear held a webinar with the guy from the pensioncraft channel to promote their gilts.

Some useful takeaways :

• This is their initial offering, they hoped to add more
• Most of the initial offering is those within 10 years as they believe a lot of interest will be from those wanting to build a gilt ladder for retirement
• Wanted to offer mixture of coupons as realise some wanting low coupon in GIA
• Haven't looked at index linked yet but if there's the demand will look into it and Romen agreed he'd be willing to help them understand how they work.

I really like the interface they've developed for them, gives you a lot of information.

masonic

"Haven't looked at index linked yet but if there's the demand will look into it and Romen agreed he'd be willing to help them understand how they work."

Hmm, I wonder how we register demand.

fire_in_progress

I bought a conventional gilt (T29K) using Lightyear's app this morning. I have to say I was not particularly impressed, mainly due to poor user interface.

To start with, I had difficulty with sending cash into my GIA from my bank account. Once you're in the right place, it's easy to do… but it's not intuitive at all how to get there. There is this super-annoying button "Get started" which keeps appearing at every single step and takes up a good chunk of the screen.

A bit easier when I actually bought the bond, but I thought Freetrade was better.

Lastly, about documentation - Lightyear only show the price I paid to buy the bond, whereas Freetrade separates the dirty price from the accrued interest. Doesn't make a material difference, but I thought the amount of extra information offered by Freetrade was nice to have.

In the recent past, I also bought gilts through Scottish Widows (formerly iWeb) - a bit antiquated, but does the job.

I am now in the process of transferring out of Lightyear to Scottish Widows (couldn't find T29K on Freetrade)… I guess I saved 5 pounds, all in all.