Topping up funds and H&L site

hyposmurf

Im thinking of topping up my funds monthly that seem to be not performing as well.Ive invsted via Chartwell.Whats the minimum you can top up funds in H&L?Can this be done via the internet,using Chartwell I have to fill forms for direct debits.
Also if I transfer my mini ISA to H&L am I likely to be charged any fees?I believe H&L had an offer whereby theyd cover the fees?
Although Chartwell's fees are lower on many of their funds I'm beginning to find their website a little un user-friendly and has limited detail of funds.

purch

http://www.h-l.co.uk/our_services/fund_account_faq.hl

http://www.h-l.co.uk/our_services/fund_account_transfers.hl

munk

hyposmurf wrote: »

Im thinking of topping up my funds monthly that seem to be not performing as well.Ive invsted via Chartwell.Whats the minimum you can top up funds in H&L?Can this be done via the internet,using Chartwell I have to fill forms for direct debits.

Monthly you can invest from £50. You'd have to write them a letter to instruct them as to which funds you want to pay into monthly or better fill out their monthly payment instruction form.

For just topping up funds with a lump sum, you can do that online ok. The minimum is £1000 per fund, although if you ring them up they'll probably do lump sum investments of less than £1k/fund if you ask nicely They've been pretty accommodating in the past for me with investing less than £1k, really good service IMO.

Also if I transfer my mini ISA to H&L am I likely to be charged any fees?I believe H&L had an offer whereby theyd cover the fees?

They have an 'offer' on at the moment until mid March (11th or 19th or something like that? Can't remember off top of head) where they will pay for any fees incurred in transferring over ISAs. However I'm sure they offer this all year round! When I read about it I thought it was a bit cheeky, 'ACT NOW, SPECIAL OFFER' type of letter came through post but the info was just the same as they send out all year around, free transfers in, they'll pay for any transfer charges etc.

Also if you know anyone who's already in HL, they offer a referral bonus for both parties if you mention that you were referred to them by a current HL client.

hyposmurf

Thanks to both of you going to go away and read over the links sent to.

Aegis

munk wrote: »

Also if you know anyone who's already in HL, they offer a referral bonus for both parties if you mention that you were referred to them by a current HL client.

Do they? That's annoying to hear now, as I know I've been recommending them for ages on here!

munk

Yes it's reasonably well hidden - I can't even find a link to anything about referral on their website. I only found out about it after leafing through the bits that comes with their Investment Times mag. There's a flier with a referrer form on it and it's mentioned on p2 I think of the last Investment Times mag.

Up until last month the bonus was a pair of binoculars(!) for both referrer and the referred - just this month though it seems to have changed to £60 worth of wine vouchers but only for the one doing the referrer. Nice.

Kind of peeved at that, referred someone just last week before I got the flier about the wine vouchers so not sure if I'd get the wine or not, would prefer that to a pair of bins and could share it with the person I referred

Also you don't need to actually fill out a referrer form (or you didn't when I did it last week) - somewhere it says 'alternatively (if you don't want to fill out a form), just ask the person you're referring to indicate that they were referred by you and to add your client ref number when they make their transfer application. Words to that effect.

Hope it works out... will have to see in next few weeks. Shame the referrer bonus is fixed and not proportionate to the amount the person is transferring in though!

Aegis

munk wrote: »

Yes it's reasonably well hidden - I can't even find a link to anything about referral on their website. I only found out about it after leafing through the bits that comes with their Investment Times mag. There's a flier with a referrer form on it and it's mentioned on p2 I think of the last Investment Times mag.

Up until last month the bonus was a pair of binoculars(!) for both referrer and the referred - just this month though it seems to have changed to £60 worth of wine vouchers but only for the one doing the referrer. Nice.

Kind of peeved at that, referred someone just last week before I got the flier about the wine vouchers so not sure if I'd get the wine or not, would prefer that to a pair of bins and could share it with the person I referred

Also you don't need to actually fill out a referrer form (or you didn't when I did it last week) - somewhere it says 'alternatively (if you don't want to fill out a form), just ask the person you're referring to indicate that they were referred by you and to add your client ref number when they make their transfer application. Words to that effect.

Hope it works out... will have to see in next few weeks. Shame the referrer bonus is fixed and not proportionate to the amount the person is transferring in though!

Well, I don't drink so it's not much of an incentive for me to refer using my name!

Would have done for the binoculars!

munk

Doh! Yes that's not much of an incentive.

Turns out the application that had this 'referral bonus' riding on it has stalled now since HL can't transfer Fidelity FundsNetwork holdings through as stock, only as cash Deciding what to do now about it (it's for my Mum who's transferring over). Shame that, looks like she'd end up paying all the initial charges again which wouldn't be huge with HL but still a pain.

jamesd

munk, the normal offer is free transfers as cash, but fees if the company being transferred from charged a transfer out fee.

In Feb they included free stock transfers from many companies that do normally charge a stock transfer out fee. And in my case a request posted on 29 Feb to transfer a fund from Aremis to HL was transferred and in my online account just 6 days later, two of them a weekend. Fast work by both of them. Prior to Feb they had been running a stock transfer fees paid from the loyalty bonus (AMC refund) account offer instead, so not actually free.

munk

Hi jamesd,

Yes, I felt a bit daft when I realized the situation - I spent ages filling out a transfer form for my Mum's portfolio, only to have it returned with a letter saying that transfers from fundsnetwork could only be performed as cash and not stock.

Considering now whether to go ahead with the cash transfer, may be worth it over time even if it does incur initial charges (which is to say the charges involved in bid/offer spreads more than anything given most HL funds are discounted to 0-.25% anyway).

I have my investments with HL and I look after my Mum's for her at Fidelity/fundsnetwork - overall the two are similar in terms of speed, efficiency and customer service IMO. Main reason for wanting to switch mum's portfolio to HL is the lack of a few funds on Fidelity (Ruffer and MFM funds).