Discount Brokers Discussion Area

motiv4

I had HnL for a while before discovering that they take charges from amount reinvested, i found iii's cap to be much much lower. Also their portfolio builder is sosos good for me as i can build my investments so much easier.

I think the costs for HnL are slightly higher, BUT they generally reimburse inital fund purchase charges, whereas iii generally reduce it to 4% from 5%. But given u are charged £10/trade if u want to have stocks and shares as part of ur ISA @ HnL and only Free/1.50 at iii...It becomes quite close.

HnL have wider range of products from what i found... But iii seem to have all the big names covered. It comes down to prefrence really, for strictly funds and trusts i imagine HnL to work out cheaper, if u want few more stocks in there then iii. For me i need some stock exposure so i xfered to iii...

Hope that helps.

jonnets

A couple of quick questions please to anyone following this thread:

If you have say £30,000 with two discount brokers and both use the Co-Funds platform are you over the FSCS £50,000 limit if there was a problem at Co-Funds or do you get two lots of protection as you went through two FSA registered brokers?

What do people think about the new commfreefunds broker? OK to use as FSA registered and in the FSCS or stick with experienced brokers?

Many thanks.

momist

Hi,
There are discussions here about various discount brokers, especially HL and iii. I have also been considering Cavendish, but the mentions of them on here are all outdated.

I am looking to put away ISAs of £5100 this year and again the full allowance less a cash ISA next year, from a redundancy/retirement lump sum. I have specific share funds I want to invest in, so I'm not looking for advice. However, I want to minimise the costs, and therefore maximise the investment.

I'm finding the various charging methods quite confusing, with reverted commission, trail, and charges per trade etc. Since I'm likely to only trade once per year and leave the investment in place until I need to sell to raise cash, which is better?

Cavendish have been removed from Martin's list, but seems well recommended over at candidmoney.
Any views please?

jimjames

If you buy funds then HL have 0% initial charge on many of them. They also rebate part of the annual charge on some funds - ie part of the trail commission, the bit that would be used as commission for the IFA if you had one.

momist

jimjames wrote: »

If you buy funds then HL have 0% initial charge on many of them. They also rebate part of the annual charge on some funds - ie part of the trail commission, the bit that would be used as commission for the IFA if you had one.

Thanks Jim,
Cavendish also rebate the whole of the annual renewal (is that the trail?) and all the initial commission. However, I'm not clear if they will charge me their fee of £25 for one ISA, or for each of the 4 different funds I want to put into it? They don't seem to have an answer service I can ask, as they are keeping their involvement with the investor to an absolute minimum.