Hargreaves Lansdown transfer obstructions

It's been ages since I meant to post the end of the story about my transfer out of HL. Well not so long in the timescales of HL transfers, maybe

My application to transfer my SIPP from Hargreaves Lansdown to Alliance Trust arrived at Alliance Trust on 16th May 2017. Eventually all funds were transferred and the final step of the cash balance appearing in my Alliance Trust account was on 22nd January 2018. That's an outrageous 251 days to complete a SIPP transfer.

Was Hargreaves Lansdown to blame ? Well, after a slightly sticky start with Alliance Trust someone there actually started giving me regular updates, which was really helpful. In contrast I frequently had to bother HL to get any action or even answers out of them, and their replies were never aligned well with what Alliance Trust were telling me. Typically it looked like letters from Alliance Trust were arriving at HL but HL were then proceeding to lose crucial parts of them. Can I prove this ? Of course not. Should I have complained to the regulator about this ? Probably (then they could have investigated like I can't).

But of course one just breathes a heavy sigh of relief to be finally rid of these incompetents and moves on. But my opinion of Hargreaves Lansdown only slid further down the scale during this whole sorry process.

Others here have pointed out that HL could have no motivation for causing delays. But I would argue that they managed to delay my transfer beyond the date on which they calculate their client numbers (and no-one can dispute their propensity to be boastful !). Also I still have an ISA at HL (no rush to transfer as weighting towards equities means fees are low) and my wife still has SIPP and ISA at HL, so they have effectively delayed the transfer out of those (because we wanted experience of Alliance Trust before moving everything).

Having been through an in specie transfer once, I don't think I'd do it again. A few days out of the market is a price worth paying.

Chordeiles wrote: »

MThe phase where fund managers were re-registering holdings was very visible to me (as I was watching like a hawk !), funds would disappear from the portfolio view at HL to pop up (eventually) at Alliance trust. Yes the time this took was disappointingly long - but a mere "drop in the ocean" compared to the total time the transfer took. Certainly all within the last 50 days, which would have left me out of the market for over 200 days using the "faster" cash transfer method. That would have represented a huge loss of gains (this was last year, remember). I don't dispute that a cash transfer might have been faster, but I certainly don't regret doing the "in-specie" transfer.

You wouldn't have been out of the market for over 200 days if you transferred as cash. It is the reregistration process that slowed everything down.

For a real world example, see this thread, where a fellow long-suffering victim of an in specie transfer from HL to II decided to play it safe and do not one but two ISA transfers as cash (from S&S ISA to cash ISA, then from cash ISA to S&S ISA) in the space of 3 weeks to transfer from II back to HL. That was four years ago and things have sped up since then (but clearly not if transferring in specie)

I find it interesting that the government suggest it should only take 30 days for an S&S ISA transfer, but for a SIPP, which in many cases would hold similar funds etc there is no such guideline, and in very many cases seems to take far far longer.
https://www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts/transferring-your-isa