IFA versus HL

ZingPowZing wrote: »

newatc wrote: »

ZingPowZing wrote: »

If your fortune is tied up in funds, you are not really a diy investor.

Don't agree with that. If you have investments that you choose ( and not by Financial Advisor ) then you are Doing It Yourself whatever those investments might be.

How does that work? You "choose" a fund to make every decision about the holdings in your investment. How is that "taking back control."?

It is probably fair to say that there are different levels of DIY investing, as with other things in life.

Say you want a new bedroom. You might buy a bespoke fitted wardrobe from a bedroom design service, or use an interior designer's personal shopping service to design your bedroom out of individual furniture pieces from different stores.

Or you might design the room yourself after doing your own research on what's available where for what price.

As an alternative to buying ready-made furniture you might use flat-packed furniture that you build yourself using an instruction pamphlet and pre-included tools and screws.

Or you could take a woodworking course and learn to make dovetail joints, tongue and groove and all that malarky, then buy your own pieces of wood, tools and paint.

A more extreme form of DIY-ing a wardrobe having 'taken back control' from the home furnishings industry starts: "first, plant your tree...".

To furnish my empty bedroom I might like to buy some pre-cut glass and wood, consumables such as nails and screws, and tools like a hammer or chisel. Likewise I might want to use pre-made products in my portfolio such as an asian smaller companies investment trust or an S&P500 tracker, because I don't want to fly to Singapore and start interviewing CEOs, nor call up a broker and ask him to buy me 500 US stocks weighted to the biggest ones.

Whereas you might start by taking your iron ore down to the smelter and then on to the foundry to make your own hammer. We all decide how much we want to 'do ourselves'.

The way the financial services industry works, the first thing they do is divide investors according to their "appetite for risk." Then silo them in fund/s according to their risk profile. So, 1) the fund managers have a ready alibi for the performance of your investment
2) your profile justifies fee-making "churn" as the mkt outlook changes

I take it you're a cynic ?

If I do buy an investment trust which has a strategy of investing in smaller asian companies, to form part of my portfolio, I hope it will invest in smaller asian companies and not just any old company that might in some sense be considered to have a similar risk profile. I'll probably prefer to choose an investment vehicle that charges me a fee that's linked to the amount of assets they're managing for me rather than the quantity of investment or divestment transactions they choose to perform within the portfolio during the year.

Fortunately, most investment managers do use that fee structure for their services.

. As they said and as I have learned with the Woodford fiasco with HL no one is truly independent

That is not correct on two fronts. HL is not independent and does not claim to be independent. They are restricted. Only an IFA is independent.

However, HL's DIY platform provides no advice of any sort. Anything they provide is either information or marketing. Not advice.

Has anyone any experience with hsbc or shall I also speak to IFA to see what they can offer .

HSBC is restricted and not independent.

2.75% is above average for initial charges. On £300k, you would expect around 1% or lower. Some will be greedy and charge more 2-3% but it should be difficult to get 1% or thereabouts.

IFA platforms are generally cheaper than HL. We are finding around 0.15% to 0.25% os the ball park on £300k

newbinvestor wrote: »

I was going to open a Prudential pension and they wanted 5% initial charge, no chance.

Why would you want to open a prudential pension?

Their offering is really aimed at a niche investor and your commments across the threads suggest that you do not fit that particular type of investor.