Opinions/Experience with Hargreaves Lansdown?

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  • The fees are acceptable to me right now, the difference between paying 0.45% and 0.25% is not worth the hassle of changing, I am a long way off the point where it would make me change.

    I have their LISA and also S&S ISA.

    Other than that I do like their platform.

    On the downside, they are atrocious for shares/ETFs, the fees are out of this world. I learned my lesson and use Degiro instead.

    Just use Degiro for shares and ETFs? And HL for funds?
  • Plus wrote: »
    If you think they're useful, there's a cunning way to get access to HL's tools without paying HL's prices. That's have two accounts.

    Let's say you have 100K. You can have 10K at HL and 90K at iWeb. You can use HL's website for research, their [STRIKE]spam[/STRIKE] valuable newsletters for education, their pretty portfolio tools for analysis, etc. Every time you make a trade you do the same trade at HL and at iWeb.

    At iWeb a trade will cost £5, at HL it'll be free. HL will cost £45 per year while iWeb has no annual fee. Compare that with having the whole pot at HL which will be £450 per year. £405 difference buys you a whole lot of £5 trades. It's akin to buy sample products to taste at Waitrose and then buying a pallet of the ones you like at the cash and carry.

    If you don't like iWeb, the scheme works for any other cheaper broker.

    Exactly what I'm planning to do.... just got to decide on the home for the bigger pot from my cash ISA... is there plenty of funds at iWeb or just shares / ETFs?

    I dont get why Halifax have got iWeb when they have their own branded share dealing sites etc? Or did they buy iWeb at some point? or is it just to have another product of the same thing but under a different brand?

    Funnily enough I've not got any newsletters / spam from HL at all ... yet!
  • I dont get why Halifax have got iWeb when they have their own branded share dealing sites etc?

    It's only like the difference between Austin, Morris, Wolseley, and Riley. Same basic product, different bells and whistles (but not much). So with Halifax you get Halifax Sharedealing, Bank of Scotland Sharedealing and iWEB. Some (very subtle) differences.

    Me, I had my fill of Halifax and the way they worked after having a few mortages with them. Even after I gave up on them I still had to deal with them on my Mum's behalf as she was blind to their faults, even though every new savings account she opened was relegated to a pathetically low-yielding "historic" account just after she opened it.

    I did actually try their online sharedealing service in the very early days. They obviously weren't prepared to pay for bandwidth, it was so slow as to be unusable. Not much changes over the years, this evening iWEB seems to be up but the other two are unreachable.
  • Just came across M&G investments... anyone used them?

    For some reason I can't find their costs which is a bit of a problem unless I'm being blind!!
  • My first investment fund was 'M&G index tracker' which I held for many years until cheaper trackers became available. Never had a problem with them, Account admin and customer service very good.

    They don't charge any extra if you hold M&G investments directly with them, rather than on a separate platform. But they are not a platform provider like for example Fidelity or Hargreaves Lansdown. They only deal with M&G funds.
  • Alexland
    Alexland Posts: 9,653
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    edited 7 November 2017 at 12:23PM
    Yup the M&G Index Tracker currently at 0.46% was one of my first investments too. It added about £3k to my first property deposit if I remember rightly. On reflection they could have called it the UK tracker to make it clearer it was not a global fund. And holding some of your house deposit in 100% equities is a bit risky.

    Still a 70/30 balanced mix of the M&G Index Tracker and M&G Optimal Income currently at 1.41% fund (for bonds it might be worth paying for expertise) in an M&G ISA would be a good investment and less currency sensitive than many popular global mixed asset funds. And the weighted fee would be only slightly more expensive than holding VLS60/80 on HL.

    Ps. the fees on the fund pages on the M&G site look clear.

    Alex
  • My first investment fund was 'M&G index tracker' which I held for many years until cheaper trackers became available. Never had a problem with them, Account admin and customer service very good.

    They don't charge any extra if you hold M&G investments directly with them, rather than on a separate platform. But they are not a platform provider like for example Fidelity or Hargreaves Lansdown. They only deal with M&G funds.

    Ah I see so similar to Fundsmith for example?
    Alexland wrote: »
    Yup the M&G Index Tracker currently at 0.46% was one of my first investments too. It added about £3k to my first property deposit if I remember rightly. On reflection they could have called it the UK tracker to make it clearer it was not a global fund. And holding some of your house deposit in 100% equities is a bit risky.

    Still a 70/30 balanced mix of the M&G Index Tracker and M&G Optimal Income currently at 1.41% fund (for bonds it might be worth paying for expertise) in an M&G ISA would be a good investment and less currency sensitive than many popular global mixed asset funds. And the weighted fee would be only slightly more expensive than holding VLS60/80 on HL.

    Ps. the fees on the fund pages on the M&G site look clear.
    Alex

    Ah I see, I was looking for the management fee like the 0.45% that HL charges?
  • Also... to be clear with iWeb, there is a £25 one off opening fee, then for each FUND (don't want to buy individual shares) I invest in it will cost me £5 ?

    And thats it... no closing fee, or yearly/monthly fees etc?
  • jimjames
    jimjames Posts: 17,532
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    Also... to be clear with iWeb, there is a £25 one off opening fee, then for each FUND (don't want to buy individual shares) I invest in it will cost me £5 ?

    And thats it... no closing fee, or yearly/monthly fees etc?

    To close you'll need to sell each fund so that's another £5 each but no yearly fees at all
    Remember the saying: if it looks too good to be true it almost certainly is.
  • jimjames wrote: »
    To close you'll need to sell each fund so that's another £5 each but no yearly fees at all

    Ah ok, apart from the actual fund charges which would be taken at source in the same way as HL?

    Also in terms of protecting the money, if I ensure I put a bit less than 50K (to allow for accumulation) with each fund it should be protected?
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