The Lemon Fool

I've recently received a message from Hargreaves Lansdown regarding my SSAS, as follows:

New legislation (The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive 2 (MiFID II)) requires us to confirm your trust's Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) by 3 January 2018.

An LEI is a unique 20 digit code allocated to your trust by the London Stock Exchange.


The LSE wants to charge me over £100 to obtain an LEI and then £75 per year to keep it active.

Anyone else come across this and know of a cheaper way to obtain and maintain an LEI?

Laughton wrote:I've recently received a message from Hargreaves Lansdown regarding my SSAS, as follows:

New legislation (The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive 2 (MiFID II)) requires us to confirm your trust's Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) by 3 January 2018.

An LEI is a unique 20 digit code allocated to your trust by the London Stock Exchange.


The LSE wants to charge me over £100 to obtain an LEI and then £75 per year to keep it active.

Anyone else come across this and know of a cheaper way to obtain and maintain an LEI?

There was a short thread on this over at Brokers. Perhaps if you join the thread over there, the OP can update you if she established anything further.

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=7150

Thanks PD - have added my two pennyworth to that thread.

Laughton wrote:
The LSE wants to charge me over £100 to obtain an LEI and then £75 per year to keep it active.

It might be worth asking whether this ongoing cost ceases when the UK leaves the EU. And if not, why not?

Perhaps rattle the cage of your MP if you don't get a satisfactory answer.

Laughton wrote:I've recently received a message from Hargreaves Lansdown regarding my SSAS, as follows:

New legislation (The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive 2 (MiFID II)) requires us to confirm your trust's Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) by 3 January 2018.

An LEI is a unique 20 digit code allocated to your trust by the London Stock Exchange.


The LSE wants to charge me over £100 to obtain an LEI and then £75 per year to keep it active.

Anyone else come across this and know of a cheaper way to obtain and maintain an LEI?

Laughton

This is poor customer advice, and worthy of a complaint IMO.

Under the MIFID2 directive HL, and possibly your SSAS, bear the obligation to undertake transaction reporting including LEIs to the market authority, not you.

Cheers
M

(Long time sufferer of implementing EMIR + MIFID reporting on various IT systems)

In my case (the SSAS) that's the same as me so if it's a cost to the SSAS then it's me that ends up paying.

Laughton wrote:In my case (the SSAS) that's the same as me so if it's a cost to the SSAS then it's me that ends up paying.

Ah understood, however at the very least HL should be "doing the work" to sort this out for you, even if any cost is passed on.

Does your SSAS itself have any obligation to report also, out of interest?

Not sure - I get charges from the Administrator for various pension reporting throughout the year.
I assume that this latest scheme will just be an annual registration process and once done (and annually renewed) there will be no additional reporting involved. HL (or any other broker) will take responsibility for ensuring they only deal on behalf of entities that are registered.

Out of interest, does Hargreaves Lansdown allow investors other than personal investors, such as companies and trusts?

My SSAS (Small Self Administered Scheme) which is a pension trust has an account with them.
It's had an account for years - not sure if they still accept new schemes or not but don't see why they wouldn't.
There's no additional work for them, having said that, it's almost impossible to find a bank offering high interest savings accounts for pension schemes.

Investec offer a 12 month fixed term deposit for pension schemes at 1.75% (minimum £25k) and is available within a SSAS.

Cheers, OLTB.

OLTB - many thanks for this. Appears to be protected up to £75,000 which, if fixed for 12 months, would earn me over £1,300 that I'm not getting at the moment.

So, a good find.

Laughton

Laughton wrote:OLTB - many thanks for this. Appears to be protected up to £75,000 which, if fixed for 12 months, would earn me over £1,300 that I'm not getting at the moment.

So, a good find.

Laughton

Pleasure - here's a useful website that tells you what is available for various notice periods and the restrictions on each account https://www.investmentsense.co.uk/accou ... -pensions/

Cheers, OLTB.

So, I am in the process of moving my administrator from Mattioli Woods who are very expensive to ssas practitioners who charge £995 per year to do the administration. They are not though a professional trustee which I didn't think would be a problem but AJ Bell has now told me that they are not prepared to allow the account to remain open without a professional trustee.

That's going to mean selling my AJ Bell holdings or transferring the holdings to another platform @ £25 per holding. Oh dear, yet another cost .

Can anyone who operates a SSAS without a professional trustee suggest another low cost platform (other than Hargreaves Lansdown or iDealing) as still fairly keen to spread the holdinsg amongst more than two platforms (maybe I'm being too cautious).

Laughton wrote:So, I am in the process of moving my administrator from Mattioli Woods who are very expensive to ssas practitioners who charge £995 per year to do the administration. They are not though a professional trustee which I didn't think would be a problem but AJ Bell has now told me that they are not prepared to allow the account to remain open without a professional trustee.

That's going to mean selling my AJ Bell holdings or transferring the holdings to another platform @ £25 per holding. Oh dear, yet another cost .

Can anyone who operates a SSAS without a professional trustee suggest another low cost platform (other than Hargreaves Lansdown or iDealing) as still fairly keen to spread the holdinsg amongst more than two platforms (maybe I'm being too cautious).

Interactive Brokers seem to offer a company account, no idea if they have the same restrictions as AJ Bell. Being a subsidiary of a huge USA company, they dont seem that bothered when I opened a personal account, opened in 24hrs. H&L did not mention any restrictions either last year when I discussed and their share dealing account has no annual charge. LEI number needed for both though, but can be purchased fairly cheaply from Bloomberg.

Thanks cookie.

The Scheme already has an account with HL so may transfer AJ Bell holdings over there but I was quite keen to have more than 2 broking accounts "just in case". My other account is with iDealing.com

Already have LEI and and am registered with HMRC as Scheme Administrator (with SSAS Practitioners doing the technical stuff).

It's only a simple straightforward scheme with 2 beneficiaries (my wife and I) who are also the only trustees.

Laughton wrote:Thanks cookie.

The Scheme already has an account with HL so may transfer AJ Bell holdings over there but I was quite keen to have more than 2 broking accounts "just in case". My other account is with iDealing.com

Already have LEI and and am registered with HMRC as Scheme Administrator (with SSAS Practitioners doing the technical stuff).

It's only a simple straightforward scheme with 2 beneficiaries (my wife and I) who are also the only trustees.

I too have a SSAS, but I do my own administration and save myself the £1k/yr. The actual work is extremely simple once setup, one fairly simple return a year (if you do SA then you would have no trouble).

I setup some P2P accounts through the SSAS very easily (not even a LEI needed), although I wouldn't necessarily recommend this now and I am almost out of all these loans now. I used a SIPP instead when I moved from SSAS P2P to share dealing, X-O SIPP at the time refunded annual and transfer fees, which was cheaper than a LEI and hassle of setting up a SSAS share dealing account

I kept the SSAS going as it had limited admin (yearly return) and I wondered if I could transfer as cash back when retire and save on draw down costs of SIPP (didn't look into if this was possible)

I am planning to setup a share trading account and purchase an LEI for my company though, similar to SSAS trading account. Although that looks like it maybe more difficult going forward!

Out of interest, someone else on here mentioned that they haven't renewed their LEI and haven't been asked to show renewal by share dealing site

Please feel free to stay in touch (PM or public). There aren't many of us SSAS owners, so sharing experience is limited but often very enlightening!

I'm doing it in stages (maybe). My bill from MW for the last twelve months came to something in excess of £7,000 which was a hefty increase on the previous year and I'd finally had enough.

So £995 seemed like quite a bargain for the next 12 months.

"if you do SA" - sorry but what's "SA"?

I had heard about not being asked for proof of renewed LEI but did it anyway. Cheapest I could find in the Uk was £39 but in the back of my mind I seem to remember someone saying they'd done it via Greece or similar for £12.

Laughton wrote:I'm doing it in stages (maybe). My bill from MW for the last twelve months came to something in excess of £7,000 which was a hefty increase on the previous year and I'd finally had enough.

So £995 seemed like quite a bargain for the next 12 months.

"if you do SA" - sorry but what's "SA"?

I had heard about not being asked for proof of renewed LEI but did it anyway. Cheapest I could find in the Uk was £39 but in the back of my mind I seem to remember someone saying they'd done it via Greece or similar for £12.

SA = Self Assessment

Who in UK for £39?
I looked at the Greek one, but it was not at all straight forward

Doh! Self Assessment. Yes, I cope with that. I even manage to complete Corporation Tax CT600s so may think again about annual returns foir the SSAS when my already paid for first year with SSAS Practitioner runs out.

I seem to remember though that when I registered with HMRC as a Pension Scheme Administrator I had to certify that I was either completely au fait with pension scheme regulations/law or appoint someone who was to take care of the technical aspect. Not sure where that would leave me if I managed returns myself and then made a technical mistake.

https://www.legalentityidentifier.co.uk/lei-renewal/

It's £59 to renew for 1 year or discounts for multiple years.