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ISA platform choice?

Stocks and Shares ISA , Choosing funds for ISA's, risk factors for funds etc
Investment strategy discussions not dealt with elsewhere.
Relaxer
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ISA platform choice?

#420176

Postby Relaxer » June 17th, 2021, 1:32 pm

I am looking for a new stocks and shares ISA platform for some new savings. Actually Funds - not Stocks.

Fidelity : Currently happy with my Fidelity Pension and ISA combination because I get the 0.2% platform fee. However I have a creeping fear of concentration risk and I feel that I want to use a different platform for this years ISA.

Hargreaves Landsdown – I also have a historical small investment with HL but they charge an eye watering 0.45% platform fee and there seems to be a lot of smoke and mirrors around some of their fund charges which I don’t like.

So what do I choose?
Vanguard looks good at 0.15% platform fee. I appreciate that their range of fund is very limited but I tend to bet on broad sectors anyway and Vangard is as good a place as any to have for example, your Asian Emerging Markets money. Their fund charges also appear to be low and they offer enough choice for me.
Is Vanguard a reasonable choice? Safe? Reliable? Does the tech work?
What else is there ?

wanderer
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420181

Postby wanderer » June 17th, 2021, 1:45 pm

Halifax might be cheapest for funds, even Vanguard funds, and is pretty robust (albeit simple, no frills)

Relaxer
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420182

Postby Relaxer » June 17th, 2021, 1:51 pm

HOLD THE BUS....
Just looked at Interactive Investor.
£9.99 a month looks better than Vanguard's 0.15% platform fee
break even with £80,000 invested?

so same question whats interactive Incvester like? safe, user friendly?, hidden charges ?
any fundamental differences to say Vanguard?

I see ii charge for dealing after the first trade in a given month. I dont trade very often as i am investing in sector trackers and possibly the off bond fund. So that charge doesnt bother me.

AleisterCrowley
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420184

Postby AleisterCrowley » June 17th, 2021, 1:56 pm

Monevator has a useful comparison table
https://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheape ... e-brokers/

(check before you jump - it's been updated recently but things can change..)

Alaric
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420192

Postby Alaric » June 17th, 2021, 2:10 pm

Relaxer wrote:any fundamental differences to say Vanguard?


Isn't Vanguard restricted to the Vanguard range of funds and ETFs whilst ii offers almost everything including foreign markets.

murraypaul
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420193

Postby murraypaul » June 17th, 2021, 2:11 pm

Relaxer wrote:HOLD THE BUS....
Just looked at Interactive Investor.
£9.99 a month looks better than Vanguard's 0.15% platform fee
break even with £80,000 invested?


Halifax is £36 a year, or £3 per month, and if you invest using the regular monthly function (which you can set up and cancel at any time, so you don't have to invest every month), only £2 per trade. Lloyds is very similar (same overall company), and I think slightly cheaper.

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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420195

Postby Dod101 » June 17th, 2021, 2:19 pm

I am a happy user of Interactive Investor, attracted by the flat fees and a free trade each month I think. I have no experience of Halifax or the other Lloyds Bank funds.

Dod

tjh290633
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420196

Postby tjh290633 » June 17th, 2021, 2:23 pm

murraypaul wrote:
Relaxer wrote:HOLD THE BUS....
Just looked at Interactive Investor.
£9.99 a month looks better than Vanguard's 0.15% platform fee
break even with £80,000 invested?


Halifax is £36 a year, or £3 per month, and if you invest using the regular monthly function (which you can set up and cancel at any time, so you don't have to invest every month), only £2 per trade. Lloyds is very similar (same overall company), and I think slightly cheaper.

Lloyds is £20 twice a year. Some other differences from Halifax.

TJH

mc2fool
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420199

Postby mc2fool » June 17th, 2021, 2:58 pm

Relaxer wrote:I see ii charge for dealing after the first trade in a given month.

Not quite, what they do is give you a trading credit (worth £7.99, the cost of a trade) each time you pay the £9.99 monthly fee, and each credit is good for 90 days, after which it expires. So, if you are a mostly buy-and-hold type of investor then you'll likely have 3 trading credits available to you most of the time, so a sell-something-and-buy-something-else will usually be free to you.

There are very very few flat-fee brokers that offer funds (OEICs/UTs), the vast majority that offer funds charge a %age of your portfolio's value.

Note that Halifax, Lloyds Bank, and iWeb are all the same thing, with just minor and mostly cosmetic differences in their web interfaces, and different pricing structures.

For the long term iWeb is the cheapest, as there is no ISA fee at all, and trades are just £5. However, they do currently have a one-off £100 account opening fee (gets you both a dealing a/c and an ISA), and they don't have the even cheaper "regular investing" feature.

pje16
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420203

Postby pje16 » June 17th, 2021, 3:14 pm

Iweb get appalling reviews
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/iweb-s ... ling.co.uk
that put me off them
does anyone here have an account with them and offer their view?

BigB
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420210

Postby BigB » June 17th, 2021, 4:07 pm

pje16 wrote:Iweb get appalling reviews
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/iweb-s ... ling.co.uk
that put me off them
does anyone here have an account with them and offer their view?


I/we have accounts with Iweb and have never had significant issues with them.

The dividends sometimes appear on the same day as other accts with ii and Barclays, sometimes a day or 2 later - never before. I like the Iweb web interface, separation between trading/isa/sipp is good. Transfers into sipp can take a week or two, and maybe 6 weeks for the HMRC credits (down to HMRC mostly I guess). No obvious funding/withdrawal issues with their IT platform.

BigB

pje16
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420213

Postby pje16 » June 17th, 2021, 4:20 pm

OK many thanks
I am with EQI at the moment and we are being transferred to https://www.ii.co.uk/ next week
I'll see how they are and if no good may well give Iweb a try
cheers and thanks once again
Paul

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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420217

Postby nmdhqbc » June 17th, 2021, 4:58 pm

pje16 wrote:Iweb get appalling reviews
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/iweb-s ... ling.co.uk
that put me off them
does anyone here have an account with them and offer their view?


I've never had any major issues. sometimes the dividends take a few day more than i'd expect but i can live with that for the money i'm saving. i really like the simplicity of their fee structure too. £5 a trade when it happens and that's it. in my HL account i'm always having to check that i've enough cash in there for the charges which is annoying. but it really is horses for courses. my current smart phone cost about £150, about a third of any other one i've had in the past. it's by far the best phone i've ever had because my expectations are lower. a slight glitch on a £450 phone and i'm pretty annoyed but not with this one. same goes for iWeb and their low fees. It only cost me £25 to open so that was not such a hurdle as it is now though.

hiriskpaul
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420248

Postby hiriskpaul » June 17th, 2021, 6:38 pm

I have had issues with iWeb, but mostly with the more obscure securities, subordinated debt, convertibles, that kind of thing. I suspect they might not be great for small companies/AIM stocks, but would not really know as I have not traded these. Even when they do support something obscure, they might suddenly change their minds. For example I hold Co-op Group bonds with them but I cannot buy any more (but I can sell). The same thing happened with Balfour Beatty convertible prefs.

I have found in the past that iWeb are very unaccomodating. If you want to trade something and they don't have it listed then they show no interest in getting the thing listed. I asked for a Vanguard ETF to be added a few years ago and just got a computer-says-no response, then a few weeks later I found that the ETF had been added!

One plus point I can think of is that if you cannot trade something online, eg due to size constraints, you do not get stung with a high telephone dealing charge, unlike with some other brokers. The deal is still only £5. Corporate actions seem to be efficiently handled as well, as good as many other cheap brokers I have used and much better than some, eg IG are atrocious when it comes to corporate actions.

Another plus point I can think of is if some fraudulent activity or something did take place, then iWeb is part of Lloyds banking group. Not some VC backed start up outfit.

With Blue-chip shares, ITs, funds, ETFs, etc. iWeb should not be a problem and they are very cheap...

Padders72
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420260

Postby Padders72 » June 17th, 2021, 7:45 pm

I've had no major issues in my ~20 years with ii (from back in the days when they were iii in fact). They seem to have nearly everything available, and while they are not the cheapest, they answer the phone and generally do what they say they are going to. I now have a Freetrade ISA ac for pocket money gambling type stuff, but my big pot will remain with ii for the foreseeable future. I see all sorts of broker horror stories with some of the newer and cheaper outfits but not so much with ii. Indeed many seem to end up being swallowed up by ii. One thing I will say is that their web interface isn't the most intuitive and some things will have you scratching your head.

pje16
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420269

Postby pje16 » June 17th, 2021, 8:09 pm

Thanks @Padders72
I too remember them being iii many moons ago, I used to keep a record of my portfolio on it and read the news articles
I don't have much hair left so best not be scratching my head too much :lol:

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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420280

Postby mc2fool » June 17th, 2021, 8:48 pm

pje16 wrote:Iweb get appalling reviews
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/iweb-s ... ling.co.uk
that put me off them
does anyone here have an account with them and offer their view?

I've used IWeb since 2007 and they are my longest surviving broker. In the interim I also opened an account with SelfTrade, specifically for "sophisticated" investments, but I bailed out of them in disgust when they started asking intrusive questions about their clients' sources of wealth and I moved the account to TD Direct Invest, which was later taken over by Interactive Investor.

I also had an account with Alliance Trust Savings, this time specifically for funds (OEICs/UTs), and that too was taken over by Interactive Investor. So, now I have the IWeb account and an Interactive Investor one, and for "non-sophisticated" investments I'd recommend IWeb, for the reasons already enumerated by others.

nmdhqbc wrote:I've never had any major issues. sometimes the dividends take a few day more than i'd expect

I see from another thread that Halifax/IWeb users have been noticing delays with dividends recently. I haven't paid close attention to the arrival of dividends since I stopped being an income investor (basically since my pensions started rolling in) but when I was I found that dividends always came in on the exact pay day, as per the company's information -- except for BT.A dividends which were always due to be paid on a Monday but always arrived in my IWeb account the previous Friday!

hiriskpaul wrote:I have had issues with iWeb, but mostly with the more obscure securities, subordinated debt, convertibles, that kind of thing. ... Even when they do support something obscure, they might suddenly change their minds. For example I hold Co-op Group bonds with them but I cannot buy any more (but I can sell). The same thing happened with Balfour Beatty convertible prefs.

I think you have experienced the seemingly ever tightening FCA distinction between "retail" and "sophisticated" investments (and lets not get into KIIDs / PRIIPs requirements!). IWeb only does the "retail" stuff, so, e.g. you used to be able to trade warrants through IWeb, but then the FCA decided (as a result of an EU directive I believe) that warrants are "sophisticated", and so IWeb not longer trades them.

hiriskpaul wrote:I have found in the past that iWeb are very unaccomodating. If you want to trade something and they don't have it listed then they show no interest in getting the thing listed. I asked for a Vanguard ETF to be added a few years ago and just got a computer-says-no response, then a few weeks later I found that the ETF had been added!

Ha....funny, I just posted in another thread a few days back that I'd successfully asked IWeb to list an ETF they didn't have before ... although it did take a few times round. ;)

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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420289

Postby hiriskpaul » June 17th, 2021, 9:38 pm

mc2fool wrote:
pje16 wrote:Iweb get appalling reviews
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/iweb-s ... ling.co.uk
that put me off them
does anyone here have an account with them and offer their view?

I've used IWeb since 2007 and they are my longest surviving broker. In the interim I also opened an account with SelfTrade, specifically for "sophisticated" investments, but I bailed out of them in disgust when they started asking intrusive questions about their clients' sources of wealth and I moved the account to TD Direct Invest, which was later taken over by Interactive Investor.

I also had an account with Alliance Trust Savings, this time specifically for funds (OEICs/UTs), and that too was taken over by Interactive Investor. So, now I have the IWeb account and an Interactive Investor one, and for "non-sophisticated" investments I'd recommend IWeb, for the reasons already enumerated by others.

nmdhqbc wrote:I've never had any major issues. sometimes the dividends take a few day more than i'd expect

I see from another thread that Halifax/IWeb users have been noticing delays with dividends recently. I haven't paid close attention to the arrival of dividends since I stopped being an income investor (basically since my pensions started rolling in) but when I was I found that dividends always came in on the exact pay day, as per the company's information -- except for BT.A dividends which were always due to be paid on a Monday but always arrived in my IWeb account the previous Friday!

hiriskpaul wrote:I have had issues with iWeb, but mostly with the more obscure securities, subordinated debt, convertibles, that kind of thing. ... Even when they do support something obscure, they might suddenly change their minds. For example I hold Co-op Group bonds with them but I cannot buy any more (but I can sell). The same thing happened with Balfour Beatty convertible prefs.

I think you have experienced the seemingly ever tightening FCA distinction between "retail" and "sophisticated" investments (and lets not get into KIIDs / PRIIPs requirements!). IWeb only does the "retail" stuff, so, e.g. you used to be able to trade warrants through IWeb, but then the FCA decided (as a result of an EU directive I believe) that warrants are "sophisticated", and so IWeb not longer trades them.

hiriskpaul wrote:I have found in the past that iWeb are very unaccomodating. If you want to trade something and they don't have it listed then they show no interest in getting the thing listed. I asked for a Vanguard ETF to be added a few years ago and just got a computer-says-no response, then a few weeks later I found that the ETF had been added!

Ha....funny, I just posted in another thread a few days back that I'd successfully asked IWeb to list an ETF they didn't have before ... although it did take a few times round. ;)

I had an Alliance Trust account. By far the worst broker I ever experienced. They once put a telephone trade through the wrong account, SIPP instead of trading account or something like that, leaving a cash deficit on the account. I phoned them as soon as the deal showed on the account, within minutes of the deal being done. They then locked all my accounts for several days while they investigated the issue. Total incompetence. I have had similar trivial mistakes at other brokers and had the problem rectified in a few minutes.

ps I agree about the FCA tightening things up and causing difficulties. I also think retail brokers are withdrawing from things that are complicated. HL, which tend be be very good (but expensive) have recently stopped offering PIBS that are not CREST settled. Unlike iWeb though they did tell their customers in advance that they were going to do this!

BobbyD
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420325

Postby BobbyD » June 18th, 2021, 5:54 am

pje16 wrote:Iweb get appalling reviews
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/iweb-s ... ling.co.uk
that put me off them
does anyone here have an account with them and offer their view?


Completely unflashy, basic functionality, but they are cheeeeap, especially for funds. Never had a problem. Not my favourite broker of those I've ever used, but not one of those I've worked up enough disdain for to leave either, and they haven't come close. I wouldn't use them for foreigns though, 1.5% FX.

PrefInvestor
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Re: ISA platform choice?

#420345

Postby PrefInvestor » June 18th, 2021, 8:34 am

Well its true that if you want to invest in OEICs and UTs then you don’t want to be with HL because of their 0.45% charge on those instruments. But if you avoid those instruments (as I do) and invest only on Shares, ITs and ETFs including many from Vanguard then all you pay is £50 for your ISA plus the transaction costs (which are a bit higher than other brokers I know).

To me £9.99 a month for ii (so £120 pa) sounds expensive compared to HL if you don’t do much trading. If you wanted to just hold Vanguard ETFs and NOT Funds (OEICs and UTs) HL would be cheaper. Another feature of ii is their foreign currency accounts which people who trade US shares appreciate.

I have heard mixed reports about iWeb mostly in respect of the set of investments that you can hold, slightly slow service and the user interface (which I have heard it said is pretty dated). But they are certainly cheap and big/reliable – two big plusses.

Just avoid the really small brokers that might go into administration I would say. Choosing them for their lower fees is a false economy IMV.

ATB

Pref


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