Barclays Stockbrokers move to new Smart Investor Platform - A lesson in how not to do IT!

Hi Peter G thanks for the reply. Sorry i wasn't clear, all of the 450k is in stocks not funds. Under Barclays Stockbrokers, for ten years I never incurred any holding fees whatsoever, except the normal trade fees [11 quid per transaction from memory]. This was because normal fees were not levied if a certain amount of transactions occurred over a quarter What Barclays have done is in effect saddled me with a holding fee [capped at 200k] which equates to about 250 quid a year. I have n o problem with the fee per se, except that I find the website a nightmare to use and therefore don't use it at all - except for transactions. The reason I am here on Stockopedia is that i need prompt and reliable access to my holdings, it takes five seconds to login to Stockopedia, I have spent hours per day logging in to Barclays, i seem to be one of the few that still has login problems. Anyway, i really like Stockopedia and its facilities.

For an investor like me with 450k in the market and many trades per year, the new "Smart Investor" site is the most expensive of all of them. Embarrassed barclays have capped the fees at 200,000, but thats still over 250 quid a year, just for holding funds.

I'm not quite in the same position as you as my holdings are mostly in stocks not funds, though it leaves my annual fee pretty much where yours is. I don't regard myself as trading "many" times a year, and yet the halving in commissions wipes out about 50% of the fee increase. For me apart from the obvious debacle of the changeover, I continue to find the service from Barclays good and the prices I get when trading smaller caps as good or often better than I get elsewhere, so for what is in fact a very small increase in percentage portfolio terms in total annual costs, including trading, I'm quite happy to stay where I am. Plus of course I can now transfer out at any time I want cost free, should I ever decide I'm not longer happy.

If you do "many" trades a year in the sense that I'd take that I would think that you are likely to be no worse off, and possibly better of in terms of total fees. 

Peter

Thanks, michael1962. From memory Barclays Stockbrokers used to take about 3 working days to transfer funds out to a normal linked current account; hopefully that hasn't changed though I assume one now has to transfer from the Investment account to the linked Barclays current account as an intermediate step. From that point, it's then a normal same-day online banking transfer (subject to daily transfer limits).

I wouldn't riskinstructing them to transfer cash directly to another broker account - back in October it took them nearly 6 weeks to transfer a wodge of cash from my Barclays ISA to another established ISA! Fortunately (?!) for me I have sufficient accumulated losses so this tedious route to avoiding out of market exposure won't trigger an untimely CGT liability.

Also, i can't help but conclude that Barclays have broken some rules in the way they have dealt with their debacle. How can they unilaterally impose [new] fees for the advertised [alleged] additional service they have clearly failed to provide. It is also clear that technology exists [HL and Stockopedia for example] for Barclays to have been able to provide the additional services they allege that Smart Investor would provide - Barclays have clearly failed in that regard. In addition, when the problems of transfer became clear, knuckleheads like me were forced to remain with Smart investor for fear of being locked out of the market, the alternative was to accept some [at Barclay's discretion] derogatory compensation of 150 -200 pounds. He doth protest, it seems the only solution is to bed and breakfast investments, selling from Barclays and re-purchasing on another provider's platform as fast as Barclays internal policies dictate [they can take a week or two to transfer cash amount to nominated accounts]. English law is quite clear on this: where a breach of a contractual obligation has occurred, then the injured party is entitled to be put into a financial position as if and to the identical extent the breach had not occurred - that would mean reimbursement of all selling and re-purchasing costs and reimbursement of capital gains tax liabilities.

For an investor like me with 450k in the market and many trades per year, the new "Smart Investor" site is the most expensive of all of them. Embarrassed barclays have capped the fees at 200,000, but thats still over 250 quid a year, just for holding funds. The site itself is absolutely and abysmally useless,I have been forced to take out a 200 quid a year subscription to Stockopedia just to keep prudent track of my 22 stocks. Logging in and [automatic] logouts during trading] are particularly distressing events. I am held to ransom because transferring accounts to HL for example will take as quoted by Barclays "6 - 8 weeks if things run smoothly" so can't afford to be out of the market whilst so much going on with Provi and Capita and Ladbrokes etc etc. Shame really because Barclays Stockbrokers was really really good before they meddled with it and it became Smart Investor. Barclays should be ashamed of themselves - having a Provvy moment.

Take a look at our blog: ShareSoc will Demand Action from the FCA over Account Switching Delays
https://www.sharesoc.org/blog/brokers/sharesoc-demands-action-fca-switching-delays/

This may be useful and of interest!

1.5% on overseas share IS steep and it's surprisingly common.
I believe I was paying 0.5% with at least one of my brokers 10 years ago, then both Halifax and TD Direct put the charge up, with TD Direct charging as much as 2% at one point (if I am not mistaken), although they backtracked to 1.5%.
The idea of losing a total of 4% when buying & selling put me off, so I just stopped buying overseas stocks with them.

The whole thing is price gouging. As a benchmark, I can transfer money from the UK to an overseas bank account with Transferwise for under 0.5% total loss. I believe dedicated forex trading accounts have a much tighter spread.

I use HL, they are not cheap but seem to be cheaper than Barclay's. Probably a few features missing such as "trailing stop losses". The service is good, if you send an e-mail you usually get a response within a day, sometimes they will ring up up at home. They have a few problems with prices, this is partly due to Aim but also closing prices now always correct. Buying and selling usually works OK. You can see their website without registering. I had a problem with Bed and ISA at start of tax year, took 4 days to complete. Their charges on funds maybe higher than other brokers, I don't hold many funds myself. One gripe is their forex charge is 1.5% on overseas shares which I find a bit steep.

What makes it worse is senior guy saying to the Sunday Times that there is nothing wrong with Smart Investor. If he cannot see the disaster and thinks the only problems relate to customers being unable to access their accounts he is in cuckoo land and that in itself makes me think it is time to move my holdings elsewhere

I am considering Hargreaves Lansdown, Equiniti, and Share Centre. Does anyone have any views on these?

Thankfully I'm not a customer, but Barclays deserve to have people leaving for this.

I don't know what the hell their IT people were thinking, but common sense would suggest the new platform should be tested on a small percentage of their customers, then when it's working well & customers are happy, just roll it out to the rest of them at a few percent a day.

Fwiw I got straight through to barclays support on the 0800 number today (Sunday 10th).

I have always found AJ Bell (You Invest) to be very good, I have SIPP and ISA with them. Recently I have been also using IG for ISA and normal stock account. IG allow you to buy using DMA - this means you can put an offer to buy at the bid price, which saves you a lot on shares with a wide spread.

I think HL is cheaper now than Barclays, with no charge for holding shares and max of £45 per annum for shares in an ISA. I agree HL charges can be a bit complex. Loads seem to be leaving Barclays. HL are not perfect but their customer service is pretty good.

I have personally found Interactive Investor to be very good. Hargreaves are a bit more expensive but do provide extra services I think. I think Hargreaves' charging structure is a bit complex.