LON:AJB | "not-rubbish" SIPP Broker Recommendations Sought

12th Nov '20 by Antehelion

15 comments 932 reads

In the aftermath of recent trading volume levels that have just caught out AJB and seemingly Halifax and IWeb, I'm looking to move my SIPP holdings away from AJB - they've had good money from me over a few years but seemingly aren't providing a platform service level that I feel I can expect in today's day and age.

or "Shrug" in layman's terms. Its almost as if they just don't care - no direct messaging to keep me updated, no expectation of a 'when' it would be fixed.

It just doesn't feel at all professional for a company looking after vast amounts of people's pensions.

Can anyone recommend a SIPP broker that hasn't disappointed them in recent months?

(one that offers a full spectrum of UK shares, doesn't cost the earth per stock trade [I sometimes trade a number of times a week when I get too excited] and doesn't have extortionate platform fees)

I've been very happy with IG for ISA dealing, is there a close equivalent for SIPP holdings?

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Macro

12th Nov '20

Remember that IG are not a pension administrator themselves.

Their SIPP administrator partner used to be ... AJ Bell ... with an IG front end.

It is currently James Hay ... with an IG front end.

Simon Rowan

Hi Antehelion.

I think between us we are getting to the nub of the problem here. A lot of these trading platforms clearly are not fit for the number of customers they have. In 20 years of internet trading I have never experienced a year as bad as this. IWEB is basically Halifax which is under the Lloyds Banking organisation that Victor Blank Check (ex CEO knighted) kindly blindly signed all Lloyds shareholders up to to save Gordon Browns neck and thus the whole of the uk's banking system on its knees at the time.

There are one or two very good independent money managers, the only problem is they only take clients with over 1 million to invest these days. I used to have an account with Jarvis Securities but stopped using them because they didn't have ISA accounts at that time. I am thinking of going back to them now that they do, not sure about SIPPS. At least they answered the phone reasonably promptly, I don't know if that is still the case.

IWEB sound like a one man band operating out of their garden shed, when you do eventually make contact with the living after hours or days of persistence. Anyway good luck and do post if you have any success.

At least my funds have turned up after 4 days. I don't think a cheque takes that long these days. I once had the bank loose the entire proceeds of a house sale in the ether for two weeks with no explanation and little apology, so am understandably a little nervous. Account valuation at IWEB still not sorted. Not a disaster yet, not acceptable either. GL

BW Simon.

mercury61

HL has disappointed with 'crashes' so one can't trade in March on the C19 outbreak/lockdown etc and recently with the vaccine news uptick. Not fit for purpose when it comes to large volumes etc... or they just aren't prioritizing the PI?. Style over substance maybe.

doug2500

Charles Stanley direct can be surprisingly cheap for a SIPP, waiving all annual fees if it's above a certain value, and all monthly fees if you trade once (for IT's and shares at least)

I couldn't comment on how they've performed over the last few day though as I don't know. Their customer service is generally regarded as being good though.

Wilbraham

Relevant comment from TechMarketView daily email this morning

''This week’s news of a possible coronavirus vaccine has led to record levels of trading on global financial markets (see: At last a good news day). With soaring optimism also fuelled by the US election win for the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, the market has experienced enormous trading volumes and significant volatility. Some stocks have enjoyed massive gains in recovery, whilst other “lockdown stocks” have fallen from their inflated peaks.

The strain caused by the exceptional levels of activity has caused problems at some of the UK’s leading retail platforms as the existing technology apparently struggled to cope. Leading share supermarket, Hargreaves Lansdown, experienced its busiest ever day this week, however many customers were unable to access their online accounts whilst others reported problems with trades being erroneously duplicated.

Another leading, retail platform provider, AJ Bell, also experienced exceptional volumes due to the record levels of activity by retail investors. This again led to technical difficulties with the firm’s trading software with many customers apparently experiencing outages during the early part of this week.

Interestingly when the scale of the threat caused by the pandemic first became apparent in early March there was similar volatility. The advent of COVID-19 was a “Black Swan” event that had a major impact on the markets. During the early days, there was a massive increase in trading volumes, with some institutional firms reporting that systems normally handling thousands of trades per day had to cope with millions of transactions.

These exceptional peaks put significant strain on the existing systems and infrastructure across the entire financial markets ecosystem. Equally, during lockdown access to data centres and physical servers has at times been problematic. These factors have exposed the limitations of the existing IT estate and led many in the sector to turn to cloud provision to satisfy their requirements for additional capacity (see: Financial Markets Transformation “The Big Bang That Nobody Heard”). Borne out of necessity, this experience has demonstrated the agility and convenience that underpins cloud provision and will in turn to accelerate wider adoption.''

My suspicion is that Monday's Melt-up/Great Rotation day in response to Pfizer's press release was perhaps more sudden than the Melt-down in March which was spread over a few days. By co-incidence, two of my occupational DC funds were processing substantial fund reallocations which I'd initiated last Friday. Both were actually completed by Tuesday, faster than they've taken in the past. So I'm thinking that the problem is more with the UK retail broking platforms which became overwhelmed rather than an issue with market makers etc.

dmjram

"So I'm thinking that the problem is more with the UK retail broking platforms which became overwhelmed rather than an issue with market makers etc."

Highly likely - market maker issues aren't going to cause retail platforms to crash and prevent client logins. They would manifest as lack of liquidity/price quotes on the shares they covered when you tried to trade following log in.

The Phoenix

Agreed market makers aren't really an issue once your over 200 mil market cap most equities above this level are driven by Sets essentially a computer system matching buyers and sellers.

willhampson

Charles Stanley Direct operated flawlessly for me all week; as compared with AJ Bell. Would recommend them, but my experience is with an ISA (not a SIPP)

Alphaflight

If you want a proper broker (i.e. which costs a lot more) then use Rathbones (https://www.rathbones.com/), they are the best one out there (high management fees though and no online platform for execution only).

One of my SIPPs has been with Charles Stanley Direct for ages - back to the dot.com time when they took over the tackily-named 'Nothing Ventured' business. They are perhaps more of an old-school asset manager - you'll see that only 30% of their FUM is execution-only; most is under discretionary management so shouldn't be subject to the same wild panics as PIs pile in and out and rotate https://www.investegate.co.uk/...

Likewise I experienced no dealing problems this week - 1 or 2 trades most days. They're definitely not the cheapest but perhaps have more solid backing than some of the mass market outfits. I recall they had a strategic review c. 3 years ago where one option was to exit the execution-only business but they decided to retain it.

Strictly speaking, my SIPP manager/trustee is actually James Hay though my involvement with them is very low key as I haven't started drawdown yet. Just an annual statement (and fee!). I believe JH work with other brokerages as well as CS-D. I was invited to a JH client focus group a few years ago - the other 7 around the table were aghast that I invested in shares directly, as opposed to funds, and employ an adviser. I suspect active PIs still represent a smallish part of the total SIPP market - no doubt someone will have stats on this.

Antehelion

13th Nov '20

thanks all. AJB have responded to acknowledge my complaint and I am currently awaiting a formal response. I'm not holding my breath for a radical change in their incident management approach nor tech stack/capacity (both of which I think have contributed to the low satisfaction levels across various brokers as we've heard), but I'd like to be fair to them and will hear what they have to say.

thanks Macro, I hadn't realised IG provided a SIPP option actually!

the IG front end would be fine for me, I quite like the light-weight approach when using their ISA account, I've not heard much about James Hay however so will investigate - thanks for the tip.

My guess of course with any of these companies, they are unlikely to provide details of their server capacity/headroom or hosting provider (dedicated or Cloud) for which to actually compare how well they might stand up in a future volume event, I guess we have to just use one or other until they annoy us too much then find another - much like with internet or phone package providers ....

Silverback01

15th Nov '20

I would not hold my breath with AJB getting back to you. I have written complaints to them this past week and have had zero replies back. The least the leadership team could have done was write to all customers appologising, explaining the issue and highlighting what they are doing about it. Like some of you, I am really annoyed with them and they too will be losing my custom once I identify an alternative platform.

10th Mar '21

In case of interest, I contacted IG about the disappearance of their SIPP offering. They replied today confirming they are no longer opening new SIPP accounts as they are changing provider. He couldn't indicate how long this will take.

It sounds a little concerning that they previously used AJ Bell as SIPP provider/administrator, then switched over to James Hay just a couple of years ago and are now seeking another. Does this suggest that IG themselves are 'difficult' for SIPP providers to deal with, or the IG customers themselves are difficult, or is there some other innocent corporate reason? I doubt it relates to customer fees as the provider fees are what they are, levied on top of the core IG fees.

Have any existing IG SIPP holders been privy to the reasons for these frequent changes and if you were originally with AJB were you forced to switch your SIPP to JH?

fwiw, I note that AJ Bell are the provider for the Barclays SIPP so presume that some specialist brokerages don't have the capacity or desire to build a dedicated SIPP administration team and prefer to outsource.

Sadly I suspect we can't assume that any selected SIPP will be 'for life'!

Rusty2

11th Mar '21

Thanks for the update. I'm still looking for a new home for my SIPP. I was thinking IGG but seems that is not a current option.

Charles Stanley looks quite good however their fees for funds is 0.35% which is quite high. Also their forex fees are 1%. There are some other fees which I don't understand such as movement on foreign shares, £20?

IG Group (LON:IGG) don't do funds. So looks like I will need 3 different accounts, 1 for funds (HL), 1 for US shares (IGG) and maybe UK shares in another (CS).

How are Charles Stanley for European shares, do they cover the main markets inc. Scandinavia?

"not-rubbish" SIPP broker recommendations sought

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Antehelion

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