I'm starting to plan ahead for the end of the tax year and I'm looking at SIPP providers. I've maxed out our ISA allowances already and will have some surplus cash that I want to lock away before my wife decides to change a kitchen or something. So far I think Interactive Investors looks a good choice but I'm wondering if the fee structure at AJ Bell is abit better for a smaller starting pot.
Any advice?
I'm with HL but considering a move. Does anyone have a view on Freetrade or similar startups?
low monthly fees, low exchange rates and free trades.
What is the risk these? Presumably that they go out of business?
For a SIPP?
Yes, I think they carry a higher risk. I have heard they don’t actually buy and sell the shares, not sure how true that is. Trading can be difficult on some stocks.
No trading before 10am last I checked, which is a nice kickback for their market maker. Also they trade fractional shares which I believe you don't actually own the underlying.
Hi Monty Carlo,
You wrote: "II only permit you to group accounts in your own name, and they don't let you deal online for other family members (you have to call, even with 3rd party authority in place)".
My wife and I both have ISAs and SIPPs with ii. You are correct that ii only permit us to group accounts in our own name. But you are not correct that they don't let you deal online for other family members - I regularly log into my wife's ii account using her login details and password and deal online on her behalf (with her permission of course).
Not convinced this will be in the best interest of small direct investors https://news.sky.com/story/abr...
The one take-away for me is that no broker is for life - there seem to be a spate of mergers, ownership changes etc every couple of years. All the while it's never any simpler to transfer direct holdings.
I have a SIPP with ii. On two occasions I have been sent a market etiquette 'warning' because I made several trades in a day on a particular stock. They stated that I needed to tell them all the shares that I wanted to sell in advance and to not break the shares down into smaller lots! I on the other hand did not know how much I wanted to sell - the market absorbed the initial sale and I thougt great - have some more. etc. I am not a day trader. I challenged ii and had a back and forth with some compliance guy who stuck to his guns and implied I could only trade by phone if I 'continued' as it was unfair on the market makers. On one occasion I did exactly what they said and got a very poor price! So now I ignore them. I am considering moving the SIPP to someone else.
I use IWeb which is owned by AJBell.
I pay £5 per trade with ISA and SIPP. The SIPP also has a quarterly fee of £22.50 on accounts less than £50k and £45 (I think) on accounts over £50k.
Sounds very odd unless you are selling large amounts. Sometimes on my IG account I can only sell small amounts, it says something like no market try later but if you reduce the number of shares it comes up with a price.
I was considering going to ii but maybe not now. I don’t usually do several trades on a stock in one day but I may want to. sounds a bit tinpot to me.
The amounts were not particularly large. I pushed them to provide examples of what 'market etiquette' actually means, and why does it protect market makers rather than the investor who is supposed to get best price, and to then put them up as a Q&A on their website so investors could see when they are 'breaking the rules' and decide if this is the type of broker they want to be with. Tumbleweed. I did several trades in a day, once again - a few years later - and back they came ! and I ignored their Email. Grrrrrr.
Does not sound good at all. Never heard of this before.
What are ii like on funds, HL are good but their fees are high.
I have just switched my SIPP from AJ Bell to Free trade . The cost is a monthly fee of £10. If you have Freetrade Plus then the SIPP costs £7 a month. They also give you 3% in an ISA account up to £4000 so you can get £120. It's early days but it seems OK, if you decide to go to FreeTrade then you might get a free share, tell someone who has an account they can share a referral link and you both get a share.
You may wish to read 14.4.1 & 14.4.2 on page 20 of II's Ts & Cs.
II do not permit your wife to divulge her log-in details to any 3rd party, and that includes you I'm afraid.
Of course who you pretend to be is none of my business, but perhaps best not discussed on an internet forum....
Not a good look for Charles Stanley....''John Redwood, a former Welsh secretary, is earning more than £230,000 working for an investment advisory company, Charles Stanley, and a private equity firm,'' Is that really value for money? From https://www.theguardian.com/po...
It is all good to find out the best provider but the time it takes to transfer wipes out all the benefit. 6-8 weeks out of the market is too long for most investor except for the buy and holder who may not be affected.
In my experience there's no easy solution! I'm more inclined to bite the bullet and liquidate then arrange a (hopefully swift) cash transfer. I found it took only one or two 'wrinkles' (eg a nil-value holding that had delisted where, after some head scratching, the transferring administrator graciously came up with an indemnity to be signed) to delay considerably an entire in specie transfer. For a trading account you've probably got sufficient liquidity elsewhere to allow you to start funding the new account while the cash transfer is in progress, but that won't work for an ISA/SIPP. Or you could try tranching it into 2-4 partial transfer slugs, if allowed. Bear in mind for many investment funds, and almost all occupational DC funds, you'll have to liquidate anyway.
Actually it seems to me we've done to death the headline merits of most brokers on these threads recently. It would be more productive to comment on things like transfer experience, drawdown experience for SIPPs, whether the SIPP will permit holdings to be segregated into crystallised and uncrystallised funds, etc.
Incidentally, ii had been bombarding me with their £200 'refer a friend' offer. Smacks of desperation to grow AUM before their sale/IPO. Possibly there's scope for people here to befriend each other and split the £200?
Following a number of takeovers I have ended up with II and am very unhappy. The app is hopeless and the website really poorly designed. I have some US ETFs which they say I should be able to sell on the website but can't so I have to call them. The whole thing is a mess. I was perfectly happy with EQI and why they thought the ii platform was better is beyond me.
I am probably going to move over to AJBell who I used historically for my ISAs and were great.
