Author Topic: Best ISA provider? (UK)  (Read 3475 times)

warfreak2

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Best ISA provider? (UK)
« on: March 21, 2014, 05:34:41 PM »
I wasn't able to find a direct answer to this, which surprised me. I imagine there's a bunch of UK Mustachians wanting to invest through the lowest-fee Stocks & Shares ISA provider that makes Vanguard index funds available. (Vanguard themselves have a minimum investment of £100,000 for direct investors in the UK, and don't appear to offer ISAs.) I imagine it depends on how much you invest and how often you want to pay into the account; it also might be the case that platforms offering Fidelity index funds end up cheaper overall if lower broker fees offset the higher fund management expenses. Has anyone done this research already?

MarcherLady

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Re: Best ISA provider? (UK)
« Reply #1 on: March 22, 2014, 03:19:00 AM »
Yes :-) http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

But bear in mind, as we've been talking about in another thread, (https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/uk-savings-the-new-isa/msg249170/#msg249170) a traditional S&S provider might not offer a great interest rate for cash, and vice versa.

warfreak2

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Re: Best ISA provider? (UK)
« Reply #2 on: March 22, 2014, 06:17:34 AM »
I did find that page, but it doesn't really help me very much. It's a comparison of brokers, and it includes their ISA accounts, but you have rows like this:

Quote
Hargreaves Lansdown    0.45% p.a. on first £250,000 of funds18    Tiered charge. You pay 0.45% on first £250K then 0.25% on next £750K etc    £0    £11.95*    £1.50    1%
£1 min
£10 max    £30 account closure plus £25 per holding    -
Shares ISA    +0.45% p.a. charge (capped at £45) on ETFs, ITs, shares, and bonds    -    -    -    -    -    -    -

Which is a bit hard to make sense of; it's not clear what the figures in the first row for "Hargreaves Lansdown" represent, when there's a row under it for their ISAs. It also doesn't specify whether each of the brokers offers Vanguard funds.

Really I was looking for a short summary; "If you're investing under £_____, use _______. Otherwise ________ is better.", from a few people who already looked into it, and I figured there's likely a few on this forum who did. This is more like trying to look up somebody's name in a phone directory, given their phone number; it's possible, but I thought I'd try calling the number first.

MarcherLady

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Re: Best ISA provider? (UK)
« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2014, 06:48:06 AM »
Yeah, fair point, it's not that user friendly.  I use Halifax online, they offer some Vanguard EFTs, (VUKE, VGOV, VUSA and VFEM) and now they only charge £12.50 pa fees, plus dealing costs of £2.00 per deal if you use their regular dealing system, plus the Vanguard management fees.  Iweb are amongst the cheapest, and are on the same platform as Halifax, so probably offer the same funds.  I believe Iweb charge more for some corporate actions than Halifax.  So, Iweb worked out cheapest for me (using last year's limit to the max, with a total portfolio of around 45k), but wasn't significantly cheaper than Halifax, and the transfer out charges from Halifax would have wiped out that savings for three or four years.

I didn't keep the spreadsheet that I did the calculations on, otherwise I would share it.

warfreak2

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Re: Best ISA provider? (UK)
« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2014, 07:30:47 AM »
dealing costs of £2.00 per deal if you use their regular dealing system

Just to let you know, according to IWeb, they're ending the £2 regular investment service very soon.
Quote
Regular investments: £2 commission

We are removing our regular investing service due to low demand. If you have a regular investment set up it will automatically stop from 31st March. Please note all regular subscriptions will also stop from this date.

Edit: Halifax appear not to be making any similar change.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2014, 07:41:22 AM by warfreak2 »

MarcherLady

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Re: Best ISA provider? (UK)
« Reply #5 on: March 22, 2014, 07:44:53 AM »
Thanks, that's a deal breaker for me, I'm glad I didn't pull the trigger on transferring to them.