...if you have, how long did it take for an in-specie transfer please?

Haven't moved quite yet but about to complete the forms to move my entire SIPP portfolio. I must be younger than you as draw-down is a long way off for me!

Reason for my move? Higher commission rebates back to customers via BestInvest, no platform fees for popular index tracker products and BestInvest being a leaner & more customer friendly organisation...not saying H-L are poor in this area just that I have found someone better for my SIPP purposes after weighing all the facts.

The platform fee issue really got my back up. I have a 6 figure SIPP with H-L and a Vantage account on top of that so in spite of having a not insignificant amount still in 'active', higher AMC / commission paying funds H-L do not consider that and instead impose the platform fee on all client lines of index tracker stock. They already get their pound of flesh from my assets via these active fund kick-backs so why they don't assess this on a client by client basis I just do not know. If I had say a £100k SIPP, and 5 lines of tracker funds in my account worth a total of £2k per index fund then they are getting an additional £10 per month or £120 per annum. That equates to an additional 1.2% on top of the 0.3% AMC which makes owning any lines of tracker funds pointless. HOWEVER, they would also be earning say 1.5% on the remaining £90k and so surely this should be taken into account before just applying this new platform fee across each client portfolio without analysis?

There is a big difference between the revenues earned by H-L from a £100k portfolio invested solely in index-tracking products (prior the platform fee being introduced) and a £100k portfolio invested in a spread of active funds paying AMCs of 1.5%, on average. However, due to the introduction of the platform fee they will now lose my entire portfolio, and ANY FUTURE KICK-BACKS they may have earned for the next 30 years before I retire due to this ridiculous additional fee, rather than write-off the platform fee for the small percentage of my portfolio I may have had in index tracking products and in so doing retain the more significant active fees they already were receiving on the remaining, larger part of my portfolio invested in active funds - this is just plain-faced greed by H-L and I will not tolerate it.

Anyway, I spoke to BestInvest yesterday and the guys there are at least as 'switched on' as H-L were when I called them and opened my account with them 3 years ago or so the decision has been made by me to make the move.

I deal with in-specie transfers on a regular basis and although they can seem to be a drawn out process and at times an administrative nightmare, they are extremely beneficial for those that wish for their funds to remain invested and avoids the requirement to encash/sell and reinvest once transferred.

Depending on the volume and type of investments they usually take between 6-8 weeks. There are of course rare exceptions to this.

Hi. Seems a popular activity and we all seem to have come to the same conclusion that the charges for running a SIPP are too high. For my part I have had a SIPP running in drawdown for several years with Bestinvest. I am looking to move to a cheaper option. Bestinvest use A. J. Bell to administer the Sipp whilst Bestinvest do the fund trading. It has been very difficult to pin down all the costs. However A.J.Bell costs me £82 per month or about 0.1 percent (1.2 %pa) plus there was an occasional additional charge of £250 (ish) for what I am not sure. A mistake (overcharge) of several hundred punds was made which I had to have corrected so you have to check everything is being charged as it should be. Bestinvest also have their charges and I think the total of my SIPP charges (bearing in mind they are hard to pin down because they come at you from different directions at different times) are in excess of 2 percent. I also have to say that whilst I have a lot of time for Bestinvest they have not been great over the years if they are judged by the success of the investments they got into on my behalf, Some have lost considerable amounts (some have gained of course). My arrangement with Bestinvest is on an advisory basis (they do the fund selection and buying and selling). In order to save costs I have been looking into the HL Vantage SIPP which is a self select investment arrangement. It is cheaper than my present arrangement with Bestinvest. However Bestinvest, also offer their 'Select' service where clients select their own investments with similar charge free activities as provided by the HL Vantage SIPP and this reduces the costs to about 1% by elliminating the A. J. Bell charges (effectively you take on the job being done by A. J. Bell). I still have work to do to be sure I am not jumping from the frying pan into something worse but feel I have to take some action. I am a bit cross with myself for getting in this position and Bestinvest for for putting me here. So check the small print if moving to Bestinvest and be sure you know all the charges including those of A. J. Bell. Best of luck, Neville

Antony et al - you have set off a ton of stuff there to read and i have to go to work, will check out tonight.

Before you finally move ring HL, I spoke with them yesterday and learned something interesting.

It seems they are looking at adding the kickback into SIPPS


The way I see it Antony is that HL are not stupid, they have seen this change in regulations coming and they also check out their opposition. Also when Barclays launch into this new attempt to nick the HL business they must react with better terms.

I considered moving, but balancing all factors (including the costs of admin for drawdown for both, - drawdown admin once they have you is a nice little earner as they bleed you ongoing

Another factor is HL are FTSE100 - who are Bestinvest, how big, where are their offices, where does you money go?? Now they are going to say ring fenced and safe, but if you rang an icelandic bank a couple of years ago and asked if your ISA was safe, what would they tell you??

I thought for a year before checking out HL

This is a big part of your life savings maybe - careful who you hand it to?????

To answer your question I have 3 to 4 years to go (God willing!), so I have to tread very carefully in investments.

I would speak to HL and say you are about to depart, maybe they will reveal more

Hi - I have two SIPPs - one with H-L and the other with Sippdeal. In the autumn of last year I was researching every option I could find to hold tracker funds (especially Vanguard) in either of them. Initially H-L didn't even offer Vanguard funds, but by the end of my weeks, months of snooping around they did offer them - but with the platform fee! At least they were true to their telephone advice that Vanguard funds were 'in the pipeline'. Monevator had some very informative articles on the whole subject which should still be on his blog.

On platform fees and tracker funds, I came to the conclusion that whatever you gain with one provider is lost at another (I also compared Bestinvest). One thing I didn't look into was drawdown fees, as I still have a few years to go yet (but not too many!)

uhm

If a SIPP provider charges a platform fee for trackers then they are just money-grabbing - it is unnecessary and unjustified given how much they are making on active funds. Yes, there has been a shift in retail investors thinking towards tracker funds given active funds have disappointed BUT then, like any firm, they should streamline their own costs and exist without excessive additional fees.

If a SIPP provider charges a fee for each line of stock, then the answer is to compress your holdings into one asset, such as a balanced fund before moving it.

If you want to invest in corporate bonds, then the IP Corporate Bond fund is a good place to be...why retail investors believe they are sufficiently skilled at selecting single corporate bonds to invest in is beyond me - the risks are just far too high for any retail investor to want to assume. This comment is substantiated by professional corporate bond investors having a diversified portfolio of around 100 stocks or so to avoid default risk, something that when it happens once, you will not want repeated in your private portfolio!! I would never advise any retail investor to speculate by picking isolated corporate bond issues for their retirement portfolios...TOO MUCH RISK, GUYS.

As we have seen with H-L and their platform fee introduction for trackers, costs are a moving target and you can never pin any of these providers down for the long-term. Therefore, you can only make your best assessment now. It is of course very different for someone about to retire, or within 5-10 years of retirement, but I am not that person. Some of you, I know, are so it is entirely relevant for now.

As for my SIPP; I do not anticipate it to be the main part of my retirement assets - I may be a little different from many on that front. It will be 'a part' of my retirement assets but the extent to which it grows relative to other assets such as my ISA portfolio, property values and the like will determine the proportion. Pensions are no longer being viewed as a major part of younger savers retirement assets due to a number of reasons such as a lack of DB schemes which many of you may have participated in, affordability of rental housing or houses for first-time purchase, ISAs and a generally poor recent history of investment returns. I am not saying that this view is right but that it is valid. I am 37, my wife is 32. Her friends are University educated and have decent jobs in London but 95% are still renting, spending too much in shops, on holidays & in pubs and clubs etc. and have no pension or ISA savings as the cost of living is just too high.

I believe pensions need to be made significantly more flexible as when I found out, when I began working, that my hard-saved for personal pension when I retire would enable me to buy an annuity with my retirement pot and depending on when I retire, will determine the annuity rate I am offered (even accounting for some deferment of the decision if finances allow), it is a far from enticing prospect to look forward to. Fully flexible choices on pension savings is needed to ensure that those currently my age and below continue to view pensions as attractive. When I die and my wife survives me, my ISA and all other assets are passed over to her, however, the pension which for many IS the largest part of their total assets is not handed over in its entireity to spouses...why would someone pump money into a totally inflexible LT savings product when subjective regulation restricts choice and, in my mind, is there to make pension providers rich on my behalf (and when they go wrong, a la Equitable Life, you get totally SHAFTED).

Pensions would be more attractive to someone working at my age or younger if:

1. they are made much more flexible upon retirement (no compulsory annuity purchasing etc.)
2. the management charges are massively cut, as per the Dutch or Danish models, to ensure that more of the asset are invested rather than withdrawn by providers exorbitant fees
3. investment returns were seen to be less volatile
4. if people my age or younger could see that the pensions industry actually can be seen to be looking out for my best interest and were not making such extraordinary profits on my retirement assets behalf
5. if property prices vis a vis incomes were more balanced for people our age - I have been a home-owner in London for 6 years now but many, many are not given that personal disposable incomes cannot compete with property prices and the cost of living. Buying a property is someone my ages first priority before pension savings. Parents would be happier to release savings to fund children's property deposits if they thought they were getting enough investment return themselves on their future retirment assets but of course they are not as annuity rates are forecast to be low and interest rates are low by definition. Therefore, parents cannot see how they can forego some of their retirement assets in order to help give their children a deposit for a house.

Anyway, a bit of a rambling post here but I am sure you get the idea of where I am coming from!

Enjoy the weekend.

Hi I am employee of Bestinvest and noticed this forum topic today so thought I'd try and clear up a few points.

We normally expect pension transfers to take between 8 and 12 weeks, although some pension providers are much quicker than this - unfortunately Hargreaves is not amongst the fastest. One of the key factors affecting the speed of transfer is the nature of the assets and investments being transferred so it does vary with each transfer.

From the other comments in this chain, it is clear that it can be difficult to compare the charges of different SIPP providers and some providers don't make it easy to find the information. We have recently launched the Best SIPP; we offer over 2,000 funds, of which 1,600 funds qualify for an annual loyalty bonus of up to 0.5%. There is no set up fee, on going annual management fee to hold funds and no fund dealing fee. Full details of our charges are available on our website (not just in the small print) and we also provide a handy comparison with some of our competitors. If anyone has any questions about how our charges compare, please feel free to call us.

I recommend doing some research before deciding which SIPP is best for you.

All the best

Adrian,

UHM and others

This platform fee thing.

Before the platform fee HL had a 0.5% management charge annually, so that is £5 per £1000 per year

Now on the £2 a month fee I would say thats:

2.4% on £1000
1.2% on £2000
0.6% on £4000


I have therefore ensured I bung inas lots of £4000, with the special rate of SWIP FTSE all share thats a TER of 0.11 plus the 0.6% (previously 0.5%)

So I pay a tenth of a percent more if I hold for a year.

Now I bought in and out of this in January - cost £2,

Bought in again twice in February (one £2 charge only, same account)
Up £121 3.6% and divi due 28th feb

get divi end feb (its an income account), sell out making say £150-£200 (we hope)

and pay HL £2 feb £2 march


Whats all the fuss on the platform fees??

please show me how the above would cost out on Bestinvest or SIPPdeal??

I have avoided thos eVanguard ones, as Vanguard seem charge an extra little fee

for going in?

I'm an HL account holder. A question was asked about who looks after the money and security of assets. My understanding is that BestInvest aren’t licensed to hold client money directly and outsource custody of it to a third party. I believe it is SEI, who I don't know much about but I think are an American company. HL look after all the money themselves and look after about £23bn so I figure that is pretty safe. On interest rates, HL offer fixed rate deals so if you are holding cash for 3 months or more in a SIPP you can get fixed rates of interest up to 2%. I'd suggest ringing them if you are interested