As you were, lads – Hargreaves does a reverse ferret
So just a short note to confirm that HL has done the decent thing on the investment trust side and removed the distinction between shares and ITs. This means that the max you will pay for holding exchange traded instruments is £45 in ISA or GIA and £200 in SIPP. This is good news and […]
Fashionably late – Halifax Sharedealing and Bestinvest slink in at the back
Another Friday, another bunch of platforms to round up. This time we welcome Halifax Sharedealing and Bestinvest to the party – we’ll move past the fact they’re late and celebrate that they’re here at all. Nearly everyone has announced now; we lack Chelsea and a few of the smaller brokers, but that’s about it. The […]
Platforms! Faahzands of em! Barclays et al go over the top.
Yes, I know that was never in the film. But it seemed relevant as we round up some of the platforms who we haven’t covered hitherto (posh) and also take a look at Barclays Stockbrokers, who announced their plans today. Judging by the traffic on these blogs, and some of the comments, investors are really […]
Next please – Fidelity joins the new world
So yesterday Fidelity showed the best of British pluck and joined the huddled masses of direct platforms in our Tables Of Repentance – obviously the only reason a provider declares its new pricing is to get a spot therein. Happily for you, and for us, Fiddy went down the simple(ish) route, and here’s what happened: […]
All hotting up – AXA Self Investor declares its hand
So here we go with the first of the week’s pricing launches in the direct platform space. AXA Self Investor (disclosure: ASI is a client of the lang cat) has been around for a wee while, but hasn’t really pushed it in the direct space; preferring to test out instead whether it could act as […]
What Tom Waits has to say about legacy business
First off, it’s been a shockingly long time since I wrote this blog. Poor form, been busy, blah blah. How’ve you been? Yes, yes I know. Yes, it is worrying. No, I don’t think putting a Greek island in your SIPP is a good idea. Shall we? Some years ago, when tripartite DFM agreements were […]
Unbundling and the Big Three
Well now, I was never going to be able to resist this. 2 April 2012 was the day that the first of the Big Three fund supermarkets got their act together and launched into the unbundled space. Fidelity FundsNetwork were the winner, beating Cofunds by a lap or so, with Skandia still faffing around in […]
Don’t take us for idiots
In an earlier post, I had a bit of a go in an open letter at direct-to-customer platform giant Hargreaves Lansdown over their charging structure. Lots of people seemed to agree, and I’m pleased to say that…it’s made not the slightest bit of difference. That’s the power of social media. Or something. At the moment, […]
Will platform margins really halve in 3 years?
Hmmm! The redoubtable Southampton-based platform behemoth Skandia has started 2012 in characteristically robust fashion by jack-in-the-boxing on Citywire and predicting that platform margins will halve by 2015. According to Skandia, the market is at 30-50bps now, and will be at 20-25bps by 2015. Only 10 platforms will survive. Cue the Destiny’s Child song of your […]
Peace out from the lang cat
So that was the year that was. As I write this I’m on a train back to Edinburgh having missed the lang kitten v1.0’s carol concert. It’s been that kind of year. Work/life balance? Not so much. Never mind. Being a talking head is no fun if you can’t do a review of the year […]
