Investment platforms are offering an array of deals to try and tempt new customers, from cashback to free share trades. Are any of the offers worth taking?
Sales investment platforms are trying to lure in new customers by introducing a range of time-limited deals.
Here’s a rundown of the deals on offer, and how good they are.
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Fidelity – up to £1,000 cashback
Fidelity is offering up to £1,000 cashback to new or existing customers who transfer money to them. The cashback is on a sliding scale depending on how much money you transfer over.
This offer is designed for those with a healthy bank balance as you must transfer at least £50,000 in order to qualify.
Open a Fidelity Stocks & Shares ISA today
|
Amount transferred |
Cashback |
|
£50,000 - £99,999 |
£100 |
|
£100,000 - £149,999 |
£200 |
|
£150,000 - £199,999 |
£300 |
|
£200,000 - £299,999 |
£400 |
|
£300,000-£399,999 |
£600 |
|
£400,000-£499,999 |
£800 |
|
£500,000 or more |
£1,000 |
In order to get the cashback you must have submitted your transfer application to Fidelity by March 3 2017. The cashback will then be paid into your bank account.
Fidelity will also reimburse you up to £500 to cover exit fees charged by the providers you transfer the money from.
You’ll be charged a 0.35% annual service fee on accounts worth up to £250,000, 0.2% over £250,000 and no fee if you hold more than £1 million with them. You’ll pay fund management charges on top of the service fee.
The offer may be attractive to anyone wanting to consolidate their investments into one pot as it is quite a bit of extra cash.
“The start of the year is often a time for reflection and an opportunity to get your personal finances in order.
One effective way of achieving this is to bring all your savings and investments together in one place,” says Jonathan Hewitt, head of personal investing at Fidelity International.
“By consolidating your investments, you’ll be able to spend less time keeping track of all of your investments and more time concentrating on the investment options that could help you reach your financial goals.”
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Hargreaves Lansdown – free share deal
Open a Vantage Fund & Share account before March 6 and Hargreaves Lansdown will give you your first share deal for free, saving you £11.95.
It certainly isn’t as lucrative as Fidelity’s deal, but if you want to try share trading for the first time it will save you some cash.
Hargreaves Lansdown doesn’t charge you to hold shares, bonds, gilts or exchange traded funds, and you can open an account with just £1.
But if you want to invest in funds you must deposit at least £100 a month and you’ll pay an annual fee of 0.45% on up to £250,000 of funds, 0.25% if you hold £250,000 of funds, 0.1% between £1 million and £2 million and free above that.
Open a Hargreaves Lansdown Share Dealing account online in just 5 minutes
Clubfinance – no admin fees
If you plan to do a lot of fund trading you may want to take a look at Clubfinance’s deal for ‘Frequent Traders’.
It has scrapped its admin fee and instead you will just be charged for trades.
However, those charges are far lower than competitors. You’ll pay just £4.95 per share or fund trade, the broker will charge you no other fees unless you fail to trade three times every three months, then there’s a low-activity fee of £15.
In comparison Hargreaves Lansdown and Charles Stanley (who handles Fidelity’s share dealing) charges £11.95 and £11.50 for share dealing.
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Nutmeg – low-cost passive investing
Annual management fees have fallen at wealth manager Nutmeg. They’ve dropped from 0.95% to 0.75% for customers with less than £100,000 invested. If you hold more than that with them you’ll pay 0.35%.
“Fees are the only part of your investment performance that you can control,” says Martin Stead, chief executive at Nutmeg. “The fees you pay can make a significant difference over time. Even a tiny reduction can make a massive saving over 20 or 30 years.”
On top of the annual management charge customers pay an average of 0.19% in fund charges as Nutmeg invests in low-cost index-tracking exchange traded funds.
The company says it is worth investing with them because you get the cost-saving of investing in passive funds, but with active, expert asset allocation from Nutmeg.
Your money is invested in one of five multi-asset portfolios that invest in up to 19 ETFs. Every six months the asset allocation is assessed and an ETF may be swapped for a cheaper or better ETF.
Open a Nutmeg Stocks & Shares ISA with as little as £500
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