Alliance Trust Savings has announced some changes to its fees [PDF] and I’ve updated the stockbroker directory entry to reflect this. The main points are:
- The fee for a regular dealing account and an ISA rises from £10+VAT per quarter to £18.75+VAT per quarter. The annual fee for a Sipp rises from £135+VAT to £155+VAT.
- Charges for corporate actions have been removed
- Transfer out fees are now a flat fee for transferring the whole account rather than a per-investment fee. This is quite an interesting decision since almost all UK brokers charge a per-investment fee and might reflect recent cases where the FSA/FCA has forced providers to waive transfer charges when increasing their fees (a precedent that AJ Bell Youinvest/Sippdeal now seems ready to try to fight over its latest fee changes).
I’ve also updated the entry for Youinvest, having confirmed that the new FX commission of 1% will also apply to non-CREST stocks (for these, there was previously an FX charge of 0.25%, but a £10 custody and settlement supplement which has now been absorbed into the FX fee). Dividends will be converted to GBP at a FX commission of 0.5%, unchanged from the previous rate).
I’ve also updated the comparison of ISAs for international dealing, the UK international stockbroker table and the UK online stockbroker table to reflect these changes. In addition, the Share Centre has been added to the broker directory; this is a popular broker, although not an especially obvious choice for international dealing.