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Share dealing charges – Halifax, iWeb, BestInvest and Barclays

A few more of the UK brokers who announced their clean fund pricing in the last couple of weeks also announced revised charges for shares at the same time. The main changes were:

  • Halifax Share Dealing will raise its online dealing rate for shares from £11.95 to £12.50. Telephone deals move to a flat rate of £25. Foreign currency charges for international shares rise from 1% to 1.25%. Charges for corporate actions have mostly been dropped. Transfer out fees from a dealing account or ISA remain £25 per investment, but the total has been capped at £125. Changes take effect 31st March 2014.
  • iWeb Share Dealing, which is the Halifax service under a different, mostly cheaper (but still-Halifax-owned) brand, has apparently also some similar changes, dropping corporate action fees and capping transfer out charges at £125. The ISA closure fee (previously £50) has also been removed. Less positively, the regular dealing option for stocks will also disappear (it seems to be retained under the Halifax service). (There’s no statement about this on the website – the update solely concerns fund charging – but iWeb clients say they’ve received an email about the changes.) Changes take effect 31st March 2014.
  • BestInvest has replaced its quarterly custody charge for shares (£12.5+VAT in a dealing account or ISA and £25+VAT in a SIPP), with a new fee covering all investments (eg both shares and funds) [PDF]. For  a dealing account, this is 0.4% up to £250,000, 0.2% between £250,000 and £1,000,000, and no further charge for holdings above £1,000,000; for a SIPP, the tiers are 0.3% and 0.2% (yes, the SIPP fee is less than an ISA or dealing account). Changes take effect from 1st March 2014.
  • Barclays Stockbrokers has reduced UK dealing commissions by £1 per trade and reduced the tier sizes for frequent trader rates. Clients who make 1-9 trades per month will pay £11.95 per deal, those make 10-19 will pay £8.95 and those who make 20 or more will pay £5.95 (previous commissions were £12.95 for 1-14 trades, £9.95 for 15-24 trades and £5.95 for 25+ trades). The ISA administration fee is now £30+VAT per year for all ISA sizes (previously it was £50+VAT for accounts over £7,500). Changes take effect from 1 March 2014.

The UK stockbroker comparison table, the UK international stockbroker table and the individual entries in the broker directory have been updated.

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News

New charges and new identity for Sippdeal

Sippdeal – up to now one of the cheaper UK brokers for international dealing – has rebranded itself in an effort to shed its SIPP-only association, changing to the rather clunky-sounding AJ Bell Youinvest. More importantly, it’s announced a new charging scheme to bring its business model into line with the Financial Conduct Authority’s platform review and the resulting ban on execution-only brokers receiving trail commission.

Unfortunately, Youinvest has combined this with another rather unwelcome fee change that will be much more of an issue for international investors, even though few people seem to be picking up on it so far. Full details of all the changes are listed on the Youinvest website [PDF], but the key points are: