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News

HL backs down on investment trust charges

Of all Hargreaves Lansdown’s new charges, the least popular with clients was the decision to levy a separate charge for holding investment trusts, whether in a dealing account, ISA or SIPP. Given the amount of criticism and illwill this has generated, it’s not entirely surprising to see that the firm has now changed its mind.

Investments trusts will now be bundled with shares, ETFs and bonds for custody fee purposes. There will be no charge for holding any of these in a dealing account. In an ISA, there will be a fee of 0.45% capped at £45, while a SIPP will incur 0.45% capped at £200.

There are still much cheaper providers for holding all of these assets for most investors (see the UK online broker comparison table for suggestions), but this certainly removes a very hard-to-justify charge and it’s good to see that clients were able to make the firm back down.

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Investment

Best Asian income investment trusts and ETFs

This is the second part of a review of Asian income funds and emerging market income funds for UK investors, focusing on investment trusts. Click here for Asian income funds – unit trust and oeics.

Asian income funds – investment trusts

There are three Asian income investment trusts in the UK market. And it shows how keen investors now are on the income theme that none trade at a significant discount to net asset value (NAV) – for most ITs, a small discount to NAV is normal.

The Aberdeen Asian Income Fund (LN:AAIF) has a rather different geographic focus to the funds we’ve already looked at in part one – it’s much more geared to Southeast Asia. Singapore is the single biggest holding at 20%, followed by Australia and then Malaysia and Thailand. It doesn’t include a sector breakdown in its factsheet, but I estimate that the biggest holdings are the familiar duo of financials and telecoms at 25% and 20% respectively