Best SIPP platform

[EquityInvestor]

Slightly unrelated, but for those employed and with Direct Contribution workplace pensions and SIPPs, what percentage of your gross yearly salary do you put towards your pension? (including employer’s contribution)

Only reply if you feel comfortable doing so.

Edit:
Maybe a better question would be, how much should we be aiming to put yearly in our pension as a percentage of salary?
I guess this depends on age.
One rule of thumb I heard was depending on the age you start investing, consistently invest in your pension a percentage of your salary equal to half your age. So if you are starting at 30, invest 15% yearly (gross salary, including employer contributions).

I’d like to hear your thoughts .
Is there maybe another thread on this? I haven’t been able to find one.

[topher]

Just to revisit this topic: has anyone got any thoughts on the best platform for my needs?

The core of my pension’s in passive trackers within a Vanguard Sipp. I also have a HL one for work contributions, with a few active funds like Fundsmith and Baillie Gifford long-term global growth.

Fortunately, I’ll max out my Isa contributions this year, so I’m looking funnel the leftovers into a third Sipp, which will be used for a handful of individual companies over 30 years or so.

I’m looking for a flat-fee broker and Freetrade looks like it may be the best bet at £84 a year (if you discount the ‘plus’ fee for parking £4k in a general investment account).

Any other options? Looking at the comparison tables, I don’t think any other broker comes close when you start factoring in commissions etc.

[Dougal1984]

£84 is kind of a lot at that level - about 2.1% I think.

Doesn’t look like you have a lot of choice out there.

Take it a GIA is no use, as you lose tax advantages?

Plus Kudos on filling your ISA. I haven’t started this year yet - GIA all the way🙃

AJB could be a shout.

[kali]

First of all none of the “market comparison” websites are honest in their reviews, almost all options suck in one way or other. Even sub-reddits like uk-investing etc are moderated and naturally all money savings forums. I’ve asked a similar question to @Hbomb s original question in moneysaving expert forums. I’ve also listed why I was not happy with interactive investor. My question got deleted and my account got banned on the same day.

I currently hold SIPPs in interactive investor and HL also used AJ Bell in the past (also many others for the sake of using)

I saw nutmeg mentioned in above threads, I’ve also used them with limited amount of money but it is not comparable to anything else that is mentioned here, so lets get it out of the way first. Nutmeg has its own managed fund that does not track anything and it managed to be flat between 2011-2017 (when I closed my account) So during the most bullish period of stock markets they managed to manage a fund that earned 0% And for all reasons and purposes you have 0 control over what you invest in (other than a “risk slider” and funky options like “halal investments” or “green investments”)

AJ Bell is relatively cheap compared to HL and II but I had so many bad “online” experiences, and trying to fix them I had to contact support and do some “pen and paper forms and fixes” for online trades, I closed my account with them in fury and even if they invited me completely free, I would not even bother.

If you are very cost averse and this is biggest criteria for your choice, I highly recommend taking a look at iWeb (halifax) Trade fees are £5 and they charge £22.5 per quarter (£45 per quarter if SIPP value is greater than 50K)

Platform costs massively depend on what you trade on usually for almost all platforms exchange traded funds/commodities stocks and shares are cheap(er) mutual funds and trusts tend to be either more expensive or “does not count towards maximum capped fees”

the only difference for me between HL and II is the slight difference in trading fee. Keep in mind HL despite having a % annual fee, it is capped at £200 for ETFs, (ETx) stocks and shares. II charges roughly £300 (on their cheapest plan) flat but gives about 12 trades free (1 per month trade credit of £7.99 this means if you trade on HKG it is actually not free so some asterisks required here)
My biggest issue with both HL and II is their almost criminal 1.5% FX conversion charge. (same in iWeb) but the advantage of II is they let you hold funds in many different currencies including $,€ and HK$

Freetrade at 84£ is for myself not even an option, their offerings are very very limited. You get very limited overseas market access, and someone can correct me if I am wrong but they offer even less shares than T212 does.

When I use the word “best” with any of these brokers, I cringe a little bit, but since it is a relative comparison I’ll tentatively say II is the best for UK at this time, at least for my needs. If I were mainly trading in “things that are denominated in GBP” this would’ve been a very easy choice HL. If the fees are the absolute most important thing for you, I’d still not recommend Freetrade, and I’d say go for iWeb.

On a side note the web interfaces for these brokers range from old to very old. All of them still better than T212 web interface, but that is mostly because T212 has no idea about web development and they are trying to build the web interface like they built their mobile app. (if it works for facebook it should work for T212 right?)

I digress and talk about random things a lot, but hopefully this was helpful for someone, if anyone has specific questions about the ones I’ve mentioned shoot them, i’ll try to answer.

[topher]

I would also do a partial transfer to push the ongoing cost down to about 0.4% initially and aim to make further inroads through regular contributions.

It’s nice to finally be reaching the stage where flat fees are more viable. GIA is an option but it’s hard to beat pension tax relief.

With my current Sipp setup, anything exchange-traded is off the table: VG’s a closed shop and HL charges an arm and a leg: so another Sipp would give me flexibility beyond funds.

iWeb may be the closest at £90-180 a year plus £5 a trade and AJB’s not too far behind at 0.25% capped at £120 but it’s still £10 a trade. Like HL, there is a £1.50 regular investment option with AJB although there’s probably similar restrictions on what you can buy.

As @kali points out, a big problem with AJB, iWeb and many others is the 1-1.5% forex fees. I’ll mostly be investing in US stocks so FT’s 0.45% is much more enticing.

FT doesn’t have the greatest range: it’s just UK and US basically, but it’s got 99% of what I need. A great thing with Sipps is you can hold stocks that aren’t Isa eligible, such as TSM.

I think it’s going to have to be FT unless T212 announces a Sipp in the next month or two.