What are some bad and good stocks & shares ISA providers beside T212 that you have had first-hand experience with?
I would say it’s a bit more than that.
What I mean is it depends on different factors - how frequent you want to trade, what you want to trade, what you want to hold.
Fidelity are decent for OEICs.
Hargreaves are decent for access to ASX1.
AJ Bell has good integration with PrimaryBid.
US common stocks mostly - rarely US ETFs or US leveraged assets.
Vanguard, only thier own ETFs, nice website, but cheaper to buy their ETFs with T212. Freetrade, better divi info than T212, £60/yr, slow divi payers, expensive US exch fees, most stocks etc available. Don’t do fractional shares anymore. But can transfer ISA on death to spouse without selling stocks. T212 wont do this at moment.
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I use:
Hargreaves Lansdown- expensive, but has a lot of markets which T212 and other brokers don’t provide
Fidelity for my SIPP(they have S&S ISA) due to SIPP cost. They have lower numbers of options to chose from
iWeb(own by Lloyds Group) no fee to hold things, but expensive Fx fee, but good to hold funds
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Thank you both, will add to my list and look through them too. Thanks again!
Interactive Investor, some very decent offers on signing up. Cheaper than some like HL and others.
ÂŁ100 trading credit. Referral offer for other people and benefit to you is very good. Receive details of IPOs
Invest Engine, A no fee Sipp which might be unique cost wise ?
No fees on the platform, only ETFs
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T212 - Lack of bonds and some markets. Obviously great fee structure. Annoying share limits that mean I couldn’t transfer most of my ISAs to T212 if I wanted to. Bad delays on dividend payments - not sure if this has improved as I moved all my dividend yielding holdings elsewhere for other reasons.
HL - Expensive. Access to bonds. Not all markets. Good secure message interface. Least delays on dividend payments of the four here.
ii - Great access to markets and bonds. Cheaper per transaction than most but not free. Good secure message interface.
Barclays - Can’t make their secure message-type interface work. Access to bonds. Lack of access to some markets. Weird dividend payments where they tax and reclaim in an ISA rather than simply not taxing in the first place. Medium costs per transaction.
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I currently use both of these (for my SIPP) and I think I’ve used or tried almost all UK brokers at some time. Most of these experiences were 15+ years ago, and the experience was horrible for anything except HL and II
secure messages are good enough for handling correspondence etc. but having the option to pick up the phone and talk to someone in next 2-3 minutes is fantastic when you need it. I just did this, with II last Friday 3:55pm and it was a lifesaver.
also HL fees (when other brokers put HL in comparison lists) seems infinite, but the fees do cap annually so it is roughly same cost as II (which has a fixed cost regardless of size)
My only problem with both HL and II is, they have “criminal” FX conversion fees. The upside is they support holding money in several difference currencies so you rarely need to do conversion. BUT if we are exclusively talking about ISAs, for some weird reason HMRC does not let you hold FX in an ISA so you’ll have to keep converting.
How “free” T212 is a debatable topic, that cannot happen in this forum 
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Love the responses, guys!
They are all mega usefull!
Thank you!
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Recently tfered to T212 from Freetrade. One of the main reasons was annoyance at length of time divis took to arrive. Credit where credits due, BP used to take a week to arrive, T212 came same day. Impressed.
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If your dividends were sizeable then there might be reason to claim some interest / compensation.
If your shares were lent out then it might have been delayed waiting for part payment, tbh they’ve probably covered themselves in their tnc.
Interactive Brokers for true market, best execution, cheapest FX and extensive APIs for trading. There are many sophisticated platforms like MultiCharta that support Interactive Brokers. They price ques are far better with bid/ask and market depths.
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I have experience with FT and T212, started other accounts but killed them all.
Fees make a massive difference, unless you literally buy and hold forever. There could be many good reasons to change transaction patter, and e.g. suddenly need to sell or buy volume, or focus more on momentum. With most providers this is VERY expensive to do. Make sure you take this into consideration.
Also, the provider must be dynamic and evolve quickly do adapt to their customer base and new opportunities. In this respect, Vanguard is champion of laggardness (like Lloyds for banking) while T212 seems to sit at the opposite side of the spectrum. Imagine how many decades would take for V. to even consider the possibility to offer some options trading.
Finally, the customer service. This is a killer, bad or no response by a provider can put off the most loyal and satisfied customer on earth. Make sure to get some reliable information on the quality of the customer service, test it if you can before transferring your money over.
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Is there an actual useful site out there that lists/compares all brokers?
There is an interactive website, forget what it’s called, you plug in how often you trade, what you’re buying etc and it spits out some options.
I tend to always go back to Monevator’s comparison table though:
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https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/stocks-shares-isas/
Scroll down on here, and there is a list of brokers.
I totally agree with you on the ii FX fees. Harsh or what. Won’t be buying any international shares with them again but had little option as one of few platforms that would accept the transfer in of the particular shares.
Invest Engine offer a free Sipp (is that unique?) if you are only after ETFs ?
If you incur fees for buying where you are, perhaps split your Sipp across 2 providers to reduce your overall fees ?