Should I move my Investment platform to Vanguard or Freetrade?

[MamaLlama123]

Currently I have a SIPP/ S&S ISA with Hargreaves Lansdown however am beginning to realise it’s very expensive. I wish to keep my Vanguard FTSE global all cap funds which make some platforms not an option

Rebel finance school recommend Freetrade as a free platform. Although I feel that Vanguard seems more well known/ established and has a telephone helpline - but with low fees as opposed to free

Any Thoughts/ recommendations?

Have you considered AJ Bell?

Low fees/charges which are capped, and you can hold those funds.

I used to be with Vanguard -
I did not like:

1. that I could only buy vanguard products - and having all my money within one investment house felt more risky
2. their product fees were higher than many of their competitors
3. their software interface - I found it clunky and couldn’t easily see how well my investments were doing over time
4. Their platform fees were too high as well!
5. Their reputation for being cheap is based on their American products - they have a different business model in the UK.

I’ve tried invest engine - too clunky and poor customer service - might have improved by now - that was a year ago

I moved to interactive investor - changed some of my vanguard products over to their competitors and saved quite a bit of money on platform and product fees.

To reduce administrative failure risk, I’ve recently moved some of my money market funds to Lightyear - so far so good! Customer service has been good and the signing up was straightforward and relatively quick.

who you choose will depend on how much you have to invest too - flat platform fee or percentage? Work out which is cheaper for you. The cheaper platforms only usually deal with etfs.

We’ve just switched to Trading 212. Lower fees than HL. I also watched RFS and took their recommendations!

Another vote for II here, there’s no way I’d go with a platform that only limited to their own products, they’re highly unlikely to ever be the best in all categories (and may not cater for more edge cases like energy or gold etfs etc).

II does have a fixed fee structure that doesn’t work for everyone (smaller portfolios) but really makes sense on larger ones.

One thing to bear in mind is hl (I’m with them too) does have some good negotiated discounts on the product fees which other don’t always have, so make sure you compare that too.

I love Freetrade but don’t have any other experience to compare it with (apart from DH’s Santander, who are terrible). Easy to manage both my SIPP and ISA.

I know you want to stick to a specific fund but T212 is an excellent, fee free, platform. Only ETFs and individual stocks so I started with Vanguard VWRP but newer investments have gone into Invesco FWRG. It has lower fees and is regularly recommended on Rebel Finance School pages. The bonus of ETFs is you buy and sell in real time.