Depends what āa lotā is.
I highly doubt even 5% of FT customers will up and leave to go to a competitor. As with most things itās a minority of people that will be disgruntled enough to take action.
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Cheaper than who?
IB, HL, Barclays, shareview, HSBC all donāt charge Ā£120 annual fees. In fact youāll find ISAās much cheaper elsewhere:
The annual charge to hold shares, bonds, Investment Trusts, ETFs or gilts in the HL Stocks and Shares ISA is 0.45% (capped at Ā£45 per annum)
With regards to members moving, I guess only FT will know but an investor leaving for a competitor is interesting metric, I invested and think this isnāt the best move as 212 offers a free ISA and for a micro trading platform Ā£120 a year is actually quite expensive.
Iāve seen a few people lean towards the other micro trading apps that are in this investment circuit.
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So you want to open a HL accountā¦ then never make any trades? Youāre being deliberately obtuse. Iām sure youāre very well aware of the actual costs of those platforms since you had to scroll past them all to get your example.
Your HL examples is for a GIA only, and on shares only. It doesnāt include costs for funds, ISA, trades, etc. So yes, HL is cheaper, if you never use it.
Itās generally accepted that % based fee brokers are cheaper initially but become much more expensive later on. Fixed fee brokers are much more advantageous long term. Freetrade also has the advantage of only having one fixed fee, no fee for trades, etc.
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The Ā£1.50 HL regular investing charge is often quoted but it is for a limited selection of shares, plus when you come to sell itās the Ā£11.95 stinger.
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Per investment as well. Plus thereās the fund fees if you hold funds. Straight up comparisons arenāt easy to make.
If you compete on price (which is an inherent idea in FT) then you shouldnāt be surprised if customers show little loyalty if there are cheaper options out there.
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Correct me if Iām wrong Nev, but reading through the Hargreaves site it seems that this regular investment needs to be not once a quarter but once a month by direct debit? Thus making the quarterly payment not possible. Indeed on your first post about costs in another thread you previously gave the monthly example?
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How often do you actually trade? You keep giving this example, Iām sure it was Ā£117 before.
Your example is extremely specific, requires no selling, and requires buying only 4 times a year.
HLs regular investment option is monthly by direct debit, it also only offers a select number of investment trusts as well.
Perhaps this example should just be dropped. Itās nit picking to try and find a cheaper gotcha. It just isnāt comparable
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I used to use the regular investment thing for all my buys when I was using HL, I just changed the instruction every month. way cheaper than doing ordinary instant order
I hold a few shares on revolut it is nice to use but has a quite limited stock universe and by a country mile not at all as good as freetrade canāt see anyone leaving freetrade for revolut
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No, you can start, change, amend and cancel the DD at anytime, so can use it to pay quarterly if you want. I have the DD set up for putting cash into the account, then make the changes on the month I want to invest then immediately after revert the DD back to cash (admittedly itās a bit of a faff).
Iād like to do it monthly but trying to get costs down as much as possible. With the example above you can also use the option to invest once a year
That makes sense - if the system can be worked around to fit your investing style then good on you, does sound like quite a niggle, but for some it will be worth it for the savings I guess.
It is a faff but literally takes about 20 secs
As a suggestion to bring cost lower, if you are keen to keep fees down and happy to invest once a quarter in your same trusts each time, wouldnāt paying for plus 4 months a year be your cheapest option then? You could then spend just Ā£40 and do exactly what you have suggested above.
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Iāve mentioned it recently, but Freetrade Plus needs to compete not just with HL but firms like x-o.co.uk and iWeb where you can do 20-25 trades a year before Freetrade Plus becomes better value for money. The majority of personal investors, do nowhere near that number
In addition, these platforms do not charge any ongoing fees if you do not trade.
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The x-o ISA only caters for UK listed products and charges Ā£5.95 / trade. If Freetrade announced that as their ISA product there would be carnage in here.
Although not cost related their platform is absolutely horrendous. I used them up until a couple of years ago and and had to email them for a cash withdrawal.
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We could debate how much you want to trade etc and if youāre day trading it would be more expensive but if your a mom and pop or average investor looking to be in major branded assets or you are looking for a few mining stocks for a 10x return youād be better off placing those long trades elsewhere.
Even with trading fees if youāre making a big ISA investment in stocks for your future, youāre better off with any other broker. e.g.
2020 Buy - National Grid, Centrica, HSBC, Barclays, LLoyds.
Trading Fees: HSBC = Ā£11 per deal. Freetrade = Ā£0
Annual Fee: HSBC = Ā£42 Freetrade = Ā£120
Total YR 1 - HSBC = Ā£97 / Freetrade = Ā£120
If you look at it over a longer or lifetime period its even worse.
Itās actually a bit of a joke that so called āfreetradeā is now more expensive to hold google and stocks than with IB or HSBC 
Now of course it depends on your investment style but for long term investors with infrequent trading patterns then FT is not viable.
For more dynamic day traders, they can get the same service without the fee on another platform so are we thinking theyāre going to stick around and pay for the UI or am I missing something?
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You donāt need Plus for any of them, the ISA on itās own is only Ā£3, so Freetrade total cost comes in at Ā£36
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You will always be able to find examples were one service is cheaper than the other in certain scenarios.
As pointed out earlier by another poster, the cheapest option in this scenario is to purchase PLUS for 3/6/9 months a year and then cancel. Significantly cheaper actually infact if something happened and they needed to sell some holdings or rebalance their portfolio.
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