A J BELL to launch an app only investment proposition with ISA, Lifetime ISA etc. All for one low cost annual charge.
What are your thoughts on this? Another player to the market, getting crowded.
The platform will have an annual charge of 0.15%, with no commission for buying or selling investments and no tax wrapper charges.
At launch, it will offer an ISA, Lifetime ISA, Pension and General Investment Account, as well as shares in UK-listed companies, with US companies being added soon after.
There will also be a range of ‘themed investments’, which include funds focusing on areas such as technology, robotics, healthcare and responsible investing.
Ah, if it’s anything like the current AJ Bell app then nothing to worry about. It will also have a simplified investment range of “50 shares and 25 external funds". I take it to be a lite version of AJ Bell, a way to take away some of HL’s market share, and like a gateway drug to the main AJ Bell service. Good luck though.
Pricing is very competitive and so an ISA of less than £24,000 would be cheaper with AJ Bell (if they let you hold the stocks you want to invest in)
It sounds like there is little interest to open it up to the full universe of stocks and shares, instead rather focussing on the popular names. “50 shares and 25 external funds" won’t satisfy many.
Free publicity for FT
Although the maths isn’t great and probably needs someone to fact check them publicly:
While customers won’t be charged a fee for trading, Dodl will charge an annual fee of 0.15% of the value of a portfolio. That works out at £15 a year on £100,000
Waiting for a comment from our resident AJ Bell fanatic @CashCow
tl;dr - I’m not sad, I’m just disappointed plus I need to read more about the offering
I feel as though people are going to be hungry around midday at Freetrade HQ today because AJ Hell just ate their lunch. People have been crying out for FT to offer LISAs and JISAs have years now but they’re still not here.
I understand FT have been concentrating on European expansion instead and I’m sure they have their reasons for prioritising that but from the outside looking in, it feels like a mistake.
Even if AJ Hell works out cheaper I’ll still be moving my LISA to Freetrade in the future, if they ever get around to offering it, purely because AJ Hell have been so awful. In the meantime, I’ll try and move my existing AJ Hell LISA to this cheaper Dodl thing… why do I already have a feeling that it’s going to be a nightmare to do that, or maybe even impossible?
My worry is that those out there who don’t know just how utter crap AJ Hell is will jump on to this new platform with this LISAs (do they do JISAs too?) and Freetrade will lose out on those people as customers for the lifetime of their LISAs… and that’s sad.
The bulk of my investments still in AJ Bell are in my SIPP - if I were able to move it from existing SIPP to cheaper Dodl SIPP (if that were available), I will save around £40 a year in fees, but not sure that’s enough of an incentive to go through the mess of it being transferred.
Good play by AJ Bell with their existing LISAs and JISAs - I do feel Freetrade have been caught asleep at the wheel on this.
Will depend on the range available, but in theory 0.15% charge means AJ Bell is cheaper than Freetrade for an ISA if you have less than £24,000 in your account. Interesting move, probably with Freetrade and their crowdfunding a catalyst. Competition is good!
Lloyds are at it now, just had an email, offering their ISA and GIA for £36 admin fee a year!!! Who next???
Not sure if there are dealing fees though, can’t be bothered to look at the old encumbants.
Regular AJ Bell is so rubbish I doubt they can execute a compelling app. It still should put FT on notice to get their ass in gear and ship LISAs, autopilot, crypto etc. competition is heating up.
with three of the Vanguard Lifestrategy funds available to give this popular multi-asset option – in 40 per cent, 60 per cent and 80 per cent equity formats.
This could swing it for people wanting to invest in Vanguard’s Lifestrategy funds.
This is my magnum opus. The greatest post I’ve ever made anywhere on the internet and you’re all witnessing it right here.
Andy Bell, if you’re seeing this and you like it then call me yeah? We can have a chat about my terrible LISA experience and you can make me an offer for buying this logo from me.
It seems maybe a few years ago? something happened to the human race, like we collectively had parts of our brains removed that inhibited our ability to not come up with utterly stupid names.
We just ran out of good dictionary word domain names so now you pick the word you want and hack some of the vowls out of it and voila, you have your company name and domain name!
Is there a reason I am missing for the similarity?
