The 45 pips charge on every transaction is too high for 2020. I understand the need to make some return, but losing almost 1% on each trade is egregious.
FT should allow us to maintain either USD cash to trade with or cut the fee to a reasonable amount.
With the exception on some brokers who have been down the last day or so I think .45 is one of the cheapest.
Do I want it to be lower? Absolutely 
I don’t think anyone will disagree, but it’s not unreasonable.
It would be good to see a multi currency GIA account at some point, but this won’t happen for an ISA as you can’t keep foreign currency in an ISA.
Imagine how I feel paying the 1% FX fee when trading in my AJ Bell LISA. Also ISA balances are legally only allowed to be held in GBP so any USD cash feature would only apply to a GIA account.
For reference in my IB account I can trade in USD at 1.36545 / 1.36550. That is 0.5 pips spread in any size. FT spread is at least 90 times larger on each leg.
This is pure profit for FT, not transaction costs.
PLUS the £9.99 for every single buy and every single sell on AJ Bell compared to £0 on Freetrade.
I’m shy and I’ve largely kept my feelings about AJ Bell to myself but one day I might open up and say how I really feel about them.
They don’t deny this is their source of revenue. They don’t have other sources like CFDs etc. I get your point but they have to survive somehow.
What am I paying monthly fees for? I thought that was their source of revenue.
Im not saying that they shouldn’t charge, just that it should be a more reasonable amount given how liquid this market is and that we are paying fees anyway.
I think the fee is fine. Cheaper than most. You can’t expect FT to charge nothing for trades and give almost free FX. Also they should not be as cheap as some of the day trade companies which offer CFD’s etc as this isn’t their business model. No one is forcing you to use it.