MEGATHREAD: New subscription plans 🔁

Exactly. Won’t work if 20% of my divs go back to FT for the Standard account

As BASIC subscriber I would see the number of investment options going from 4721 to just 1525

Yes 100% this. It will be a curated 500 stocks next.

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When will this feature be available,I’ll pay £4.99 if and when it is released.

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I’m not a huge fan of securities lending, at least if I’m not profiting from it. But I take it then you don’t buy ETFs? Or if you do have you found an easier way to identify which funds do lending and which don’t?

Yes, hence my consideration to downgrade.

I disagree with this as a justification for a platform to enforce compulsory securities lending with no cap on amount that can be lent. But this has been discussed before in the securities lending thread. Probably not worth discussing further here and taking this thread off topic.

The point of my post was to comment on interaction between new price plans and possibility of compulsory securities lending influencing my choice of price plan.

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You may be joking. Nevertheless, I think the comment is wholly unfair and is a gross mischaracterisation of the situation.

There are millions of people in the UK who have never invested. They think that you need to have bags and bags of money to invest. I think that companies like Freetrade help to dissuade people of the notion that they can’t invest. The basic tier provides access to the major companies through ETFs and direct holding in major companies. People can dip their toes in and decide if this is something they would like pursue. It opens up possibilities and opportunities. It is for people who are beginning their journey … and perhaps for people who don’t wish to continue to manage their own affairs beyond the very first steps. I think it is very important in a democracy that everyone has the opportunity to invest.

What a better way to begin investing with no strings attached - the basic tier does that. The financial exchanges are at the heart of our way of life. In a nutshell, the basic tier allows people to dip their toes and more fully participate in our countries democracy. WoW. Just WoW.

It is a great time to be alive.

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I stopped investing years ago because of the charges, except for an ISA at HL,
and got a GIA as my main account with FT because of the low fees with good US access. This has been undone.

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An ISA at HL makes sense if you’re invested in funds under a certain balance. That’s the good thing about options. Fixed platform fees only make sense at higher amounts of money

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if you were a complete beginner to investing, then an ISA would be the first point of entry :face_with_peeking_eye:
but I guess we do need the complete novices, who come in, loose all their cash therefor transferring it to us :sweat_smile:
the market is best way of transferring cash from those that dont understand to those that do

I started investing with Freetrade and then moved over to Trading212 due to Freetrade not allowing reits in isa acounts.

So ive just been using freetrade to hold 2 years worth of isa investments and im happy to pay for that. However the extra features their providing for this price hike i cant use due to not having an active isa with Freetrade, so to me this is just a price hike with no added value.

Increasing the price of your subscriptions is absolutely fine but it does mean you have to compete with other businesses that can provide more features for the same price or less much harder. Considering Freetrade still doesnt offer reits in isa accounts and they currently dont have a webclient outside their most expensive sipp subscription this is an extremely hard sell right now.

I dont see myself opening a sipp with freetrade so i will never have acess to the nice features Freetrade has locked off for its premium users, and I’ll never use the features they added to the standard subscription such as stoplosses. So i feel stuck in the middle.

While i wouldn’t tranfer my Freetrade isa to Trading212, as that platform has its own problems, it does make switching to HL look like a much more appealing option now.

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Does the standing order for the ISA / standard need updating or will this be automatic?

I currently pay £3 a month and im happy to pay the standard fee, not sure if i need to do anything to agree / modify standing orders to pay for this?

A beginner doesn’t necessarily need an ISA.
If I’m starting with £10 per month in my GIA I’m not going to need an ISA for a couple of years at least (dependent on market conditions of course).

Having 1500 stocks and ETFs to invest in is more than enough for a beginner.

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If the fees are cheaper and your not trading inside your ISA (you can still sell and buy inside an ISA even if its not the one your subscribing to, not sure if that’s what you meant but just for others sake) then HL might make more sense as the fee cap is lower £45 vs £60 (assuming zero trades are made)

Excellent news for Freetrade investors. Thanks for sharing this.

You should be able to access all the benefits of the £4.99 plan right now, however you will continue to pay £3 the next two billing cycles. After that (around October) you will start paying £4.99 automatically.

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You don’t really need an ISA unless you are making over 12 grand in capital gains or over 2 grand in dividends.

I doubt many beginners are in that category

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Anytime is a great time to be alive!

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Technically true.

The point that’s missing here is you still need to do tax returns. Many see these as a hassle.

The ISA is useful in that it prevents the need to do a tax return

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If you aren’t over the threshold You only need to report it if the amount you sold if for was over 4 times your allowance and you do self assessments.

so you need to have sold ~ £48K of shares, still don’t think many beginners are in this category

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No you don’t need to do a tax return just because you are outside an ISA. There are specific limits at which you are required to complete a tax return and they correspond roughly to the numbers that @Dave states. More details at Report and pay your Capital Gains Tax: What you need to do - GOV.UK and Tax on dividends: How dividends are taxed - GOV.UK.

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