Stockbroker Charles Stanley Direct are increasing their platform charges. Their platform fee will rise from 0.25% per annum to 0.35% per annum. That might sound a large increase but in practice many clients will not pay any more. The overall annual cap of £240 per annum remains on those holding shares rather than funds and even that disappears if you trade once per month. On funds the charge of 0.35% reduces on larger portfolios to as low as zero on those over £2 million. Transaction charges remain at £11.50 per trade on shares and zero on funds.
That’s a brief summary of the new charges, but as with any platform you need to work out exactly what you will pay based on the composition of your investments, the size of your portfolio and the frequency you trade.
It would appear that these changes will mainly impact the smaller investor and Charles Stanley put the reason for the change down to the need to maintain investment in the platform when they face complex and evolving changes. Mention is made of the need for more cyber security but all brokers have been hit by increasing regulation and the requirement to change their systems as a result.
As we saw from the results from The Share Centre last week, who reported a statutory loss of £280k for the half year, it’s not easy to make money in the “platform” business at present. Charles Stanley Direct lost money in the last full year also, although the rest of Charles Stanley made a profit. Only Hargreaves Lansdown, the gorilla in the market place, seem to be making real profits on their capital invested although it will be interesting to see the financial figures from A.J.Bell Youinvest if they go public soon as forecast.
Part of the problem is the exceptionally low interest rates brokers obtain on their holdings of client cash from which historically stockbrokers made a large proportion of their profits. Bank of England base rate increases will assist but they have been waiting a long time for that to improve and rates are not rising rapidly.
As I said before in my comments on the recent FRC Report on the Platforms Market, “informed investors can no doubt finesse their way through the complexities of the pricing structure and service levels of different platform operators. I can only encourage you to do so and if an operator increases their charges to your disadvantage then MOVE!”.
Incidentally my submission to the FRC on their Report is now present on my web site here: https://www.roliscon.com/Investment-Platforms-Market-Study.pdf
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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