Giles Hargreave piles into Hargreaves Lansdown shares

Are Giles & Peter related?

My family and I have 7 accounts with HL.

The system is ideal for the young and old amateur investor.

No relation to H or L

ciao

HL are a great company - for shareholders, including me and Giles Hargreave. However, this is the posting that I put on Citywire last April, and my views are still the same:

I have to admire HL’s business model; they have done well. I am an HL shareholder because of their very successful business model. I’m up over 100% on my initial investment, so I have absolutely nothing to complain about!

However, I will never, ever, be a client of their “Vantage” platform. Why? – because it’s great for HL (and shareholders) but not so good for their clients. HL have managed to carve a very successful niche for themselves and I give them all credit for that.

Investors of their “Vantage” offering are suckered in to the hype of a good deal but HL successfully make their income from the balance of their non-refunded commission fees (including trail commission). It’s a great model but don’t try and include shares (in lieu of commission-paying funds) in the “Vantage” pot, as their charges are prohibitively expensive. For instance, who in their right mind these days would pay a percentage-based annual “administration” charge for holding shares when others offer a transparent fixed annual fee?

Well done HL, may your success continue – for shareholders like me!

Giles Hargreave is a seriously shrewd man, he is most unlikely to have got this one wrong, I think that I might buy a few HL shares for my portfolio.

I've been with HL for many years and I have to say the customer service is now so poor I will be withdrawing my investments from them and moving elsewhere

I agree with Alan. They are expensive for share dealing especially ETFs. Also some of their funds which appeared in their so-called 'Wealth-150' have failed to live up to expectations such as Axa Talents. They still get the commission, investors take the hit.

hl good company i own 1000 shares in company also have a sipp and isa and vantage account.

I agree with some of the above comments. They have good service and good rebate on funds, but come ETFs, Shares and Investment Trusts, they are expensive. Add to that the lack of a stop-loss service, they're really targetting the 'invest and do-nothing for 10 years' client.

I've started to move my assets elsewhere for these reasons. I suspect I'm not the only one, but I still think I'm atypical of their main client base. So as an H-L shareholder I don't regard it as a problem.

After reading the comments here about share dealing charges, I looked up HL's charges page for their share account:

http://www.h-l.co.uk/investment-services/share-dealing/charges--and--interest-rates

I can't see any mention of "percentage-based annual administration charges" there, and it reads like the only charges are the dealing fee and a set quarterly fee for their "active trader" service. Have I misunderstood this? Are there other "hidden" charges somewhere?

HL only apply the annual administration charge in its Vantage ISA service, and although it's comparatively more expensive than the fixed administration charge other brokers offer, I think it's still fare. I plan to hold a mix-match portfolio of active funds and shares, so even with the percentage-based charge at 0.5%, it still beats those active funds' TER.

My only experience of them was when a slick salesman of theirs wanted me to cash in every asset I owned and pile it 100% into a portfolio just before the market went belly up.

Fortunately my dog was a very good judge of character, she didn't like him so I didn't invest.

I am both a shareholder and hold a SIpp and Isa with them. I have always found them very efficient both with correspondence and on the telephone.Their charges may be higher than others in some areas but I am sure most of their clients are relatively financially sophisticated and understand the cost structure which is well documented. As the saying goes "you can't have it all ways".

You are also paying indirectly for their research and general advice which is a means to an end to make you invest other than staying in cash, that is why they hardly pay any interest on cash deposits.

I've been with HL for about 6 years. I have to agree their customer service has got worse recently. Their costs for holding direct equities are also high (0.5% PLUS VAT), and they charge this fee on some funds too (like the popular Fidelity Moneybuilder UK Index). Their commisions are also quite high. I'm planning to move my holdings to Cofunds through Bestinvest, and use iii for sharedealing. Those buying HL's share now might be buying into yesterday's growth story

Are Giles and Peter related in any way? I cant see an answer to the original question made above

Richard and Lester,

As Giles's surname is Hargreave and Peter's surname is HargreaveS I would think the chances of them being related are somewhat remote.

One thing often overlooked with CoFunds is that if you ever wish to move from their platform, you have to move into cash, and then move the cash to the new platform and invest afresh, all of which causes delay and cost and a nasty hit if markets move up in the meantime.. They don't allow transfers in specie. This is an unnecessary obstacle to easy transfers since they will accept in specie transfers onto their platform. CityWire strated a campaign to get them to change this about two years ago but it never got anywhere in the face of obfuscation from CoFunds.

I've been with HL for about two years and hold a SIPP and Shares ISA and I can only say that their service has been exemplary, both on line and on the telephone. I take full advantage if their stock research and at the same time treat the Wealth 150 with some caution!

HL is a very mixed bag, and until they sharpen their act, I won't be investing in their shares.

Their charges for holding shares / ITs in ISA make them seriously uncompetitive, especially as they will not link dealing charges to their Active Trader share trading accounts, with result that they are very expensive even for on-line share dealing within an ISA. Barclays is much cheaper.

For funds ISAs, their initial charges on most funds are low, and they do rebate some of their trail commission, but their switching service is often rather slow. OK for core holdings, though.

Vantage share account, at active trader rates, has worked well for me.

But their research and recommendations are, at best, uneven in quality. My biggest losses have come from following their recommendations, and it is impossible to understand some of the inclusions in the Wealth 150.

They seem to spend way too much on indiscriminate mailshots to give confidence that they can contain costs if business contracts. Avoid.