Sad to say i have been waiting for over a year for IE to add a SIPP to its product range and its all been a bit disappointing now its being unveiled with a whopping fee compared to many other SIPP providers in todays market.
As many have said… uncompetitive and far too high for smaller pension pot holders.
Shame really, and i would imagine IE have lost a potentially huge amount of custom because of this that have been waiting patiently.
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There are 2.5 main ways to charge for a SIPP. 1) Flat fee.
2) Percentage of pot size
2.5) A combination of both.
IE seem to be going for a flat fee and at £11.99 (assuming they don’t charge for transactions) that would make them cheaper than all other major ‘flat fee’ providers.
Percentage based fee structures benefit smaller pot sizes, up to a tipping point depending on the percentage charged. Apart from Vanguard the pot size won’t need to grow that much before you are paying an average of more than £11.99 (especially with those provides that have transaction charges). And remember Vanguard have a limited fund range.
So my view is IE is competitive for all but small pot sizes where Vanguard has the edge. So for IE to become the most competitive they would just need to add another tier e.g.:
a) free below £2k.
b) £5.99 p/m below £50k.
c) £11.99 p/m above £50k.
In order to avoid the step change when crossing tiers then a percentage approach would need to be adopted (e.g. with a similar approach to income tax brackets).
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Although the problem with ascending tiered pricing is that it:
- Adds complexity for consumers (albeit marginal)
- Adds implementation complexity e.g. as it’s easily gameable if IE doesn’t add protections to stop multiple SIPPs and multiple accounts per person
- It works as a disincentive to invest more
Flat pricing on a single tier avoids all of these, so perhaps that’s the calculation they’ve made.
Perhaps they can re-evaluate with a lower price for a single tier, a cap, or some other incentive mechanism for smaller pots though
Presumably the second point (gaming by multiple accounts per person) is relatively easy to address given that these are all KYC-ed products with a single provider.
Hi all,
Thanks for your patience whilst we went back to the planning room re SIPP pricing. As a bit of background, we set the £11.99 monthly fee to provide simplicity and support investors as their portfolios grew, while hoping that the £2,000 fee-free limit would provide an avenue for investors to get started.
However, we’ve heard your feedback, predominantly around the £11.99 fee being prohibitive for mid-sized SIPP portfolios, and have made the carefully considered decision to amend the pricing.
Upon launch, our SIPP fee will now be 0.15% capped at £200 a year.
This should achieve all objectives for investors of all portfolio sizes; and when combined with our already low-investing fees (commission-free for DIY, 0.25% for Managed, with ETFs from as little as 0.04%) and automated investing solution, makes for a compelling pension proposition.
Thanks again for your feedback, the pre-registration page will be updated shortly with these details.
We look forward to welcoming you all as SIPP clients in the coming weeks.
Team InvestEngine
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Wow. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you for listening to the feedback.
This will make you by far the most attractive SIPP provider on the market.
Me and my wife will be opening/transferring our SIPPs from Vangiard to InvestEngine!
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This is great news, thanks Adam and the IE team for listening to your user base.
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Wow, that’s awesome news. Thanks for listening to user feedback 
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One request on the SIPP front (since it hasn’t launched yet) - please allow us to pay the fee from cash within the account. This is more tax efficient than paying from money ‘outside’ the SIPP
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Great news but are you allowing employer contributions, that is what will enable me to switch.
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Absolutely Nats - not many on this thread are talking about this, but for me it’s crucial otherwise I won’t be switching…
Out of interest, how would this work? I don’t think I’m able to tell my employer where they should pay my pension each month to. The company have a pension provider who they pay all employee and employer contributions to, and if I want to put it somewhere else, I have to do a partial transfer.
My employer is an umbrella company with a fairly long list of pension providers they can support payments to. If Invest Engine enable employer contributions I would approach the umbrella company and ask they are added to the list, which would obviously benefit IE as well as myself. For other companies I believe you can ask but they are not required to make specific providers available to you, although I know folks working in smaller companies where this has been possible but likely because it’s just easier for smaller companies to be more flexible.
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Another one who would need the allowing of Employer contributions to be able to switch from HL to InvestEngine. Initially I looked at the Vanguard SIPP which is priced competitively but had to go HL as Vanguard does not accept Employer Contributions.
I have my ISA with InvestEngine so would love to have my SIPP with them too.
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Hello Community,
Its great to see the positive reaction to our SIPP pricing above. We really value your input, so much so we thought it would be good idea to ask another question!
How should we take our SIPP fees?
- Take the 0.15% SIPP fee from the GIA Cash outside the SIPP account
- Take the 0.15% SIPP fee from the SIPP Cash
- Ask for a card to take payment
0
voters
We plan to take fees monthly in arrears. But let us know if you think we’re should do something different or if we’re missing an option above.
Look forward to seeing which way votes & reading any comments.
Hi Tom,
Will there not be the option to take the fees directly out of your investments?
If you have GIA or SIPP cash, assuming you have the cash auto invest function turned on, you’d likely not have available cash, so having the ability to take this from your investments (say the biggest holding) would be helpful.
Thanks.
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Out of those options I chose card. Generally, I think it’s simpler for a lot of people just to automatically fully invest a regular fixed amount and then pay what can be a relatively small but variable SIPP fee separately. Although that wouldn’t necessarily have to be card, card would be ok. Some people won’t have a GIA and even if it’s paid from SIPP cash, then people have to juggle how much to leave in the SIPP cash to allow for fees.
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I voted for the SIPP cash option as this is what is done by HL. If there’s not enough cash available they take it from the investment itself which is a bit of a pain but I can understand why it’s done. Once your into the swing of things it’s fairly easy to estimate what the monthly fee will be so keeping enough back in SIPP cash is not a big issue.
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Would company directors be able to make direct payments into their personal SIPP from the business bank account? Also, any updates or hints about a tentative release date would be greatly appreciated. I’m eagerly looking forward to it.
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@tom.winterton have you got an approximate release date? I’m just wondering whether it’s worth me postponing merging my pensions until you’ve released your pension and this info would really help.
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