Investors wanting to compare costs on open-ended funds can use a new fund platform comparison website to find the cheapest deals.
The site, www.comparefundplatforms.com, is free to use and allows investors to find the cheapest deals on the funds that they hold in their portfolio or are thinking of buying.
The service features 2,858 funds across six fund platforms, with more to follow over the coming weeks. Investors can select their favoured funds, including options for share dealing and whether they wish to hold the investments within an individual savings account (Isa) or self-invested personal pension (Sipp), and then view projected returns after all charges and commission rebates.
The six platforms/discount brokers featured so far are: Alliance Trust Savings, Bestinvest, Cavendish Online, Club Finance, Interactive Investor and rplan.
The service does not yet include some big players in this market. However, it says A J Bell's Sippdeal data is coming soon. Comparefundplatforms states on its site that the biggest fund platform, Hargreaves Lansdown, has declined to send data. A spokesperson for Hargreaves Lansdown says: "We did not refuse to supply the data – we refused to supply the data in the format requested."
Fund platform rplan also has a service to compare costs across 35 fund platforms and discount brokers (www.rplan.co.uk/compare). While you can't enter specific funds, you can compare the costs for different investment amounts over various periods, with different trading frequencies.
Fund investors could use rplan's service to get an idea of which platform is going to be cheapest for their investment type. Investors with specific funds in mind can then narrow down the field using www.comparefundplatforms.com.
Justin Modray, founder of www.comparefundplatforms.com, comments:
"Finding the best fund deals has become increasingly complex. We're seeing discount brokers posing as fund platforms and fund platforms taking on discount brokers, some using new 'clean' fund classes while others continue rebating commissions. Platforms charge in a variety of ways and cost can also be affected by whether you wish to hold shares and use Isa or Sipp wrappers. Putting all this together and deciphering what you actually end up paying can be a minefield, hence my motivation for building an easy-to-use comparison tool.
"There's no single overall 'best buy' platform at present, the best deals depend on how much you're investing, how often you'll switch funds or trade shares, whether you want an Isa or Sipp wrapper and the funds you'll hold. Plus some investors might be happy to pay more for additional features such as fund research and portfolio analysis tools. A platform that proves great value in one scenario might be less so in another, reinforcing the need for an accurate and impartial comparison tool."
