We received the following email this morning and I thought that my response might be of help to others.

My savings are ‘trapped’ in stocks and shares ISAs and I am unable to escape into cash in the forthcoming financial aftershock of the crunch (unless I dispense with the benefits of ISAs). Does Arch have any tricks up its sleeve to help? If so how and what does it charge? Thanks.

Thank you for your enquiry. No tricks but the solution is to move your stocks and shares ISAs onto an online investment platform. Once on the platform you can usually move in and out of cash within 24 hours and on our preferred platform all switches are free. If the underlying investments in your ISAs are ‘collectives’ such as unit trusts, investment trusts or OEICs (Open Ended Investment Companies) then we would be happy to be involved. If the underlying investments are direct shareholdings then you will need to use a stockbroker and I would be happy to give you details of an online one you could use.

It takes a few weeks to get things moved across but once there life becomes a lot simpler. You can see all your investments in one place and (if you were using our services) give us instructions by email as to what amounts you want to move in or out of cash. You do not lose the ISA status of your investments by such a move.

If the total of your ISAs and any other unit trusts you have is less than £20,000 then we would move them to the Cofunds Fund Supermarket. We have used Cofunds for 10 years and it works well but it is not so flexible as our preferred platform and there is a small charge for fund switches. If the total of your ISAs (which can include any new ISA investments) and unit trusts is more than £20,000 then we would use our preferred platform the Nucleus Wrap which we have used for two years and in which we have purchased a small shareholding so we can use the system as it is IFA (independent financial adviser) controlled.

We would charge 1% of the monies moved to the platform to cover our advice and admin costs. This would be capped at £400 so moving £20,000 would cost you £200 and moving £100,000 would only cost you £400. In the case of Nucleus our charge can come out of the funds transferred rather than by direct payment if you wish. We then charge 0.5% of the funds each year which is paid out of the funds to us. Please note, however, that as Nucleus negotiates reduced annual management charges with fund groups the extra annual cost to you is likely to be negligible. One of the major advantages of using Nucleus is that you have access, at no extra cost, to a range of professionally managed risk-rated portfolios for your ISA investments and these are rebalanced quarterly.

Some fund management groups will simply allow you to ‘re-register’ your ISAs to a platform. For example, we can arrange this for you with Henderson, Invesco Perpetual, Jupiter, Schroders and Threadneedle and they make no charge for doing so. Other companies do feel it necessary to deduct a small charge from the funds transferred so for example M&G charges £35 and Gartmore £25. Some fund management groups such as Fidelity will not allow re-registration. In those cases we can transfer the funds. This means the funds within your ISA are sold and the cash amount is transferred to the platform where new investments are purchased but still within the same ISA wrapper, that is you are not using up any of this year’s ISA allowance. As there are no initial charges on the purchase of 95% of funds held on the Nucleus platform the only issue with a transfer is that you are out of the market for around 10 days, so you could lose out if markets race ahead or gain if they fall back during that short period.

If you would like us to provide further information please let me have a list of your ISAs showing the ISA provider (eg Gartmore), your account number for that ISA and the approximate value (a figure from your last statement is fine). I will then forward the relevant paperwork (which is quite straightforward) together with our Personal Questionnaire so we can make sure our advice is correct. I will also let you have a copy of our Client Agreement although I can confirm that our fees would be as detailed above.

Thank you once again for your enquiry, which is appreciated. I trust that this information has been helpful to you and I attach some notes on Investment Platforms.

If anyone reading this Blog would like to receive our notes on Investment Platforms please email me at arthur.childs@arch-fp.co.uk with ‘Investment Platforms’ in the heading or body of your email. If you would like to discuss your ISA investments please ask your usual Arch adviser, telephone 01483 204600 or email enquiries@arch-fp.co.uk.