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Rplan unveils new platform prices

Tahmina Mannan
Written By:
Tahmina Mannan
Posted:
Updated:
23/01/2014

Rplan has become the latest investment platform to unveil its new charging structure, following in the footsteps of Hargreaves Lansdown, AXA and Fidelity.

Rplan will charge customers a universal flat fee of 0.35% per annum on funds held on its platform, with no transfer penalties or account fees, matching Fidelity’s new offering.

On top of the 0.35% platform fee, investors will be required to pay an annual management charge on the funds in their portfolios.

Existing rplan customers will get a special ‘thank you’ price of just 0.25% rather than the standard 0.35% that new customers will pay. The new rplan prices will come into force from mid-February.

The reason behind the pricing annoucements is that from April, all investment brokers and platforms will have to ‘unbundle’ their prices under new rules from the regulator aimed at making investing fairer and more transparent for the end consumer.

In real terms, this means customers will pay a ‘service fee’ to the platform as well as an annual fee on any funds held, rather than one ‘bundled’ charge as they did previously.

Earlier this week, Fidelity Personal Investor undercut Hargreaves Lansdown with its new pricing structure, introducing a platform charge of 0.35% for clients with investments of up to £250,000, and 0.2% for those with investments north of £1m.

Hargreaves Lansdown will charge a fee of 0.45% for clients with assets up to £250,000.

For higher net worth clients the fee is lower, but the country’s largest do-it-yourself platform came in for criticism from users who were angry at some of the additional charges.

Although not as large as the likes of Hargreaves and Fidelity, rplan is positioning itself as the platform designed to help its users become “better investors”.

Andy Creak, director at rplan, said: “rplan’s focus will always be to help DIY investors to achieve better results from a more informed, sensibly diversified, asset allocated, properly monitored and flexible approach to their investing, all made possible for even the novice investor through our market leading tools, guidance and information.”