Until 31 December, Fidelity is promising price parity on funds with the UK’s leading D2C platforms, or it will refund the difference, with the group believing it will remove the cost barrier for price-conscious investors.
Fidelity has looked across at Barclays Stockbrokers, Bestinvest, Hargreaves Lansdown and TD Direct Investing for its benchmark pricing.
For investments up to £250,000 the one-off service fee is 35bps and with portfolios of between £250,000 and £1m the fee is 20bps on all investments held.
Fidelity Personal Investing will not charge any service fee on any investments above £1m and has no additional fees.
If investors in eligible funds held between 1 March and 31 December discover their fund is available at a lower cost at one of the four main competitors they have between 1 January and 28 February 2015 to inform Fidelity and apply for a refund. Claims will be refunded in cash within 90 days.
Mark Till, head of personal investing said: “Following the announcement of our competitive pricing model in January, this latest development further highlights our commitment to delivering both value and investment expertise to the self-directed investor.”
He acknowledged that price played an important role in customer decision-making but added: “However, we believe investors will benefit more from focusing on the resources and skills of the asset manager, as well as individual fund performance, than on securing a small additional discount on their funds.
“That is why we have made this bold move, to enable investors to find the right funds for their needs without having to worry about which of the leading platforms is currently offering the best deal on their choice of funds.”
Till warned investors they would be better placing greater emphasis on performance over price when it came to selecting funds, as the difference between the most expensive and cheapest funds was only 1.58% compared with an annualised outperformance of 18.89% by the top three performing funds against the UK equity funds sector average.
