Is the Charles Stanley Direct Stocks & Shares ISA any good?

Is Charles Stanley Direct's Stocks & Shares ISA any good?

Yes, we rate Charles Stanley Direct’s Stocks & Shares ISA very highly, especially for investors with larger portfolios and those that want added value and excellent customer serivce.

Pricing: Charles Stanley Direct charge 0.3% of the value of your investments, but fees are capped across all accounts at £600, and there is a minimum ISA fee of £60. There is also a £10 online share dealing fee, so it’s certainly not the cheapest ISA around and best suited to those with larger portfolios.

FX is a little punchy too. If you are buying US stocks, 1% below £10k and 0.75% up to £50k is quite high compared to peers. Above £50k, 0.5%, which is a bit more reasonable.

However, as with everything in life, you get what you pay for. If you want better service and access, it will cost a little more.

Market Access: Excellent – one of the great things about old school stock brokers is that you can invest in all the weird and wonderful small-cap stocks on the London Stock Exchange. For some reason, Kefi is one of the most popular share price pages on Good Money Guide at the moment, even though it is only a tiddler valued at £180m, people seem to be really interested in it. That is, despite the investor relations page being described by one of our analysts as “like something from the bad old days of bulletin boards”.

But, opinion, as they say, is what makes a market, so I bought some Kefi shares as a test trade when I was testing their ISA. After all, when we interviewed Charles Stanley Direct’s Chief Analyst, Rob Morgan after they were voted best ISA, he said there was a lot of value to be had in the small-cap market, which I happen to agree with, so I can’t blame him if they go down.

App & Platform: I’ll be honest, the desktop version could do with a refresh; it’s a bit 2006, but does the job. The app is much slicker. I was surprised to hear that only around 25% of orders go through the app at the moment. There is much more stock info on the app, like what the company does, performance and some dividend info. It’d be good to get some analyst ratings and broker forecasts on there, plus a recurring order function would be handy (good investing habits and all that). But you can choose to invest on an amount basis, rather than per share basis, which is the modern way.

Customer Service: This is where stock brokers differ from investment platforms, and I think where Charles Stanley Direct is winning. Investors get to a point where their portfolio has grown to a level where it’s quite nice to have a chat with someone about it. One of the recurring themes of the reviews that are left on Good Money Guide for Charles Stanley Direct is that the customer service is excellent, and the ability to get advice or guidance from a broker is one of the key draws to traditional stock brokers as opposed to online or app-only platforms.

Research & Analysis: There is lots of on-trend analysis available to read from experienced analysts, a good knowledge base to find out more about ISAs and SIPPs. But I think the main thing here in the AI world we currently live in is the ability to pick up the phone and have a chat.