Your questions answered

From July 2023, we will gradually move our company and trust accounts onto a new administration system. This will make it easier for you to manage your investments and will mean we can offer new services and better ways of holding cash within your account.

In the first phase, we moved most ISAs, Junior ISAs, SIPPs and Investment Accounts.

We are now moving company and trust accounts.

We will be moving eligible accounts from July 2023. If you hold different types of company or trust accounts, we may move accounts at different times. To keep disruption to a minimum we will move accounts over a weekend

If we cannot move an account as planned – because there is a transaction going through, for example – we will delay the move for that account until the next available weekend but continue moving any other accounts.

We will send you a statement by post showing any transactions since your previous statement, as well as the value of the accounts you had on our current system at the time of the move. You will still receive a quarterly statement at the normal time, covering the period after your accounts are moved. If, for any reason, you have accounts on both the current and new systems, you will receive separate statements for them.

You or your adviser will not be able to give us dealing instructions over the weekend when your accounts are moved, or on the following Monday. Dealing will be available again on the Tuesday morning.

Yes, this is possible if you withhold consent (see question 26). However, all eligible accounts will eventually be moved, so it will not be possible to opt to stay on the current system indefinitely. We believe that the move will have positive results for our investors.

Bundled – a bundled share class is an older share class version and one where the majority of charges are included in a single ongoing charge figure (OCF). Charges for platform services, such as administering your account, are taken from this OCF, as well as charges for managing the fund itself. For example, a typical bundled fund might have an OCF of 1.5% a year. This might be made up of 0.75% for fund management, 0.25% for platform services and 0.5% for other expenses.

Clean – a clean (or ‘unbundled’) share class is a new version of the share class and has a lower OCF as it only includes the fund management charge. Our Service Fee has to be charged separately. Using the example in the paragraph above, the fund’s OCF might go down to 0.75% to cover the fund management charge, and our Service Fee will be collected from your account separately. This means you can clearly see how much you are paying and what it is for.

If you still have any investments in older or ‘bundled’ share classes of Fidelity funds, we plan to move them into ‘clean’ share classes of the same funds. This process is called ‘conversion’. There is a small minority of Fidelity funds for which we have not yet been able to create a clean share class. An investment in one of these funds will stay in the bundled share class, but we will charge for it in a slightly different way, so that our Service Fee is separate from the fund management charges. If you hold an older version of one of our offshore GBP funds in the Fidelity SICAV range, we’ll perform a switch to the clean shareclass, instead of a conversion. Switching into a different share class of the same fund won’t create a capital gains tax liability, but if you need information about the impact a switch could have on your tax position, we suggest you contact a tax specialist or HMRC.

Because we will no longer be able to take payments for platform services from the ongoing charge figure (OCF) of a bundled share class, we will pay an equivalent amount back to you on a quarterly basis as a ‘platform rebate’. Please note that the rebates would count as taxable income. You will see any rebates within your statement and valuation. These are shown as ‘Management Charge Rebate - ‘fund name’’.

If we convert your investments, you’ll see these conversion transactions on your closing statement which we’ll send to you once your account has been moved to our new platform. If we perform a switch to a clean shareclass, you’ll receive a confirmation of transaction. You can then look at the key information document (KID) for each share class to compare charges. If you search for a share class at fidelity.co.uk/clients using the Investment Finder tool you will find a link to its KID in the ‘Important documents’ section of the fund factsheet. Alternatively you can ask your adviser.

No. Nor will you lose out if any of your funds usually has a higher price for buying shares than for selling them, as we will convert them at a single price. Also, your money stays invested throughout the conversion, so there is no risk of missing out on market rises.

Capital Gains Tax (CGT) – fund conversions will not affect the amount of CGT you pay.

Income tax on rebates – if you have a Trust Account and you currently receive rebates on investments in bundled share classes held in an Investment Account, your tax liability may be reduced as a result of conversion to clean shareclass. This is because clean share classes do not pay rebates. On the other hand, the few funds that do not have a clean share class available will pay rebates that are liable to tax, so your tax liability on these may increase.  

If you would like more information on how a conversion will affect your tax situation, we suggest you consult a tax specialist.

The conversion will take place over a weekend (Saturday and Sunday). While your investments are being converted you or your adviser will not be able to sell or switch out of them. Once converted, you or your adviser will be able to deal on your holdings the next working day.

No – you may have a different number of units in the clean share class, but the total value of your investment in a fund will not change as a result of the conversion. However, during the short period when you cannot sell or switch out of your investments (see previous answer) your money will still be invested. This means the value of your investments may go up or down in response to market movements. We will not be held responsible for any losses you incur as a result of not being able to sell if the market falls during this period.

You’ll see these conversion transactions on your closing statement which we’ll send to you once your account has been moved to our new platform.

If you hold an offshore GBP fund in the Fidelity SICAV range, we’ll place a switch instead of a conversion in the new clean shareclass. A confirmation of transaction will be sent to you. Switching into a different share class of the same fund won’t create a capital gains tax liability, but if you need information about the impact a switch could have on your tax position, we suggest you contact a tax specialist or HMRC.

No.

In the past there have been some differences between the way we administer Fidelity-managed funds and funds managed by other investment companies. Customers who bought Fidelity funds in an Investment Account, for example, were named as the owner on the share register. However, if you have funds managed by other companies, the share register shows the name of a ‘nominee’ company, which holds the shares securely on your behalf. When we move your accounts to our new administration system, we’ll register the units through a Fidelity group nominee.

A nominee is a company (or sometimes a person) in whose name an investment is registered. The nominee we use for Fidelity-managed funds is a Fidelity Group company appointed by Financial Administration Services Limited, which is already the nominee for non-Fidelity funds sold through our platform.

While your name will no longer be on the share register of the Fidelity-managed fund that you hold in an Investment Account, you will still be the beneficial owner. This means that the shares belong to you even in the unlikely event of the nominee becoming insolvent, and you can sell or move them at any time, just as if you were named on the share register. In addition, you will still receive all the benefits of ownership, such as dividends and interest payments. The differences involved in the nominee arrangement include the way you vote – you will need to give your instructions to the nominee company and it will vote on your behalf at the fund’s meeting. You can register to receive voting forms at fidelity.co.uk/vote

Additionally, shareholder reports will go to the nominee, but you can ask it to pass them on to you.

As with all investments made with Fidelity, your assets are kept separate from ours. It is very unlikely that Fidelity would ever become insolvent, but if we did, creditors would have no legal right to your money and we could not use it to cover our obligations. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) is an independent body set up by the government under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and funded by the financial services industry. As the ‘fund of last resort’ for customers of authorised financial services firms, it can pay you compensation if a firm is in default and cannot meet any valid claims against it. To find out more, visit fscs.org.uk

Regular savings plans and withdrawals plans will be automatically updated to clean share classes, as part of a conversion. If you have a regular savings plan paying into a Fidelity fund in an Investment Account and ask us not to convert the fund, the plan will be stopped in the near future as we phase out our older administration system.
This is because it will only be possible to invest in accounts that are held on our new system.

You will still receive your regular income payments.

The annual Service Fee and Investor Fee for your Fidelity Adviser Solutions corporate and trust accounts will not change.

The service fee is divided into monthly payments, based on the value of your investments at midnight on the first of the month that the charge relates to.

We calculate the fee on the first of each month. It is deducted on or around the 1st of the following month. The Service Fee is normally taken from the cash held within your account. If there is insufficient cash in your account to cover the fees we will sell units/shares in your largest investment by value and by asset class – for example we will take the fee from the largest fund before we take it from an Exchange Traded Instrument.

Customers outside the UK can sell funds and withdraw their money to a UK bank account, but they cannot buy, or switch into, new investments. Our new system offers the option to hold cash within an Investment Account. This means that if the account is overseas and you sell a fund, you will be able to keep the proceeds as cash within your account rather than having them paid out to you. You are also able to transfer or re-register your investments to another provider if they permit investment for accounts outside the UK.

If any trustee lives overseas, then a block will be placed on the account to prevent buy and switch dealing.

The changes noted in the section above are only necessary for Fidelity funds you hold in an Investment Account, including any joint accounts and any accounts that you are responsible for as a trustee under your Fidelity Customer Reference Number. We’ll make the changes at the same time as we move your investments to our new administration system.

If you do not want us to make these changes (moving unit registration to a nominee / conversion to a clean share class), you can call us to withhold your consent. For joint accounts, we will write to the primary holder, but all account holders should confirm agreement to these changes. If any of the joint holders, wish to withhold consent, they or the primary holder should call us. Where consent is withheld, we will not convert your investments to the new charging structure and will not be able to move them to our new administration system. This means you will not be in a position to benefit from the improvements we are making to our services. We are gradually phasing out the system your Investment Account containing Fidelity funds is currently held on. As a result, we may have to extend the restrictions on your account.

There are a number of options available to you, including selling your investments or transferring out to another platform or investment company.

Most Fidelity Funds will have a cut off time of 11am which is the same cut-off times as the majority of funds that we offer on our platform. However, there are some exceptions to this, including our Fidelity offshore range, whose cut-off time will change from 5pm to 4pm. Please refer to fidelity.co.uk/importantinfo for more information on cut-off times.

If we receive your instruction online or by phone before the relevant intraday cut-off time, we will normally process this instruction on the same Business Day. If you send an instruction by post or upload and send, it will be processed within two business days from the receipt of your instruction to Fidelity. In certain circumstances your instructions to buy, switch or sell may take longer to process, for example if your adviser submits them through the bulk switching and rebalancing service. Please refer to fidelity.co.uk/importantinfo for more information.

Our share dealing service gives you access to a new range of investment options, including shares from the FTSE All-Share and AIM 100. Our share dealing service includes investment trusts and exchange traded funds (ETFs), so if you already hold any of these types of investment with us, you’ll still be able to deal on them.

As the service is not available online for corporate and trust accounts, we’ll place an aggregated order when we receive your dealing instruction - this means it will be dealt with other orders received at the same time and will be dealt at the next available aggregation point after receipt. This is the same process whether we receive the order directly from you or from your adviser.

There are specific transaction charges for the new share dealing service. These are listed in the next question and you can also find full details in the Doing Business with Fidelity Adviser Solutions document at fidelity.co.uk/clients/legal-information

Our service fee and investor fee will not change from what it is today.

The charge for buying and selling will be £3.00 for each deal. A switch will be charged at £3.00 if you are selling one brokerage asset and buying into another brokerage asset - £1.50 will be charged on the switch out transaction and £1.50 on the switch in transaction.

For regular transactions, including regular savings plans, regular withdrawal plans, dividend reinvestments and deductions to pay a fee, the charge will be £1.50 per ETI.

These charges replace the current percentage-based fee of 0.1%.

Stamp Duties/Levies - Depending on the type of ETI you buy or sell, additional charges may be incurred. 

• UK Stamp Duty of 0.5% applies when you buy UK shares
• Irish Stamp Duty of 1.0% applies when you buy Irish shares
• In certain circumstances UK Panel of Takeovers and Mergers levy of £1 applies on UK share deals of over £10,000. 
• In certain circumstances Irish Takeover Panel levy of €1.25 applies on Irish share deals of over €12,500. 
• Financial Transaction Tax - A charge on the purchases of some exchange-traded instruments from a number of countries internationally, including some in Europe.

The current charge for instruments domiciled in Spain for example is 0.2%.

On our new system, the flat-rate dealing fee of £1.50 per asset will apply to all regular transactions, including regular savings, income reinvestments and withdrawal plans. This will be taken as part of the overall transaction charges and in the case of a withdrawal plan, taken from the investment.

This will help to cover the costs of buying or selling shares on the open market. It also represents a saving on the standard transaction fee for a one-off share transaction.

We are able to offer this discount by carrying out instructions from many different investors at the same time.

Depending on how much your regular transactions are for, the £1.50 charge may be more or less than you currently pay with the 0.1% dealing fee.

Please note, you will only be able to buy whole units in investment trusts and Exchange Traded Instruments, so any money left over after your regular savings or income have been invested will stay as cash in your account.

Yes, although you could hold them in different accounts if you prefer. If you have a Private Trust account, you will be able to see these holdings (alongside any personal accounts) in your online account overview once you have registered for online access.

As you hold a company or trust account, you can’t vote on any voluntary corporate actions at this time, and as such if the corporate action proceeds, your investments will change in line with the proposal. Mandatory corporate actions will also be processed as per the default option. Any corporate actions affecting the shares you hold will be processed and you’ll be able to see any changes on your annual statement and valuation.

Over the time we have been developing our share dealing service, we have managed holdings in investment trusts and ETIs in the same way that we manage mutual funds, which allows for partial shares. However, we need to adopt the standard industry practice of only dealing in whole numbers of shares.

You may need to bear in mind that the selling of a partial share within an Investment Account could create a Capital Gains Tax liability. You should speak to an independent expert if you have any questions about tax.

Yes. Once we move the account to the new platform, we cannot currently exclude the payment of Stamp Duty Reserve Tax from any ETI on which this is charged. If you are exempt from paying this, you’ll need to speak to your tax adviser and claim this back as part of any tax return.

Yes, you’ll be able to move fund investments and company shares from other companies. In many cases it will be possible to ‘re-register’ investments – in other words, move them without having to sell them and buy them back. This ensures your money stays invested and you are not out of the market during the move.

If you hold the physical share certificates, you can send us a CREST transfer form (one for each different company you wish to transfer) and a Stock Deposit Instruction Form. To check if a share is available on our platform, you can use our Investment Finder.

Share certificates can only be deposited into an open Investment Account. You’ll need your adviser to open an Investment Account first if you don’t already have one.

With our new system, you’ll be able to choose whether your income is paid out on the 1st, 10th, 17th or 25th of the month. The initial setting will be for the 10th, but you or your adviser may change the date following the move of the account. In addition, it will be possible to specify different dates for different accounts, as well as different frequencies – monthly, quarterly, six-monthly or annual.

Yes. You will be able to hold cash in all your accounts. This will give you greater flexibility when managing your investments. For example, you can keep your investment income in your account as cash (rather than having it paid out or reinvested) and if you keep enough cash in your account, we won’t need to sell any of your investments to pay your fees. You can also sell investments and hold the proceeds in cash or use your cash to make new investments.

At the time of the move to the new system, we’ll also set up a Cash Management Account (CMA) for Companies, Societies, Limited Liability Partnerships, Private and Pension Trusts. A CMA will not be set up for Pension Trust Nominee accounts or our Canada Life International Bond and Utmost Offshore Bonds.

A CMA is a separate account that helps manage cash across a portfolio, pay fees efficiently where possible and provides a place to keep cash when you have yet to decide where you would like to invest. You can only hold cash within the CMA account and it is different to ‘cash within your account’ where you can hold cash alongside your other investments.

Your cash will be held by Financial Administration Services Limited (a Fidelity Group company) in accordance with client money rules laid down by the Financial Conduct Authority. It will be deposited in trust accounts with authorised banks. Each month we assess banks’ credit ratings and select the most appropriate ones to hold our investors’ money. Where possible we will spread the money across more than one bank to provide extra protection.

Financial Administration Services Limited is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and if we cannot meet our obligations to you, you may be entitled to compensation of up to £85,000 from the scheme if you have investments that are not cash. Deposits held in cash on your behalf in UK-based bank accounts are also covered by the scheme up to a maximum claim of £85,000 per bank. More information on how your money is protected can be found here: How is my money protected? (fidelity.co.uk)

Any cash that is held in your accounts, including the Cash Management Account, will earn interest. Interest is paid on a monthly basis, on or around the 21st of each month. The interest paid each month is based on your cash balance each day of the previous calendar month.

For more information, please review this page www.fidelity.co.uk/clients/about-us/cash-management/

For GIAs and Cash Management Accounts, interest payment is dependent on your client type. Charity, Pension Trustee and Offshore Bonds are paid gross, all other client types are paid net.

If an account is eligible for gross interest, but it is receiving net interest, then tax will need to be reclaimed from HMRC. If you would like more information on how a net payment will affect your tax situation, we suggest you consult a tax specialist.

Any account maintenance or dealing instructions can be done as you and your adviser do today. Your adviser will be able to place some instructions online.

We will continue to address correspondence as we do today. You’ll receive a confirmation of transaction when a deal is placed. Quarterly, you’ll receive a statement and valuation and you will receive an annual costs and charges document.

We’ll also send you confirmation when you send us any maintenance instructions.

If you hold a company account or a pension trust, instead of receiving an annual tax voucher for any account holding distributions, we’ll send you a consolidated Monthly Distribution Summary.

Your adviser can open a new Pension Trust account, or company account on your behalf. Additional Pension Trust Nominee, Canada Life International Bonds and Utmost Offshore Bonds accounts can continue to be opened via an application form

A withdrawal payment will be made to the bank details we hold for the account, unless different bank details were given to us on the withdrawal instruction. If we do not hold any bank details for you or if these belong to a new third party whose details we have not paid to previously, we will contact you before sending the payment out.

In the case where we have a query on the bank details, we will place the withdrawal instruction and sell out of your investments. The proceeds of this sell will remain in cash within your account until any bank details are confirmed and verified. When these details are confirmed, payment will be made to the bank account. While the money is held as cash within your account, it may be subject to any fee that is due and payable.

Companies - Some existing company accounts have limited online access that allows them to see account holdings and valuations and this will continue following the move of your accounts. 

Today, income tax is not currently charged on rebates for Limited Liability Partnership accounts. After the move to the new system, we will stop this practice and pay these on a net basis. There’s no material impact as you have an income tax liability which will be corrected in tax returns.