Hargreaves Lansdown has delayed cost increases for a select group of customers until March 2027 after it faced a backlash from high-net-worth and previously loyal users.
The Isa and pension provider had planned to more than triple the annual charge cap for holding shares, investment trusts and ETFs in stocks and shares Isas and general investment accounts (GIAs) on March 1, from £45 to £150.
However, Britain’s largest Isa and pension provider has emailed a small group of its clients offering to postpone the cap increase until the end of February 2027. The company said this was to thank particular clients for their loyalty to the platform.
A spokesperson for Hargreaves Lansdown said: “We run targeted incentives and promotions across the year as another way of adding great value and saying thank you to clients for trusting Hargreaves Lansdown with their savings and investments.”
The incentive has only been made available to customers already contacted by the platform and will not be offered more widely. Only the price cap has been changed via the offer, and other changes announced in January came into effect for all customers on 1 March.
Hargreaves announced an overhaul of its pricing regime, including the change to the fee cap for its annual account charge. These included a reduction to the annual charge for Isas, self-invested personal pensions (Sipps) and GIAs from 0.45 per cent to 0.35 per cent. The platform also introduced a fund trading fee of £1.95 per trade while cutting the platform’s share trading fees.
The company argued that eight in ten customers would be better off or face no change as a result of the pricing refresh. However, clients with large share, trust or ETF portfolios will still have experienced a sharp increase in their fees. An investor with a £500,000 share portfolio held in a Isa, who makes one trade per month and has not benefitted from the cap postponement, will see annual charges increase from £188 to £233.
This has led to reports that customers with large shares, trust and ETF portfolios left the platform in search of cheaper alternatives.
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