Barclays Stockbrokers has become the latest platform provider to reveal its new pricing structure, putting it in line with Fidelity and undercutting Hargreaves Lansdown.

Barclays Stockbrokers has become the latest platform provider to reveal its new pricing structure, putting it in line with Fidelity and undercutting Hargreaves Lansdown.

Barclays will charge a fund administration fee of 0.35 per cent per annum for clients with assets up to £500,000 ($827,900), with no further fund charges above this amount. The new structure also includes a minimum fee of £35, which may result in those with less than £4,000 paying more, Barclays said in a statement.

As a result of the Retail Distribution Review banning trail commission, many platform providers have announced new charges as they move to the new clean model, which does not include commissions, fees, or rebates, ahead of the April deadline.

Earlier this month, Hargreaves announced it was reducing its charges to 0.45 per cent, with no extra charges above £250,000, while last week Fidelity said that it will be introducing a 0.35 per cent platform fee for clients with up to £250,000 on its platform, dropping to 0.2 per cent for clients with between £250,000 and £1 million.

Above £1 million for Fidelity there will be no charge, while for Hargreaves the fee is 0.1 per from £1 million to £2 million and nothing above that. 

“We are introducing what we believe to be a clear, simple and fair RDR funds pricing structure. The RDR has encouraged a more competitive marketplace, however we recognise that the changes can be confusing. Investors need clear and simple information about the price they are paying and we have designed our pricing structure with clarity, simplicity and fairness at its heart,” said Alastair Thaw, director of Barclays Stockbrokers.

Pub brawl

Holly Mackay, managing director of London-based consultancy The Platforum, which specialises in investment platforms, said that while some had referred to the platform price changes as a price war, it was in fact more like an "epic price pub brawl".

"The good news for investors is that there has been a general reduction in charges across the market. The bad news is that there is still confusion pricing out there, especially for platforms supporting shares, funds and SIPPs, and it’s still very hard for investors to work out what any platform will actually cost to use," said Mackay.

“For providers supposedly at war, there’s actually not that much between the top platforms for customers. Barclays is competitively priced in general, although smaller SIPP investors with shares will find this a pricey option. Fidelity’s ‘all-in’ fee makes it a nice, easy-to-understand option for fund investors but it is not a good option for those with shares. Hargreaves will suit accounts with both an ISA and a SIPP and some of their Wealth 150 funds,” Mackay said.

Last week, SCM Private, founder of the True and Fair Campaign, a lobby group which says it campaigns for greater transparency in the investment industry, questioned the benefit to investors of the new regime and said companies were not passing on the benefits of their economies of scale and instead "rewarding" customer loyalty with higher charges than their smaller competitors.

In April last year, the FCA said that cash rebates would be banned from 6 April 2014 for new clients and until April 2016 for existing customers. After these dates a more transparent pricing model will be implemented, where platform charges will be disclosed to and agreed by investors.

These changes were brought in by the FCA so that clients would be able to make more informed choices and understand what they were paying for. This has led to platforms operating at least two share classes in their funds with the old-style traditional bundled share class model and the new clean share class model.