Account Consolidation

Most people dread the end of the tax year, but it’s a good time to get things sorted and make your finances as streamlined as you like for the next year. For me I’m transferring my ISA and SIPP to the same provider, and possibly my Emergency Fund in their Cash ISA down the line when they allow transfers in.

Currently for the past year and a half I’ve had my SIPP and ISA with InvestEngine. Some relatively recent providers Lightyear and Prosper are looking very attractive these days, as well as InvestEngine and the ever popular Trading 212. We’ll get into these later on.

Why I’m Moving

InvestEngine is great, I’ve enjoyed using them but I had 4 major gripes with them

1. They don’t offer funds, only ETFs

2. No in specie transfers out, only cash

3. No Cash ISA or cash savings

4. No support for LTD pension contributions

1. I wasn’t too bothered by exclusive ETF options when I started, as InvestEngine offer the ability to create a portfolio and your money gets invested across the ETFs you chose. But I’ve come to realise my preferred action is just to go all in on my fund of choice, the Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap. This is because it includes small cap which none of the ETFs currently offer. This may change when Vanguard launch their ETF version of this fund, but we’ll have to wait and see when that launches, how it looks and who provides it. Having just one fund means no rebalancing and is much more aligned with my set it and forget it approach.

2. As for my second gripe, you never know what the future holds and a good provider today could make changes you don’t like in the future. Or a better provider might hit the market so the ability to transfer out is very important to me. I learned this the hard way when I transferred my LISA from Hargreaves Lansdown to EQi back in 2020. I was out of the market for about 5 months while I transferred in cash, far from ideal.

3. While it’s not a dealbreaker that InvestEngine don’t offer any sort of cash savings, having multiple accounts with multiple providers can get tiresome checking across apps/websites and getting statements. That said I’m not willing to sacrifice on a good interest rate too much for simplicity.

4. As for my last gripe, it doesn’t affect me right now but I think in the future I may move from a sole trader to a LTD company, and knowing my provider supports this is great peace of mind.

Who I’m Moving To

I’ve already transferred my Stocks & Shares ISA to Prosper. I’m also now in the process of transferring over my SIPP. Prosper was attractive to me since they are a modern 0% fee broker that actually offer funds, including the mentioned Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap, they also allow in specie transfers out which is great to know I’m not locked in. Prosper also do allow for LTD pension contributions which future proofs myself for that potential shift.

Prosper also offer a Cash ISA at a competitive boosted rate of 4.6%. This is only for a year though and unfortunately it doesn’t just drop to the Bank of England rate, it falls right down to a measly 1% less than the BOE rate which at time of writing would be just 2.78%. If the BOE hit their target of 2% then you’d only be getting 1% from Prosper, which is poor.

Interestingly Prosper also refund fees on certain ETFs which for a 0% fee provider is the absolute rock bottom of fees for investors. I’m currently testing this out with my SIPP using the Fidelity

I also like the dashboard layout on the home page which displays both your savings and investments. It displays at a glance the total invested across both my SIPP and ISA (which InvestEngine also did) but I find this much more clean and simple layout more appealing. If I had any cash savings it also displays this separate to investments.

Other Options

Lightyear

I really liked the look of Lightyear, even more so than Prosper. Their Cash ISA follows the BOE rate which is great for a set it and forget it approach, perfect for an Emergency Fund. They only offer ETFs however and their SIPP doesn’t allow for LTD contributions, so it’s not as ideal and future proof as Prosper for me.

Vanguard

Why not go straight to the source for my fund of choice? They offer both a S&S ISA and a SIPP with LTD contributions. Well, it’s the fees. Vanguard changed their fee structure last year and that’s actually why I moved my first ever SIPP from them to InvestEngine, so I’m not going back there! There are too many zero fee platforms for me to go to a percentage based fee platform, in my humble opinion.

Trading 212

Another solid option, but as they only have ETFs and shares not my ideal choice. They do offer a cash ISA at a reasonable 3.6% rate, and have just announced their SIPP. So this could be a nice all in one package if you’re happy with ETFs and shares and not bothered about funds.

My Portfolio

Once my current transfers are complete my portfolio will be spread across these providers;

• EQi - LISA

• Prosper - S&S ISA

• Prosper - SIPP

• Monument - Cash ISA

I plan to write about diversifying income as well as diversifying investments to avoid risk. Having investments spread across multiple providers is another way of diversifying. Though I love the idea of a single app being my financial dashboard, it just isn’t currently possible because of the limited amount of LISA providers. Of all the providers that offer S&S ISAs, SIPPs and Cash ISAs, I don’t believe any also offer a S&S LISA to complete the package. If someone did that would be mighty tempting. Personally, for me to move my LISA from EQi it would need to be a no platform fee provider, as my LISA works out to be a tiny 0.05% annual charge on my current portfolio, and as it increases the annual charge percentage actually decreases as it’s a fixed amount. Once I hit 6 figures the fixed fee works out to be just 0.04% of my portfolio, so a zero fee broker saves me £40 a year and the app experience would be way better than EQi’s extremely basic app. But it would mean transferring over which with a portfolio of that size is a bit of a concern.

Anyway, I’m happy with the state of things for 2026. I’m feeling optimised and in control of the investment side of things. We are sticking to a rough budget that still allows for actually living and enjoying life too (understated in most personal finance/investing content!) My focus right now is on getting my home studio built and that will give me a nice creative space to produce more content, push my recording business, and practice more regularly to keep up the chops.

Let me know below if you use multiple providers to optimise on interest rate/fees or if you prefer the simplicity of an all in one provider for a cleaner overview. Thanks for stopping by.