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I haven't looked at De Giro, but I'll take a quick look. When I compared I found interactive brokers to be the cheapest.

Do you have a UK bank account? I'm looking for a cost effective offshore account option for someone in my family who doesn't have the ability to travel and open one.

Thanks, I'll look into the investec option. For DeGiro, I'm trying to get my head around all the costs. The commission free ETFs sound great, my favourite, VWRD is there too, just listed on a euro exchange in euros rather than $. What I can't find is if there are any monthly fees for the account, or any custody fees if you're holding those ETFs.

I haven't looked at De Giro, but I'll take a quick look. When I compared I found interactive brokers to be the cheapest.

Do you have a UK bank account? I'm looking for a cost effective offshore account option for someone in my family who doesn't have the ability to travel and open one.

Patrick, I have an acc in the UK with Nationwide and they have always been very efficient and provide good service and attend to any queries immediately not sure how you open an acc from here as I am originally from the UK and go back frequently but would recommend them

Thanks, I'll look into the investec option. For DeGiro, I'm trying to get my head around all the costs. The commission free ETFs sound great, my favourite, VWRD is there too, just listed on a euro exchange in euros rather than $. What I can't find is if there are any monthly fees for the account, or any custody fees if you're holding those ETFs.

Have opened an offshore broker acc with TD Direct International which because of all the forms and questions they ask has taken forever and now when I transferred funds into the acc and asked to buy ETF's they sent me this reply:

If this is an ETF that is leveraged or involves short selling then you will have to complete the ‘complex products test’.

You will also have to accept the exchange agreement for investing in the US.


So doesn't look like I'm going to be using them and the DeGiro option looks much better - was it easy to open an acc with them to trade ETF's? No 'products tests' or similar?
 

No products test. Very simple

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Hey Mr_D.

Thus far it's been great. I have a local Investec account and through them was able to open the UK Investec account. The cost is £10 per month. 

On the De Giro side the only costs are trading costs and these are ridiculously low in comparison to what I have seen on other platforms.

I'm new to the game so I might be missing something. But so far... all good.

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For you guys opening the De Giro accounts, just make sure you get the CUSTODY account, and not the regular account. With the regular account your shares are lent to others (to be shorted I assume). Trouble is, the risks are on you should the party lending the shares not be able to return them.

This isn't an issue with the newer custody accounts.

I'm still looking at costs. At the moment if I buy VWRD through interactive, I pay 0.08% with a minimum of $1.70 per transaction. With De Giro I'd pay €2 + 0.02%.

Here's how I see the costs:
$1000 IB: $1.70 DG: €2+$0.2
$2000 IB: $1.70 DG: €2+$0.4
$3000 IB: $2.40 DG: €2+$0.6
$4000 IB: $3.20 DG: €2+$0.8 (+-$3)
$5000 IB: $4.00 DG: €2+$1.00
$10000 IB: $8.00 DG: €2+$2.00

It looks to me like there's a crossover point at around the $4000 mark, before that interactive is cheeper, and after that De Giro is cheaper. This is all provided you have $100 000 in interactive, otherwise you pay $10 per month for the account. There will be another crossover too, with IB there's a maximum fee of $39, so for very big transactions IB will be cheaper again.

In theory you could also just buy VWRD in Euros for no fees, however since I have $'s in my account and not Euros, I'd have to pay 0.1% currency conversion, so again it would only be cheaper for very small amounts.

Another theory says I should just buy VT in USD, which has TER than VWRD (0.17% vs 0.25%), but then the hoops to jump through to get the divvie tax reduced from 30% to 15%, and there's the risk of holding over $60k and dying and having to put the US estate tax treaty with SA to the test. So much to consider for a saving of a couple of $ a month!