I strongly believe in simplifying things but not putting all your eggs in one basket is a wise adage, as I found out today, that’s yesterday you-time.
It should make sense to find one place to park savings that is cheap and secure. Two homes for my money are Investec and Alliance Trust Savings. The former is by no stretch of the imagination cheap. Commission is about 2% +VAT and there is an annual fee. The latter, up in Dundee, has a great online trading platform and is ridiculously cheap. Rationally I should simplify my life by moving everything to Alliance Trust Savings and it was in the back of my mind to do so when my friend Trevor at Investec retires.
I am unsure what ATS would do if Scotland gains independence. My guess is that they would relocate to the UK. I’m not unduly worried on that score. They exude reliability especially since the staff have reassuring Dundee accents. They are safe hands to handle eggs. However, I will not rely wholly on them after an incident this morning. Their trading platform crashed because a server “went down”. Not the end of the world but it raised a red flag that I’m not going to ignore. Next time it might be a malicious attack on their website or a fraudulent one. I very definitely don’t want to see my eggs disappear like props in a conjuring trick.
The UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme offers some protection but it is capped at a relatively low level. Whether it would apply to me would depend on the circumstances of a failure by ATS. It’s not a bad thing to prepare for the worst. Retired people in Ireland enjoyed the handsome dividends paid by Irish banks. In some cases, now they have only the state pension to live on. Of course events take one by surprise but, so far as one can, like the Boy Scouts it’s worth being prepared.
Tom Lehrer first became known to a wider public in the UK in 1957 when it was said at a ceremony conferring an honorary music degree on Princess Margaret that she admired his songs. It is sometimes said that she chose something by him when she appeared on Desert Island Discs but this is untrue.