Consolidating my ETF holdings

My ETFs are held in several broker accounts, as shown below. This is because I have changed broker several times when searching for low cost broker for ETF in US, UK and HK exchanges.

• DBS Vickers Securities (formerly DBS Vickers Online)
  • Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (US)
  • ABF Pan Asia Bond Index ETF (HK)
• POEMS
  • iShares DJ STOXX 50 ETF (UK)
• optionsXpress
  • Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (US)
  • Vanguard Emerging Market ETF (US)

Each broker has its disadvantage. DBS Vickers Securities is the only broker I know in Singapore that does not charge custodian fee for US stocks, but its commission is higher than others. optionsXpress, which started its business in Singapore later, charges less commission than DBSVickersOnline, but funding the account is a bit troublesome when I use bank draft from Custom House for its lower foreign exchange spread. Finally, POEMS charges custodian fee and dividend handling fee, though its UK trading commission is lower than others. So, it would be good if there is a broker that is easy to fund and with low commission to hold all my ETFs.

Recently, a friend mentioned consolidating his ETF to Saxo Capital Markets Singapore because of its low commission for UK market, zero custodian fee and zero dividend handling fee. I have explored this option before but put off the idea due to the minimum SGD15,000 requirement to open an account. Later I found out from Saxo customer service that I could transfer in stocks to meet the minimum SGD15,000 requirement. So I decide to consolidate my ETFs to Saxo. The advantages are:

1. Lower commission than POEMS for UK stocks.
2. Zero custodian fee and dividend handling fee as compared with POEMS.
3. Ease of funding: you can fund the account by SGD cheque. Trade done in foreign currency are converted using the current spot rate plus/minus 0.5%. This is close to Custom House rate and lower than banks.

As transferring of stocks from one broker to another incurs fee, I plan to transfer my ETFs only from optionsXpress to get rid of the funding headache, and from POEMS to get rid of the high commission, custodian fee and dividend handling fee. I will leave the ETFs in DBS Vickers Securities because they do not incur on-going custodian fee.

The transfer of my ETFs to Saxo is in progress. I will post update when they are done, so stay tuned.

Buying USD-denominated stocks in SGX

Recently I bought Lyxor Japan ETF in SGX which is denominated in USD. I use Lim&Tan broker to buy USD-denominated stocks because its minimum commission is lower at USD12.50. I would usually click the estimated commission link to check how much commission is payable before I submit my order. If I choose to settle the order in SGD, the minimum commission becomes SGD25. Given the current USD:SGD exchange rate, it is more expensive than the commission in USD. If I choose to settle the order in USD, and convert the total order value to SGD, which commission is applied?

I emailed Lim&Tan helpdesk to clarify and received their call on the same day. Below is Lim&Tan’s reply:

1. Settle the order in SGD — minimum commission SGD25.00
2. Settle the order in USD — minimum commission USD12.50
3. Settle the order in USD, then call Lim&Tan within T+2 to convert total order value to SGD — minimum commission USD12.50 converted to SGD, which is currently about SGD17.

Of course, I use the third way to buy Lyxor ETF because the commission is cheaper.