COME AND HAVE A GO 2016

RISE OF THE MACHINES
E OGHAV A
E DNCO M A
Direct platform investing in the age of robo-advice

FOREWORD
WHAT YOU’RE GETTING
MARKET OVERVIEW: TO ROBO OR NOT TO ROBO,
THAT IS THE QUESTION
WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU ROBO: THE BASICS
OF ROBO-ADVICE
THERE’S A PLATFORM OUT THERE FOR EVERYONE
BUT WHAT IF IT ALL GOES WRONG?
ARE YOU GAME TO COME AND HAVE A ROBO?
DICING WITH PRICING
PLATFORM CHARGING: LIKE A WOUNDED BULL
TAKING THE WOUNDED BULL BY THE HORNS
WHAT IF, JUST MAYBE, THE BANKS DON’T MESS IT UP?
THE LANG CAT DIRECT PLATFORM AWARDS 2016
CONCLUSIONS
ABOUT THE LANG CAT
T TNCO SN E
3
11
8
26
4
19
38
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Hello and welcome to COME AND HAVE A GO: RISE OF THE
MACHINES. In 2014, when we were working on our first
guide to direct platform investing (as we call them, since
they’re guides to direct platform investing), we didn’t think
it would ever turn into an annual affair. There was a lot
going on in the direct investment market back then, we had
opinions to share and since we made it free to download
there was a chance folk might read it. Job done.
It turned out that several thousand of you did download it, so
we did it again in 2015. And you stayed with us, against all the
odds. So here we are in 2016! With a trilogy! Which means a
significant character should probably die and someone ought to
unearth a long-kept secret about their parentage.
While we can’t quite promise that, we can promise you pretty
good coverage of what’s worth knowing about the direct
investment platform sector. At the moment, the single biggest
‘thing’ is robo-advice. You’re going to be hearing a lot more about
that in the coming pages.
Like justice, love, or a ripe Camembert, the Guide means
different things to different people. It doesn’t change its
physical appearance and content based on who happens to be
looking at it (we have the technology but choose not to use it)
but, depending on how informed and experienced you are as
an investor, you may approach it in different ways.
If you’re brand new to the world of direct investing (and to our
Guide), first of all we welcome you. Now put this Guide down,
and download our two previous issues: COME AND HAVE A GO
and COME AND HAVE A GO TOO. Both are available on our
website and will give you a good grounding in the basics. And
then you can come back to this edition brimming with freshly
acquired direct platform investment know-how. Or ignore us
and just dive in. You are the master of your fate, not us.
If you’re a seasoned direct investor, with a seen-it-all-before
air as you move through life being impressed by absolutely
nothing, then we’ll do our best to find new things to tantalise
your jaded palate.
Just before we kick off, a timely reminder that nothing happens
in isolation and no man is an island. Except when you’re an
island that just voted to sack off the rest of Europe. Which is
exactly what happened as we were in the process of setting
the Guide. As things stand right now, the markets are, ahem,
fluctuating and platforms are struggling to cope with demand
as investors try to limit the impact on their portfolios. Beyond
that, things will settle but we’ll have to wait for time to do its
stuff before a clearer picture emerges. We’ll be sending out an
update later in the year and will get into it all then.
Right, time to power up and get this semi-automaton-themed
show on the road.
Enjoy the Guide
Mark Polson
principal, the lang cat
E ROFO DR W
COME AND HAVE A GO: RISE OF THE MACHINES COME AND HAVE A GO: RISE OF THE MACHINES2 3

A long time ago (last year), in a galaxy (direct
investment platform market) far, far away (sort
of)...stuff was happening. The Rebel Alliance
had gained control of its own pension pot
and was using it to counter the Empire’s…oh,
forget it. No more Star Wars references.
This sector is fickle, and moves fast. Pension freedoms are
now part of the landscape, and we’ve moved on to the latest
New Thing. Regardless of what any well-meaning Chinese
astrologists might tell you, 2016 is the year of the robo-adviser.
THE FORCE AWAKENS3
In some ways the direct investment market has been comatose
for a year or so. When we first shared our musings with you
back in 2014 it was – in industry parlance – all kicking off, as
platforms had to decide on and announce explicit charges
instead of surviving on back-handers from fund managers.
The dust from this settled and formed a Miss-Havisham-does-
interior-décor look. Pricing changes slowed, there was little
acquisition or consolidation activity to speak of and nothing
more than a few good Twitter spats to get excited about. Our
2015 Guide had some extra cat pictures to compensate.
But as we write, things are waking up and moving on. The big
story in the online investment universe has been the emergence
of what we know as robo-advice. The launches have been
coming thick and fast, at roughly a rate of one launch for every
four complaints about robo-advice being a silly term. And we’re
not kidding. Whoever comes up with a better name wins robo-
advice (or whatever it ends up as) and everyone else can just
go home and watch Pointless.
MARKET
OVERVIEW:
TO ROBO
OR NOT TO ROBO,
THE QUESTION
THAT IS
3. Except that one. Sorry.
For the bargain price of precisely no pounds you are now in possession of a veritable
smorgasbord of delights. In fact, this particular smorgasbord contains no less than 327%
of your recommended daily intake of direct platform investment knowledge1
.
Here’s an appetiser.
Before gorging ourselves on all things robo-advice related, we plate up some of the other stuff that’s been keeping everyone busy
over the last twelve months, like pension freedoms, the Financial Advice Market Review (FAMR) and, incredibly enough, some direct
platforms going about their business in ways that have nothing whatsoever to do with robo-anything.
But we all know – or at least you will soon – that robo is the big thing. And as big things do, it takes up a lot of space. We’ve even
made some changes to accommodate its not inconsiderable girth.
We are chuffed to welcome a number of new robo-adviser or robo-like platforms to the Guide and to our tables. We’ve even added a
brand new Wounded Bull section (platform pricing, if you’re new to all this2
) to take account of the unique quirks in the ways they go
about their business.
There’s been seemingly endless robo-talk across the industry but little (if any) of it appears to be aimed at the people who might
end up using the products, explaining the important stuff to them that they might (and very likely will) need to make the important
decisions. And yes, dear reader, we’re talking about you. We’re happy to rectify this oversight and in this august organ you’ll find
all you need to know about robo-advisers: what they are, what they do and whether they might do it for you (in a purely investmenty
sense of course).
WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU MEAN BY ‘FREE’?
Are we talking free as in ‘free’ or free as in ‘it’s free to you but with some questionable
stuff going on in the background’? It couldn’t be any freer. Is that a word? Never mind,
you get the point. Anyway, it’s free. And there’s no questionable stuff. That is to say,
we don’t have any sponsors or advertisers. We don’t make any money at all from the
Guide; in fact it costs us a packet to put it out. Any questionable stuff is down to our
specialist sense of humour.
The simple truth? We believe it’s important that the Guide is easy to access for anyone
who wants. And that means not charging you good people to download it. We’ll never
compromise our independence and unbiased position for cash.
Which bodes well for the Guide, if not for any future political ambitions.
Everybody ready? On we go.
T GNGE T I
T U’OWH RA Y E
COME AND HAVE A GO: RISE OF THE MACHINES COME AND HAVE A GO: RISE OF THE MACHINES4 51. The lang cat Surgeon General has found that any platform knowledge above 100% of your RDA is harmlessly
passed through your system and leaves your body in the normal way each time you watch X-Factor.
2. Charging, you see. Wounded Bull. Charging. Charging
like a wounded bull? No? Oh, what’s the use…

ROBO REGULATORY REVIEWS
ROMP (CAN WE SAY ‘ROMP?)
Few people like the term robo-advice but no-one’s come up
with anything better. So, since all that’s left of the ‘don’t call it
robo-advice’ stable door is a few splinters, we’re calling it robo-
advice. Deal with it.
Anyway, robo-advice has been a feature of much of the Financial
Conduct Authority (FCA)’s work over the past year. It was
especially prominent in what was ultimately an anti-climatic
Financial Advice Market Review (FAMR to its friends, of which it
had few). We expected a wide-ranging analysis of whether the
financial services market was doing enough for consumers as it
could or should – mainly because that’s what we were promised.
If you missed FAMR, don’t worry. We TiVOed it for you.
FAMR was meant to be the key that unlocked financial advice for
those who have been priced out of it after the Retail Distribution
Review made advisers charge properly for their services and not
survive on commission and post-golf bacon rolls.
What we got was about 80 pages of meh, in which the
28 recommendations made were mainly suggestions of
further consultations, working parties and other forms of
procrastination. We are experts in procrastination at the lang
cat so know how to spot it. After we’ve checked Twitter.
FAMR was clear on the subject of robo-advice though, with
a recommendation that the FCA set up a unit specifically to
help robo firms. The Regulator and the Government are quite
keen on robo, spying an opportunity to narrow what they
(optimistically) call the advice gap without having to get their
own hands too dirty.
FAMR also proposed changing the definition of
‘regulated advice’ so that it has to involve a ‘personalised
recommendation’ based on your specific circumstances and
needs – although this too is subject to a consultation so won’t
apply until early 2017 at the soonest. This has the potential
to (finally) give some clarity around the ‘is it advice or is it
guidance’ debate that has dogged the industry and held a
number of offerings back from launching.
Guidance is fine and serves a purpose but it’s not advice and if
an unregulated firm (anyone other than a qualified and regulated
adviser) crosses the line into advice, all sorts of bad things start
happening. Like feeding a Gremlin after midnight.
Away from FAMR, the FCA has been trying to encourage robos
through its too-cool-for-school Project Innovate unit. This unit
aims to lure new ideas and businesses out of the shadows
without worrying that they will be beaten into the carpet at the
first opportunity.
FCA has also launched a ‘regulatory sandbox’, an extension
of Project Innovate which will allow firms to test-drive new
products and services without having to worry about the usual
liabilities and regulatory requirements, other than some basic
consumer protection demands. In short it allows access to
the real market and real customers to test potentially viable
offerings without putting anyone at unnecessary risk.
While this is curiously available to large firms too – including
banks – the idea is to help lower the barriers to entry and
innovation facing smaller, unauthorised firms. We’re guessing
that the big boys would have cried ‘foul’ if they had been
excluded and we wouldn’t want the poor ickle multi-billion
pound companies feeling hard done by, would we?
WHAT’S GOT US HERE: THE ROBO
BRICK ROAD
If column inches reflected business activity, robo-advice
firms would be absolutely raking it in. Unfortunately for
them – and for people who write things like guides to direct
platform investing, to pick a random example – there is no
correlation between the two.
But at this point it’s all about potential and shiny new
stuff. And who doesn’t like shiny new stuff? It has so
much potential. Anyway, we’ve got all this excitement and
interest, and a bandwagon groaning under the weight of
all the newbies jumping on board – and little evidence
of where clients and the resulting revenues will actually
come from. Seriously, are you investing with one of the
robos? No, you’re not, and neither is anyone you know.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it? A bit like 1999 and 2000,
for instance, when the dotcom boom scrambled the
collective brain cells of investors and much of the
financial media. The rate at which new robo-advice firms
have emerged over the past year and the willingness of
investors to back them makes the dotcom comparison
difficult to escape.
A brilliant example of robo-hype came in the form of an
April Fool’s prank which misfired. New kid on the block
Swanest tweeted that it had raised £10m start-up funding
(LOLZ). But then it was picked up and reported as a
fact. And then congratulations started pouring in from all
over the fintech world for this great result. Cue red faces
and a lot of hasty retracting. It goes to show that this is
considered perfectly achievable.
The question, of course, is where the dotcom similarities
end. We’ll dodge that bullet for now, but will come back
and stand in its path later.
MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE
OLD SKOOL
Just two short years ago direct platforms were all
zeitgeisty. Now? Old hat. But we still love them, so let’s
take a look at what they’ve been up to.
As we said earlier, the flurry of pricing activity in 2014 was
followed by a lull in 2015, and that remains the state of
play in mid-2016. Even ISA season, which used to be a
sure-fire feeding frenzy, has now markedly diminished with
platforms declining to compete for (decidedly unprofitable)
ISA business. The first quarter of 2016 was the worst
since Methuselah was a lad, and unless you were
Hargreaves Lansdown, your figures were a bloodbath.
To say that direct platforms are standing still, however,
would be unfair. Some have been running very fast indeed
to achieve stillness.
Here are the headlines (click each name to visit that provider).
Strawberry Invest has done its bit to keep
things interesting, buying a load of clients
who’d invested on the FundsDirect platform
from Royal London, and preparing to launch
P1, its new discretionary proposition.
Nutmeg has been busy too and has finally
clambered over the fence into being a proper
robo-advice offering after a prolonged period of,
like, mindfulness, you know? and totally trying to
locate its centre.
Santander which launched its direct investment
platform (Santander Investment Hub) just in
time to make it into the Guide without the need
for last minute re-writes. Nice timing, lads, extra
points to you. It’s an ISA and trading account –
or general investment account (GIA), if you like
– with plenty of information about investing and
risk that’s pitched about right for beginners.
Alliance Trust Savings went through
with its purchase of Stocktrade from
Brewin Dolphin, bringing it up to £12bn of
assets under administration and within sight of
the big guys.
Brewin Dolphin is
in the process of launching its own direct offering.
AXA Self Investor was snaffled for an
undisclosed sum alongside its advised sister,
Elevate, by Standard Life. It’s too soon to say
exactly what will happen to you if you’re on ASI
but it looks as if everything will continue as is
for the time being at least.
Parmenion is
worth a mention as it’s been busy too – tying
up a series of deals to provide the underlying
technology for robo firms including
EQ Investors, Fiver a Day and Destination
Financial Planning.
AJ Bell Youinvest has also been rummaging in
the tech toy box. It’s successfully fired a trade
into its platform from Facebook Messenger. A
sign of things to come – imagine updating your
portfolio AT THE SAME TIME as publishing
pictures of your dinner. What a time to be alive.
OHHHH..
CARRY
ON
CHAIRMAN!

WAKE ME UP
BEFORE YOU ROBO:
1 WHAT EXACTLY IS
ROBO-ADVICE?
3 WHAT DO ROBOS
ACTUALLY DO?
THE BASICS OF ROBO-ADVICE
Advice is like pregnancy; it’s a binary state. You’re advised or you
aren’t. You can’t be a bit pregnant; you can’t be a bit advised.
The line between the two isn’t always entirely clear but if the word
‘recommendation’ is being bandied about, it’s a clue. Platforms tend to
be better at telling you when they do give advice than telling you when
they don’t. The thing to keep in mind is that if you feel like you’ve been
advised then you probably have, whether it was meant that way or not.
Direct platforms are typically the cat’s pyjamas if you want control
over the whole investing process. You might need a helping hand
to better understand things like risk and what different funds do,
but you’re happy to accept responsibility for your investment
decisions and (and this is the important bit) their outcomes.
If you don’t crave that level of control and either can’t afford or don’t
want full financial advice, you might well be ripe for the robos. The
robo firms say the main advantages cited by their customers are
ease, simplicity and low cost (although this is compared to advice,
rather than other direct platforms). If you don’t have the wedge for
full advice and/or you want to set something up without too much
hassle, a robo-adviser might appeal.
In other words, if you’re using a robo-advice service you’re
probably comfortable with technology but you don’t have a lot
of spare time. It’s the outcome that tops the priority list when
investing, after all. Not the process. Here’s the rub, though –
the process is where the risks lie.
As with all technology, robos carry a risk of failure. Just one
system flaw in one part of the automated process – an iffy
algorithm, perhaps – would almost certainly result in a whole
glut of unsuitable recommendations and mis-sold investment
portfolios. We’re not saying it’s likely, but neither is it impossible.
In short, the same caveat applies to robo-advice as it does to
using a D2C site or any other kind of investing channel: read
the small print and know what you’re getting into. If you’re not
sure about something to do with any platform (what it does,
rather than what you should do) then ask. That’s facts, not
advice and customer support teams should be comfortable
talking about their offering. And if your needs are more complex
or sophisticated than investing with a particular objective in
mind, professional face-to-face advice is the best option by far.
2 ROBO OR RO-NO?
(with apologies to Scooby Doo)
OK. Let’s recap. We’ve established that robo-advice (as we
will continue to call it) is:
direct investing platform market or maybe both.
This section, then, is where we try to make sense of a few things.
Like what robo-advice is, whether it’s something you should be
interested in, how it works and what you need to know about it.
So here goes.
Very good question. There’s no universally-
accepted, detailed definition, mainly because
the term is such a catch-all and the whole thing
is still taking shape.
(We’ll take a swing at segmenting the whole
direct investment market shortly: our method is
like nothing anyone has done before. Like, ever.
We’re not even telling you the page number
because you’ll just skip straight there. It’s that
ahead of its time.)
The untrained eye might not see much to
distinguish robo from normal direct investment
platforms. They are all online investment
services after all, with the ultimate aim being to
flog some investments (usually funds or ETFs)
to investors who are unwilling or unable to pay
for full-on professional advice from a real-life
person. There are some clear differences
between the established D2C players and those
sitting under the robo-advice banner, however.
The most obvious is the offer of advice, as
opposed to the guidance offered by a number
of direct platforms.
One thing a lot of people like about robo-advice is that
it sounds simple and relatively jargon-free. If you like
completing questionnaires and learning a bit more about
yourself, there’s a decent chance you’ll even enjoy it. Yep,
‘enjoy’. Not a word we usually associate with investing.
Robo-advisers all tend to work in the same way. They
collect information on you, use algorithms to assess your
risk tolerance, recommend investments and then buy and
manage those investments.
The Q&A part of the process rarely takes more than a few
minutes. You’ll be asked some straightforward questions and
you’ll complete a (typically short) questionnaire on your appetite
and requirement for risk and, in some cases, capacity for loss.
You should also be asked about your financial circumstances
(to determine whether you can afford to invest the money
instead of, say, keeping it for emergencies).
It’s the risk profile generated by your answers that dictates the
kind of portfolio or fund
recommended. A poorly
constructed questionnaire
or an inaccurate response
or two could therefore land
you with a portfolio that’s
not suitable for you. So it’s
important to be honest and
not give the answers you
would like to be true.
You’ll be asked about your
objectives – some services
are designed to help you
save towards certain goals
– but whether you are
asked about your wider
financial circumstances and your existing assets will depend
on whether it is restricted advice (just that investment) or full
advice (everything). Again, this should be clearly stated on
the website. Time with an adviser is an option in some cases,
by Skype or phone for example, which will usually involve an
additional fee.
And that’s pretty much it, as far as your input goes.
The outcome will generally be a recommended risk-rated fund
or portfolio (selected from a range of pre-defined portfolios)
and a suggested level of investment to give you the best
chance of meeting your stated goal in the stated timeframe.
That portfolio will usually be a basket of passive investments
such as trackers and exchange traded funds (ETFs), to keep
costs down and make it easier to manage.
The danger here is that if your provider only offers a handful of
pre-constructed portfolios, you may find yourself shoehorned
into one that is closest to meeting your criteria but is not ideal.
You can choose to accept the suggested portfolio and get the
green light to start paying into it, with the firm managing it in
line with the risk profile you came up with, rebalancing as and
when needed.
Although you might not get that far. If the outcome of the
analysis is that you can’t really afford to invest that money or
none of the investment options available are appropriate, at
least one robo-adviser we have seen will put the brakes on,
taking the process offline and into the real world.
RISKY BUSINESS
JARGON ALERT! We’d better
clarify all this stuff about
assessing risk. Your risk profile
(how much risk you’re taking
in your portfolio) is generally
driven by three factors:
Appetite for risk: how much
investment risk you are happy
to take.
Risk requirement: how much
risk you need to take to achieve
a goal.
Capacity for loss: how much
you can afford to lose.
ADVICE
A recommendation by a regulated and qualified
financial adviser based upon a person’s needs and
specific to them. It should take into account such
factors as goals, attitude to risk, capacity for loss and
whether they can afford that investment. That might
be it, in which case it will be restricted advice (i.e.
restricted to that one investment). Full advice will take
into account other personal and financial factors such
as other investments or commitments they might have.
GUIDANCE
Information and support to help a person make their
own decisions. This might be material to read or a
Q&A which generates a risk profile. There might be
suggested funds or portfolios as a result but there
won’t be a personalised recommendation.

If you have the means and appetite
to invest there will be an offering
out there to meet your needs. In
fact, there will probably be several.
In fact, there will – on first glance –
be dozens.
So how to choose? Well, you could do worse than
working out how much assistance you think you
need in choosing an investment. Once you’ve got a
sense of that, you can start to narrow things down
with the use of handy tools like us. Sorry, ours.
We’ve fixed the platform market for you by breaking
it down into sections. The table starting on the
next page gives you a sense of where all these
brave new and not-so-new options sit in the direct
platform investment firmament. And below the table,
we’ll unpack each segment for you, because we
have literally THAT MUCH LOVE for you.
THERE’S
OUT THERE
EVERYONE4
FORA PLATFORM
DIY
DO IT WITH YOU
DO IT FOR YOU
4. Right. Clearly this is hyperbole. There is not, in fact, a platform for everyone. Kalahari bushmen, for example, have little use for multi-asset funds.
Small children can’t be trusted not to throw the platform at their sister. And so on.
Or, perhaps more accurately, do they make money? Evidence
so far, and experience in the US where the market is more
mature, raises some questions on that front.
Presumably firms entering the robo market have done their
homework and feel confident that tons of money is about to
flow into their path. Or perhaps, in an uncomfortable echo of
dotcom-era logic, it just sounds like such a good idea that there
must surely be a way of making good money out of it somehow.
That homework will have involved looking at the number of users
and the level of assets that the existing robo-advice firms are
attracting. Which would have been tricky, because they won’t
disclose those figures, primarily because they are very small.
Despite this, we know that robo-advice is a diminutive market in
asset terms. D2C platforms had around £132 billion of assets
under management in 2015, more than double the amount
Deloitte reckoned the 11 leading US robo-advisers held at
the end of 2014. The amount of assets currently held by UK
robo-advisers is probably around £150m, equivalent to that
controlled by a decent-sized financial advisory business.
One way to put that into perspective is to compare it with the
£60.3bn that Hargreaves Lansdown holds in assets under
management, according to its latest results.
The problem for the newbies is that putting together a snazzy
website, some nifty algorithms and a persuasive pitch is the
easy bit. Robots don’t need salaries, desks, tea-breaks or a
hug when they’re sad, but the costs of acquiring customers,
keeping the whole show running and building assets under
management are nonetheless daunting.
Winning clients in a market which will soon include some of the
UK’s biggest banks requires a hefty marketing budget, wisely
spent. If the likes of Santander make a decent fist of automated
advice, the hill that new brands are only just beginning to climb
will suddenly get far steeper. Never underestimate the power of a
familiar brand. Even if it is a bank.
Maybe the advice gap is so big that there will be plenty of clients
to go round for everyone. But is that demand really there? We’re
not convinced. This might be a proposition in search of a market,
which is generally a mistake in financial services: the idea that if
you build it they will come has never really worked. At least not yet.
Some will make it; others will fall by the wayside. But here’s
a thing. What happens to your money if your robo-adviser
disappears? Another good question. Happily, we’ve got the
answer, on page 16.
UK ROBO-ADVISERS:
£150m
3 HOW DO ROBOS MAKE MONEY?
US ROBO-ADVISERS:
£60bn
D2C PLATFORMS
£132bn

DO IT FOR YOU DO IT WITH YOU INVESTMENT RANGE WRAPPER CHOICE
Provider
PROCESS DRIVEN
CHOICE
FINANCIAL
ADVICE
SUGGESTED FUND LIST RISK-GRADED SOLUTIONS Provider FUNDS ETPs
SHARE
DEALING
GIA ISA JISA PENSION
Fiver a Day ✔ ✔ Fiver a Day ✖ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖
MoneyFarm ✔ ✔ MoneyFarm ✖ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖
Nutmeg ✔ ✔ Nutmeg ✖ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
Retiready from Aegon ✔ ✖ Retiready from Aegon ✔ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✖ ✔
Simply EQ ✔ ✔ Simply EQ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Wealth Horizon ✔ ✔ Wealth Horizon ✖ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖
AJ Bell Youinvest ✖ ✔ Choice of 3 passive portfolios. AJ Bell Youinvest ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Alliance Trust Savings ✔ Top 20 funds, shares and
investment trusts.
✖ Alliance Trust Savings ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Aviva Consumer Platform ✔ Select fund range
✔ Choice of 7, for both growth and
income.
Aviva Consumer Platform ✔ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
AXA Self Investor ✔ Top 100 favourite funds ✔ All-in-one funds AXA Self Investor ✔ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖
Barclays Stockbrokers ✔ Most popular funds ✖ Barclays Stockbrokers ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
Bestinvest ✔ Premier Selection ✔ Ready-made Portfolios Bestinvest ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Cavendish Online ✖ ✔ Range of risk-graded portfolios. Cavendish Online ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖
Charles Stanley Direct ✔ Foundation Fundlist ✔ Foundation Portfolios Charles Stanley Direct ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Chelsea Financial Services ✔ Chelsea Core Selection ✔ Chelsea EasyISA Portfolios Chelsea Financial Services ✔ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔
Close Brothers A.M.
Self-Directed Service ✔ The Close 50 list of funds ✔ Close managed funds
Close Brothers A.M.
Self-Directed Service ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
Fidelity Personal Investor ✔ The Select List ✔ PathFinder range Fidelity Personal Investor ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
Hargreaves Lansdown ✔ The Wealth 150 ✔ Portfolio+ Hargreaves Lansdown ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Interactive Investor ✔ Ready-made fund selections ✔ Model portfolios Interactive Investor ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
rplan ✖ ✔ Risk-rated model portfolios rplan ✔ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖
Saga Investment Services ✖ ✔ Ready-made Portfolios
Saga Investment
Services ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Strawberry
Goal-based process
then suggests a list of
target date funds.
✔ Investment ideas
Goal-based process then suggests
a list of target date funds. Strawberry ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
TD Direct Investing ✔ TD Recommended funds ✔ Quick start funds TD Direct Investing ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Telegraph Investor ✔ Telegraph 25 ✖ Telegraph Investor ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
The Share Centre
✔ Platinum 120, preferred
index trackers and
recommended shares.
✔ SF Portfolio of funds The Share Centre ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
True Potential Investor
Guided process with a
choice of portfolios at
the end.
✖ Guided process with a choice of
portfolios at the end. True Potential Investor ✖ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
Trustnet Direct ✔ Trustnet Direct 100
✔ Goal-based Selections
(portfolios)
Trustnet Direct ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Wills Owen
✔ Fund suggestions across
passive/ethical/income/
growth.
✖ Wills Owen ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

USING THE TABLE
1. THE BASICS
Let’s start by acknowledging that this is a Big. Ass. Table.
But don’t freak out. The first thing you need to know is
that you read across the two pages for each provider. And
because A4 is A4 and there are nearly 40 providers, we’ve
had to deal with them over a total of four pages.
The columns are easy to navigate. They’re in groups. The
first two columns refer to providers who ‘do it for you’ – that
is to say they provide you with a pre-loaded investment. Any
providers who don’t do this will have these two columns
greyed out.
The second two columns refer to those who do it ‘with you’ –
more on this below, but again if a platform doesn’t offer these
services, they’ll be greyed out here.
The final two sets of columns are about investment range,
and product or wrapper choice.
So if you read across, you’ll be able to see what kind of help
you get, if any, what the investment range the platform offers,
and what wrappers you can hold those investments in.
To make it EVEN EASIER, we’ve grouped platforms together
into similar styles of proposition:
Do it for you
Do it with you
The rest
2. DOING IT FOR YOU
Don’t want to make a choice at all? Not a problem. These
platforms are here for you. There are two ways folks go
about this, one of which ends in financial advice and one
which doesn’t.
Most of the platforms in these two columns make up our
Class of 2016 robo-advisers (Fiver a Day, MoneyFarm,
Nutmeg and Wealth Horizon). As a rule, their Q&A based
processes cover: goals, timescale, how you feel about risk,
how much risk you can afford to take, your priorities when it
comes to investing, your other financial commitments (debts)
and whether you have an emergency fund tucked away.
The output will be a personal recommendation based on all
this but, as we’ve said before and will again, their advice is
restricted to this investment only.
Note that Retiready from Aegon stands out from its peers.
You’re matched with one of its five risk-rated funds (four if
you’re using an ISA) but it’s a suggestion only and you can
opt for a different fund.
3. DOING IT WITH YOU
These show you the platforms which – and we don’t mean
to give the game away – help you choose but don’t make the
choice for you.
This help can take two forms: some just give you a big
ol’ list of suggested funds or portfolios while others offer
options which aim to suit a particular level of risk (you’ll
usually find a wee tool5
to help you identify your risk level on
these platforms).
Fund lists first. These take a number of forms, but mostly
tend to be a list of funds that the platform believes are
good options for whatever reason (don’t confuse this with
advice; there’s no personal recommendation here). The
Telegraph 25 is one example, as is the TD Direct Top
100. Charles Stanley Direct hugs the middle ground with
its Foundation Fund List as this gives you the option of a
cut down list of active or passive funds across a range of
sectors, as well as details of the most commonly viewed
and bought funds. Strawberry takes a more educational
approach, giving you a straightforward explanation of a few
funds from a range of providers and performance details to
help you choose.
Another way of narrowing the field is by using the ready-
made funds offered by some platforms. Interactive
Investor’s Ready-made Fund Selection for example is a
range of fund-of-funds (the fund is a basket containing other
funds) achieving a wide spread of assets in your investment
without having to do all the alchemy yourself.
Let’s turn to platforms offering a selected range of risk-
rated funds. You might be ahead of us on this one, but
these are ranges of funds or portfolios designed to fit a
range of risk profiles. To choose one of these options
you have to understand your own attitude to risk and, as
mentioned before, these platforms will generally help you
with that. Fidelity Personal Investor has a really nice, simple
slider between less risk and more risk with the option of a
questionnaire if you’re not sure.
Others, such as Chelsea Financial Services EasyISA
Portfolios eschew tools but offer a decent explanation of the
types of investor each option is likely to suit. While there’s
nothing to stop you using one platform’s risk questionnaire
and then using its output to invest on another platform, you
should be aware that risk definitions can and do differ.
You might have a specific investment goal in mind and some
platforms have thought of this. Trustnet Direct has a range
of portfolios designed for goals such as paying school fees
or retirement. Growth is generally the number one priority
for investments but income is also a common requirement
and Aviva Consumer Platform (surely the worst name in the
whole market) has options for both.
4. THE REST
Guess what? These platforms don’t offer any help with
selecting investments. They are generally the hunting ground
of those who are happy to choose their own adventure; they
also tend to offer the very widest choice of investments.
THE AWKWARD SQUAD
A quick word about a couple of outliers.
However carefully you design a table, there
will always be a couple of platforms, out there,
doing it for themselves. And so we say hello
to Strawberry and True Potential who both
take you through a process to understand
your goals and/or appetite/capacity for risk
but then leave the final choice up to you. No
consideration, some folk.
5. Insert ‘wee tool’ joke of your own here.
DO IT FOR YOU DO IT WITH YOU INVESTMENT RANGE WRAPPER CHOICE
Provider
PROCESS DRIVEN
CHOICE
FINANCIAL
ADVICE
SUGGESTED FUND LIST RISK-GRADED SOLUTIONS Provider FUNDS ETPs
SHARE
DEALING
GIA ISA JISA PENSION
Clubfinance Clubfinance ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖
Equiniti Shareview Equiniti Shareview ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖
Halifax Share Dealing Halifax Share Dealing ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
iDealing iDealing ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
IG IG ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
iWeb iWeb ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
James Hay Modular iPlan James Hay Modular iPlan ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
Santander Investment Hub Santander Investment Hub ✔ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖
Selftrade Selftrade ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
SVS XO SVS XO ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖
X-O X-O ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

You already know about investment risk. But you also need to
know that by investing you have other risks to be aware of. One
of the main ones that investors ask us about is the financial
stability of platforms themselves. How likely is it that one could
go kaput, and what happens if it does?
Being realistic, the chances of a platform of any kind failing are
pretty slim. That isn’t to say that you won’t see changes. All
platforms have to have:
capital reserves,
plans in place for an ‘orderly wind-down’ if they exit the
market by choice or necessity, and
a custody arrangement to keep your money completely
separate from their own.
When a platform does leave the market the ‘book’ (that’s
you, that is) is usually bought by another company – we saw
this happen in 2015 when Alliance Trust Savings acquired
Stocktrade, the execution-only business of Brewin Dolphin. So
while the brand name might be gone, your money is perfectly
intact. You might not like the new owner and so choose to move
on, but nothing disappears into a BLACK HOLE OF DOOM.
Of course, you’d expect large, well-capitalised businesses
like Barclays, Fidelity, Vanguard and Hargreaves Lansdown to
be more stable than funky startups, but no matter who you’ve
chosen, you get some degree of protection. But this varies and,
as is so often the case, the devil is in the detail.
The Big Three of investment protection when using a platform
are: custodians, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme
(FSCS) and the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). Let’s
cover each in turn.
CUSTODIANS
Custodians are your first line of defence. Let’s pretend
that you’re investing in the lang cat platform, and we get
into financial trouble and decide that we’re better off doing
something else with our time. We’re out of cash, out of luck,
and out of business. Are you bothered? Yes, because you
might not be able to trade or get information. But no matter
how constrained the lang cat platform is, or how much we
owe creditors, none of this touches your money, which is all
held elsewhere.
It follows, then, that it’s the custodian you need to worry about.
The good news for you is that custodians are generally some of
the largest and most secure financial institutions in the world.
They include folk like Deutsche Bank, Pershing, Northern
Trust and others. If you find the name of your custodian and
you don’t know it, look for the ‘sub-custodian’ – it’ll end up
in one of these large companies. These guys simply hold the
money on your behalf, so it is never mixed up (the techy term is
‘commingled’) with the operating capital of the platform itself.
THE FINANCIAL SERVICES
COMPENSATION SCHEME
The FSCS is the lifeboat scheme that covers people who have
suffered losses when their bank, building society, insurer or
financial adviser has gone out of business.
The FSCS covers customers of authorised financial services
firms that are ‘in default’ (read: out of business/assets or about
to be and so unable to pay claims). There are different rules for
deposits, insurance products and investments. We’re talking
specifically about investments here and investors can make
a claim if they have lost money due to default. Your claim is
limited to £50,000 per firm that’s found to be in default.
If you’ve taken advice, and it transpires the advice was bad,
you may have the ability to bring a case against the adviser
who did you wrong. If you win that case, the adviser has to
pay you from a mixture of their reserves and their professional
indemnity insurance. If they can’t do so, they may go into
default and so once again you might visit the FSCS for the
rest of what you’re owed.
And that’s an important distinction. If the investment was bought
without a personalised recommendation – i.e. advice – you
probably won’t be entitled to compensation. Another important
distinction is that guidance is not advice. If you made the
investment as a result of guidance then, again, you probably won’t
be entitled to compensation. The FSCS states that it considers
each case individually but these are the usual standards.
THE FINANCIAL OMBUDSMAN
SERVICE
If you’re at FOS, you’re at the end of the line. The last line
of defence. FOS mediates in disputes between consumers
and firms (and orders firms to pay compensation when the
customer’s complaint is upheld).
There are lots of ways to end up at FOS – for example, you may
feel that a platform has mishandled your money. If the platform
refuses your complaint and you’re not getting anywhere, it’s off
to FOS with you to test your case.
In terms of advice, the same goes for FOS as FSCS – you can only
complain about mis-selling or a badly performing investment if you
bought it as a result of advice. A victim of mis-buying? Not so much.
WHAT LIES BENEATH
So for you to lose your money on a platform (as a result of firms
going bust rather than picking bad investments), here’s who
has to fail:
1. The platform operator
2. The custodian
3. The fund manager (if you’re holding funds)
We don’t know of any instance where this has happened. But if
it does, you’re protected (usually) by the FSCS up to £50,000
for each firm. The most likely point of failure is actually the fund
manager, who takes your money from the custodian and invests
it. The good news is that most people aren’t lucky enough to
have £50,000 or more with a single fund manager. If you’re
worried about this, the next step is to diversify your holdings,
which is often not a bad move anyway. If you’ve seen people
spread deposits around different banks, this is the same thing.
FRONT UP
Online investment firms are not all that good at making it clear
to customers whether or not they would have recourse to the
FSCS and FOS in the event of things going pear-shaped.
We don’t think this is good enough. It should be made very
clear to investors that by taking investment matters into their
own hands they are giving up a degree of protection that the
vast majority will take for granted. Investor compensation is
complex, particularly when you bring pensions into the mix, but
that’s no excuse.
Ultimately, you will have some form of protection whether you
are invested via an adviser, an established direct platform or a
robo-offering. But it really is worth knowing exactly what kind
of protection.
BUTWHAT IF
ITALL GOES
WRONG?

We’re just about ready to get up and at ‘em
with our world-famous7
heatmaps but, before
we do, a quick reminder about the basics of
platform pricing. A number of elements go to
make up the charge that comes out of your
investment and, like everything we pay for, we
should be clear on what we’re handing over
our money for and why.
The big ol’ table starting on the next page details who charges
what for the main bits but here are a few things to keep in mind
when looking at it…
Product/wrapper – which of SIPP, ISA or trading
account (general investment account) will you use?
Investment – will you invest in funds, equities, ETFs,
investment trusts or a bit of each?
Trading – are you a trader of trades or a leave-it-be
aficionado?
Leaving – will you face penalties to transfer away from
the platform?
All of these things can have an impact both on the type of
charges you might find yourself paying and the extent to which
they add up.
We’re going to look at each of these in turn before moving on
to the table for the detail. We talked about the different aspects
of pricing in much more depth last year so, rather than repeat
ourselves too much, you can download last year’s Guide and fill
in any blanks.
CORE PLATFORM CHARGE
This is the charge the platform levies for looking after your
investment: custody, administration and so forth. Most
platforms charge a percentage of your investment amount
(usually starting at about 0.25% to 0.35% and decreasing as
the investment pot gets bigger) but some prefer a fixed cash
amount regardless of how much you invest.
Percentage charges tend to be based on the whole portfolio
on that platform (apart from the odd Grinch like Hargreaves
Lansdown and AJ Bell Youinvest, who apply it per wrapper).
Thanks to the overwhelming power of primary school level
arithmetic, percentage-based pricing is likely to appeal to those
with less to invest while the fixed fee option will appeal to those
with more padding around the portfolio.
Happy news for those with big funds. You may well
be pretty happy anyway, but never mind. Some
platforms cap their charges, either setting a cash
limit of what you pay or not charging for the portion
of a fund above a certain point, often £1m.
PRODUCT FEE
Where there isn’t a platform fee there will probably be a
product (or wrapper) fee. And sometimes you might find
yourself paying both. SIPP fees are more common than ISA or
general investment account fees and, unless you’re Bestinvest,
they tend to be higher as there is more involved in running a
SIPP than an ISA.
FUND SWITCHING
Most platforms don’t have an explicit charge for fund switching.
You pay for it all right, but it’s built into the overall platform
charge. Where there is a specific charge detailed (around £5 to
£12.50) this will be per buy or sell, so a full switch (selling one
fund and buying another) will cost double the price you see.
One to be aware of as you don’t have to be the Wolf of Wall
Street for it to rack up.
EQUITY TRADING
A different story here as every platform offering equity (or
share) trading charges for it explicitly. Again, you pay for each
individual trade, so a complete switch counts as two. Charges
can vary from around £2.50 to £15 a pop although there are
some discounts available for (very) frequent trading or investing
a regular (usually monthly) amount. Again, think about how much
you might trade and how that might nibble away at your fund.
EXIT CHARGES
Not at the top of your mind when you’re setting up an
investment perhaps, but definitely something to consider at the
outset rather than when it’s too late and you’re stuck paying
an exit fee you didn’t know about/merrily ignored. This is
another charge more commonly applied to SIPPs due to ‘added
complexity’ (hmm, not our words), but isn’t unheard of for ISAs
and crops up all too often for equities. We’ve long campaigned
for exit charges to be capped or removed. Still working on it.
WITH
DICING PRICING
7. In our heads.
6. Some or all of these things may not technically be true. Actually, only one of them is true. This is, technically, a quiz.
ARE YOU GAME
TO COME AND
HAVE A ROBO?
If you’re still on the horns of an ‘is robo
for me or not?’ dilemma then fear not! The
lang cat has got your back with our fun,
scientifically based, psychological quiz
designed to reach deep into the recesses
of your unconscious mind and determine if
you’re ready to robo6
.
1. When it comes to investing do you:
A. Generously share your EXTENSIVE KNOWLEDGE on the
subject with anyone who’ll listen.
B. Think about where to start looking for information.
C. Look for a sense that you’re on the right path.
D. Feel nervous, you’ll definitely need a helping hand.
E. Shudder. You wouldn’t know where to start.
2. What are you investing for?
A. Next year’s holiday! Magaluf, innit!
B. A house deposit in 5 years or so (good luck with that).
C. The kids’ university fees (pffft, let them sort themselves out).
D. Retirement, but I don’t know what that’ll look like.
E. A carefully structured retirement income, tax optimisation
and leaving as much as I can behind.
3. How do you like to research and track your
investments?
A. I have a system of spreadsheets I designed myself.
B. I’m fine as long as I can easily find what I need to know.
C. I just need to know the bits that matter to me.
D. A nice report I can download will do the job. With cats!
E. I prefer to have it explained to me by a nice man/lady over
a cup of tea.
4. When it comes to being the first to have
brand new technology:
A. It depends on whether I need it.
B. I’ll read all the info and then decide if it’s for me.
C. I prefer to wait until the glitches have been ironed out.
D. I beta test therefore I am. Got to go, there’s a queue
forming at the Apple Store.
E. Touchscreen phones will never catch on.
5. If you were going to place money with a
platform it should be:
A. Solid, ideally with a strong stock-broking history.
B. Well established with a good track record.
C. Something up-to-date but tried and tested please.
D. Cool as ****.
E. I like that Hargreaves thingy. It seems very popular and the
nice tall thin man is on the TV a lot.
6. You make an investment decision and it
doesn’t end well:
A. Meh. My bad.
B. I based it on all the research but past performance…
C. I knew I should have listened to what I was told by Dave in
the pub.
D. I should have asked someone who knows better .
E. I’m writing a letter of complaint right now.
7. When you hear ‘financial adviser’ you think:
A. What now? I haven’t seen one of them since 1985.
B. They’re a bit pricey when I can get all the info from
platforms and that nice Martin Lewis chappie.
C. Good if you need proper advice but I just need a bit of a nudge.
D. Very helpful as long as you keep them well oiled.
E. A comforting presence in a suit, with a cardigan on the
back of their chair.
8. How do you feel about deciding how much
risk to take with an investment?
A. I designed my own risk rating system on holiday last year.
B. I’m ok as long as I know exactly what I’m getting into.
C. A steer might be useful but I’ll make up my own mind.
D. It sounds a bit scary, I’d need help to work it all out.
E. That’s for someone else to worry about.
9. You get what you pay for but what do you
want to pay for?
A. Holding and trading and that’s it.
B. I’ll pay a little more for regular updates and reports and so forth.
C. Nice and simple, I’ll make my choice and then leave it to
the pros.
D. I want advice and someone looking out for my investment
but times are tight.
E. It’s worth paying more to have someone looking after
everything for me.
10. How do you feel about robots?
A. I challenge the practicalities of Johnny 5 being alive.
B. It’s been downhill since Metal Mickey.
C. Those little ones in Batteries Not Included were quite cute.
D. I want to adopt Wall-E.
E. The Daleks still give me nightmares.
Find out if you’re GAME
TO COME AND HAVE
A ROBO on the inside
back page

CORE PLATFORM CHARGES SIPP FEE ISA/DEALING ACCOUNT FEE FUND SWITCHING EQUITY TRADING EXIT FEES
AJ Bell Youinvest
0.20% for investment in funds, capped at
£200 pa per account (So, holding a dealing
account + ISA for example means that annual
platform charges are capped at £400)
Value
Up to £10k
£10k to £20k
Above £20k
Charge (pa)
£20
£60
£100
£0 AJ Bell Youinvest £4.95 per buy/sell
£9.95 a deal, reducing to £4.95 if there
were 10 or more deals in the previous month.
£75 + VAT SIPP fee
£25 per line of stock
Alliance Trust
Savings
NA. Fixed fee per wrapper. £15 + VAT a month = £216 pa £7.50 a month = £90 pa
Alliance Trust
Savings
£12.50 per buy/sell £12.50 per trade
£100 + VAT ISA fee
£150 + VAT SIPP fee
Aviva Consumer
Platform
Value
Up to £50k
£50k to £250k
£250k to £500k
Above £500k
Charge (pa)
0.40%
0.35%
0.25%
0.00%
£0 £0
Aviva Consumer
Platform
£0 None
AXA Self Investor
Value
Up to £250k
Above £250k
Charge (pa)
0.35%
0.20% £0 AXA Self Investor £0 None
The 0.20% applies to the whole portfolio if
you have over £250k invested.
Barclays
Stockbrokers
0.35% charge with £35 minimum and
£1,750 maximum per year.
£155 + VAT (waived if you hold
funds only)
£30 + VAT for ISA, £48 + VAT for
dealing account (waived if you hold
funds only).
Barclays
Stockbrokers
£0
£11.95 a trade reducing to £8.95 if there were
10-19 trades in the previous month, reducing
further to £5.95 if there were more than 20.
BestInvest £0
Value
Up to £250k
£250k to £1m
Above £1m
Charge (pa)
0.30%
0.20%
0.00%
Value
Up to £250k
£250k to £1m
Above £1m
Charge (pa)
0.40%
0.20%
0.00%
BestInvest £0 £7.50 per trade
£50 + VAT ISA fee
£75 + VAT SIPP transfer if in cash, £125 + VAT
in-specie.
Cavendish Online
0.25% (0.20% platform fee and 0.05%
Cavendish ongoing fee)
Whole portfolio reduces to 0.20% if you
have more than £500k (platform fee
reduces to 0.15%).
£0 Cavendish Online £0 None
Charles Stanley
Direct
Value
Up to £500k
£500k to £2m
Above £2m
Charge (pa)
0.25%
0.15%
0.05%
£100 + VAT per year £0
Charles Stanley
Direct
£0
£10 a trade
There is a charge of 0.25% for equity
investment with a minimum of £20 and
maximum of £150 per half year. This is
waived if there were 6 or more trades in the
half-yearly collection period.
Chelsea Financial
Services
Value
Up to £250k
£250k to £500k
£500k to £1m
£1m to £2m
Above £2m
Charge (pa)
0.60%
0.55%
0.50%
0.40%
0.15%
£0 £0
Chelsea Financial
Services
£0 None
Close Brothers
A.M. Self-Directed
Service
0.35% pa £0 £0
Close Brothers
A.M. Self-Directed
Service
£0
£8.95 a trade
0.25% pa charge
None
Clubﬁnance 0.24% pa with a £120 minimum. £0 Clubﬁnance £0
£2.50 a trade. £1.50 is rebated for portfolios
between £250k and £500k, reducing to a £2
rebate for portfolios above this.
Value of the rebate is capped at £4k.
Equiniti
Shareview
0.25% pa with a £10 + VAT minimum and
£37.50 + VAT maximum (taken twice yearly).
£0
Equiniti
Shareview
£12.50 per trade. £35 per line of stock
Fidelity Personal
Investing
Value
Up to £7.5k
£7.5k to £250k
£250k to £1m
Above £1m
Charge (pa)
£45
0.35%
0.20%
0.00%
£0
Fidelity Personal
Investing
£0 ETF trading costs 0.10% per deal. None
Once £250k is reached, the 0.20% charge
applies to the whole portfolio. Capped at
£45 for ETFs and investment trusts.
Details of where VAT applies are included where available.

Fiver a Day
Each contribution has an initial charge
of 0.25%.
Ongoing charge of 0.34%
Further investment costs (0.25% initial
and 0.46% to 0.52% per annum) apply for
management of your portfolio.
£0 Fiver a Day None
Halifax Share
Dealing
£0
Value
Up to £50k
Above £50k
Charge (pa)
£75 + VAT
£150 + VAT
£12.50 + VAT
Halifax Share
Dealing
£12.50 per buy/sell £12.50 per trade
£75 + VAT SIPP fee
£25 per line of stock (max £125)
Hargreaves
Lansdown
0.45% pa for equities, gilts and bonds
(capped at £45 for ISA and £200 for SIPP.
No charge for GIA.) For investment in funds:
£0 £0
Hargreaves
Lansdown
£0
£11.95 a trade reducing to £8.95 if there
were 10-19 trades in the previous month,
reducing further to £5.95 if there were more
than 20.
£25 + VAT ISA fee
£25 + VAT SIPP fee
Value
Up to £250k
£250k to £1m
£1m to £2m
Above £2m
Charge (pa)
0.45%
0.25%
0.10%
0.00%
IG £0
It’s a link to the James Hay Modular iPlan
so cast your eyes down a few rows...
£0 IG
£8 per trade reducing to £5 if 10+ trades
were placed in the previous month.
None
iDealing £0 £20 pa £20 pa iDealing £9.90 per trade
£60 + VAT ISA fee
£60 + VAT SIPP fee
£17.50 per line of stock
Interactive
Investor
Quarterly £20 account fee (comes with a
credit for 2 free trades each quarter)
£80 + VAT per year £0
Interactive
Investor
£10 per buy/sell
£10 per trade reducing to £5 for the rest
of the month if you’ve paid for 10 full price
trades that month.
£15 per line of stock but free for up to 10 lines if
the account has been held for less than a year.
iweb £0
Value
Up to £50k
Above £50k
Charge (pa)
£90
£180
£200 one-off account opening fee iweb £5 per buy/sell £5 per trade
£75 + VAT SIPP fee
£25 per line of stock (max £125)
James Hay
Modular iPlan
Value
Up to £500k
£500k to £1m
Above £1m
Charge (pa)
0.18%
0.15%
0.05%
£195 fee, waived if there is over £195k
in basic assets (including Investment
Centre funds).
£0
James Hay
Modular iPlan
£0 £15 a trade
£50 + VAT ISA fee
£150 SIPP fee
MoneyFarm
Value
Up to £10k
£10k to £100k
£100k to £1m
Above £1m
Charge (pa)
0.00%
0.60%
0.40%
0.00%
£0 MoneyFarm None
Nutmeg
Value
Up to £25k
£25k to £100k
£100k to £500k
Above £500k
Charge (pa)
0.95%
0.75%
0.50%
0.30%
£0 £0 Nutmeg None
Once each band is reached, that charge
applies to the full portfolio value.
Retiready from
Aegon
Value
Up to £50k
£50k to £100k
Above £100k
Charge (pa)
0.50%
0.40%
0.30%
£0 £0
Retiready from
Aegon
£0 None
rplan 0.35% pa £0 rplan £0 None
Saga Investment
Services
£0
Value
Up to £250k
£250k to £1m
Above £1m
Charge (pa)
0.30%
0.20%
0.00%
Value
Up to £250k
£250k to £1m
Above £1m
Charge (pa)
0.40%
0.20%
0.00%
Saga Investment
Services
£0 £11.95 per trade
ISA: £50 + VAT (no fee after 2 years)
SIPP: £75 + VAT (no fee after 2 years)
Santander
Investment Hub
Value
Up to £50k
Above £50k to £500k
Above £500k
Charge (pa)
0.35%
0.20%
0.10%
£0
Santander
Investment Hub
£0

Selftrade
Value
Up to £50k
Above £50k
Charge (pa)
0.30%
0.25% £99 + VAT £0 Selftrade
Buys are free, sells cost
£11.75.
£11.75 reducing to £6 if 20 trades are
placed in a month (across all accounts). £15 per line of stock
Maximum charge of £250 per quarter.
Simply EQ
Value
Up to £50k
£50k to £100k
£100k to £250k
£250k to £500k
£500k to £1m
Above £1m
Charge (pa)
0.99%
0.79%
0.69%
0.59%
0.49%
039%
£0 £0 Simply EQ £0 £0
Charges apply to whole portfolio once you
reach each tier
Applies to Low Cost portfolio range. Best
Ideas and Positive Impact ranges charge
additional 0.20% at all price points
Strawberry
Value
Up to £50k
£50k to £1m
Above £1m
Charge (pa)
0.35%
0.25%
0.10%
£100 + VAT £0 Strawberry £0
£9.50 a trade
£25 + VAT ISA fee
£75 + VAT SIPP fee
Minimum charge of £30 pa. There is also
an annual platform charge of £10.
SVS XO £0 £0 SVS XO £7.95 per trade £15 per line of stock
Telegraph
Investor
0.30% with a minimum of £20 and
maximum of £300 per year.
£80 + VAT (£96 pa) which is included
in the charge cap, effectively reducing it
to £204 pa.
£0
Telegraph
Investor
£0 £10 per trade
£100 + VAT SIPP fee, waived if the account has
been held less than a year.
Free for up to 10 lines of stock if account held for
less than a year. Extra lines (or all lines if account
held for more than 1 year) £15 each. Accounts
opened in 2015 have charges waived as above
until 31/12/16.
TD Direct
Investing
Value
Up to £250k
Above £250k
Charge (pa)
0.30%
0.20%
Product charge of 0.25% taken twice a
year. Minimum of £80 and maximum of
£200 per annum + VAT.
£30 + VAT annual charge for
balances lower than £5,100.
TD Direct
Investing
£0
£12.50 a trade reducing to £8.95 if there
were 10-19 trades in the previous 3
consecutive months, reducing further to
£5.95 if there were more than 20.
None
Maximum collection per year of £1,500.
The Share Centre £0 £172.80 pa (£12 + VAT per month)
£57.60 charge for ISA (£4 + VAT
per month)
The Share Centre
Standard – 1% per deal
(min £7.50)
Frequent trader – ﬂat rate
of £7.50 per trade plus
£96 pa admin fee.
Standard – 1% per deal (min £7.50)
Frequent trader – ﬂat rate of £7.50 per trade
plus £96 pa admin fee.
True Potential
Investor
0.40% pa £0
True Potential
Investor
£0
£50 ISA fee
£50 SIPP fee
Trustnet Direct
0.25% pa with a minimum of £20 and
maximum of £200.
£80 + VAT £0 Trustnet Direct
£10 per buy/sell
reducing to £6 for the
rest of the month if
you’ve paid for 10 full
price trades that month.
£10 per trade reducing to £6 for the rest
of the month if you’ve paid for 10 full price
trades that month.
Wealth Horizon
Each contribution has an initial charge of
0.25%.
Ongoing charge of 0.75%
Further investment costs of 0.18% apply
for management of the portfolio.
£0 Wealth Horizon £0 None
Willis Owen
Value
Up to £50k
£50k to £100k
£100k to £250k
Above £250k
Charge (pa)
0.40%
0.30%
0.20%
0.15%
£110 + VAT £0 Willis Owen £0 £7.50 per trade £25 per line of stock
X-O £0
£99 + VAT (refunded if a share dealing
account is linked to the SIPP)
£0 X-O £0 £5.95 per trade
£50 + VAT ISA fee
£50 + VAT SIPP fee

What makes these #heatmaps special isn’t the arithmetic. It’s
the work involved in collating everyone’s charging structures
and making sure that the scenarios we play out here are
realistic. It’s hard to imagine that King Bob was referring to
us when he wrote that ‘the times, they are a-changing’ or
that Isaac Watts was thinking of Leith’s leading independent
platform consultancy8
when he wrote that ‘time, like an ever-
rolling stream, bears all its sons away’. But we’re going to
imagine it anyway.
For this section has changed from last year. To take just one
example, our #heatmaps now reflect the segments that we set
out earlier on in the Guide. And that, ladies and gentlemen,
means that not only have we moved things around a bit but we
have also tweaked the lists of platform providers very slightly.
And you’re getting this for free…what a time to be alive.
But that’s not all.
We also REACHED OUT and ENGAGED WITH the platforms
and have been RESPONSIVE to their VALUED FEEDBACK.
That’s another way of saying that we got in touch with platforms
and asked them if our scenarios were indeed realistic. Some
were lovely and helpful. Others reminded us that they had
already asked us to stop calling, and that their next call was to
their lawyer.
But we were not disheartened. What we found out from our
VALUED FEEDBACK9
was that in past Guides we’ve been
assuming too many fund switches and share deals. Obviously
trading volumes vary from person to person and from platform
to platform but on average, it seems you’re keener to stick than
twist with your investment choices. Which means we need to
incorporate a couple of alterations:
We now assume 2 (instead of 5) complete fund switches in
our #heatmaps. This means 4 charging events overall (2 buys
and 2 sells).
The share dealing table now assumes 12 individual share
deals rather than 25.
And that’s still not even all. We need a whole new section to
cover the way we’ve sliced and diced the market. So you’re
not just getting one Wounded Bull section this time around.
No indeed, ladies and gentlemen. You’re getting two whole
Wounded Bulls. That’s double Bull.
All the platforms we talk about in this first Wounded Bull
section fall under the heading of ‘do it yourself’ with loads of
funds or shares to choose from. Our lovely new table in our
lovely new, second Wounded Bull section features platforms
with investment options aimed at less experienced or confident
investors, where holding your hand and helping you towards
an investment choice come as standard. And that’s also
where you’ll find our new robo-friends with their risk profiling,
algorithmic programming and other stuff that George Orwell
probably warned us about.
You’d be forgiven at this point for just racing ahead and diving
headlong into the numbers. But you don’t get to ride the
rollercoaster without listening to the safety announcement. And
you don’t get to ride the heatmaps without familiarising (or re-
familiarising) yourself with the rules of engagement.
8. Probably.
9. We really are grateful to the platforms who took time out to give us their opinion.
THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
We take into account the main platform custody charge as
well as any annual product charges. These are combined
using a complex and confidential data analysis technique
we call ‘squishing’.
We exclude event-driven charges such as re-registration,
drawdown or exit fees.
In the interests of a fair comparison, we also exclude
underlying investment costs. While there are some
discounted fund deals out there, with fund managers
offering some platforms better deals than others, you get
the same price on the vast majority of investments across
the vast majority of platforms.
Remember that change in the number of trades we assume
for fund and share investments? This is where it comes
into play. We include an assumed 2 full fund switches (2
buys and 2 sells) and 12 share trades, which can be either
buys or sells.
The end result of all this is our tables or heatmaps. The
heatmaps are in glorious red, amber and green – but! Red
doesn’t mean ‘stop your investment’ and green doesn’t
mean ‘good to go for your hard-earned’. The colours are
based on an algorithm which compares the cost of each
platform for each of the investment amounts. So, we
compare them to each other and not to any one standard.
Which means no hard standards of good and bad, just
a spectrum of pricing. If everyone was expensive, there
would still be some less pricey than the others and they
would be green.
Kermit tells us that green isn’t an easy thing to be, but
we’re taking that under advisement.
WOUNDED
BULL
PLATFORM CHARGING:LIKEA
Look. We know this is the bit you like best. So here we
are again. Another year, another set of platform charging
#heatmaps. Never before has a mix of three colours and
a basic function in Excel had such a shelf-life.

Let’s look at ISA/GIA with investment purely in funds, including 2 switches, and see how things look in percentage terms:
ISA/GIA – FUNDS ONLY
There’s been hardly any repricing activity in the last year
and so the market rate still sits at 0.25% to 0.35%. If
you’re paying more than this you need to ask yourself why
– alternatively you could just ask Hargreaves Lansdown,
who despite being 50% more expensive than many rivals,
remains the one provider knocking it out of the park with
new business levels.
In other news, Aviva Consumer Platform and Saga
Investment Services have both entered the market in the
last year or so with a maximum charge of 0.40%. Selftrade
has repriced for fund investment and also starts at 0.40%
but with an additional charge on top for fund buys. The
latest addition to the table is the Santander Investment
Hub, with a starting charge of 0.35%. All this suggests the
market is settling around this rate.
Despite AJ Bell Youinvest giving it a bloody good go, no
provider is in the green all the way through, demonstrating
that these providers target different customer segments.
Or don’t know what they’re doing. We prefer the former
theory. As do their marketing teams. In either case it means
that there are a goodly number of options no matter how
much you have to invest. Which is as it should be.
Fixed fee providers like Alliance Trust Savings, Interactive
Investor and The Share Centre are always going to look
conspicuously red at the lower end of the AUA spectrum,
though they take on a more emerald tinged hue the further you
move up the AUA food chain. And let’s all try not to look at
iWeb’s 4.40%. Oops, too late. That was awkward. But not as
awkward as charging £200 to open an ISA or GIA.
If you’ve yet to amass enough of a fund to get the most
out of fixed fees, then those platforms charging on a
percentage basis will look more attractive on price.
Cavendish Online and Charles Stanley Direct lead the
way for funds up to £50k. And no, we haven’t forgotten
about James Hay. Although the James Hay Modular
iPlan carries a lower charge, it also comes with a) the
requirement to have a James Hay SIPP before you can
open an ISA/GIA and b) a one-off £195 charge on the
first £195k of your investment. So, a good option if that all
works for you – but it won’t for everyone so we don’t think
it’s right to highlight the charges and not the other bits.
IN POUNDS
Now, this is pretty much the same table but expressed in
pounds instead of percentages. We think it’s worth having them
both as sometimes charges stand out more effectively when
we’re talking about cash-money. And that’s always most fun
when we’re dealing with chunky sums.
So, for your £1m (should you have a million squid nestling
in an ISA/GIA) you can pay anything from £63 (Halifax
Share Dealing) to £5,375 (Chelsea Financial Services,
‘leading’ this column by nearly £2k). Now, price isn’t
everything (we might have mentioned that before) and the
service experience will likely be very different – which may
matter more if you have £1m to stash in an ISA/GIA – but
we’re still talking about a difference of well over £5,000.
Every year. Which could buy a cruise. Although probably
not Tom.
The other good thing about this table is that it details the
charges applied by platforms to switch funds. You can tell
that because of the column headed ‘Switching charges’
(Hi, plain English guys!). And the most noticeable thing is
that very few platforms apply them. Fixed fee pricing and
fund switching charges tend to go together as platforms
have to make money somehow and it’s by either holding
or trading your investments. We can see this here with
examples such as Alliance Trust Savings, Halifax Share
Dealing and Trustnet Direct, all of whom levy hefty
fund switching charges (£12.50, £12.50 and a tenner
respectively). Something to keep an eye out for, depending
on how much you’re likely to switch your funds around.
Note that we show Interactive Investor – despite it being
a fixed fee provider who charges for switches – as having
no cost for tinkering (not THAT kind of tinkering, shame on
you). Anyway, the £80 per quarter account fee includes two
free switches. So we assume that our 2 buys and 2 sells
are used up across the year and included in the allowance.
PORTFOLIO SIZE £5k £15k £25k £50k £100k £250k £500k £1m
AJ Bell Youinvest 0.60% 0.33% 0.28% 0.24% 0.22% 0.09% 0.04% 0.02%
Alliance Trust Savings 2.80% 0.93% 0.56% 0.28% 0.14% 0.06% 0.03% 0.01%
Aviva Consumer Platform 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.38% 0.36% 0.31% 0.15%
AXA Self Investor 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.20% 0.20% 0.20%
Barclays Stockbrokers 0.70% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.18%
Bestinvest 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.30% 0.25%
Cavendish Online 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.25%
Charles Stanley Direct 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.25% 0.20%
Chelsea Financial Services 0.60% 0.60% 0.60% 0.60% 0.60% 0.60% 0.58% 0.54%
Close Brothers A.M. Self Directed Service 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35%
Clubfinance 2.40% 0.80% 0.48% 0.24% 0.24% 0.24% 0.24% 0.24%
Fidelity Personal Investing 0.90% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.20% 0.20% 0.20%
Halifax Share Dealing 1.25% 0.42% 0.25% 0.13% 0.06% 0.03% 0.01% 0.01%
Hargreaves Lansdown 0.45% 0.45% 0.45% 0.45% 0.45% 0.45% 0.35% 0.30%
Interactive Investor 1.60% 0.53% 0.32% 0.16% 0.08% 0.03% 0.02% 0.01%
iWeb 4.40% 1.47% 0.88% 0.44% 0.22% 0.09% 0.04% 0.02%
James Hay Modular iPlan 0.18% 0.18% 0.18% 0.18% 0.18% 0.18% 0.18% 0.16%
rplan 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35%
Saga Investment Services 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.30% 0.25%
Santander Investment Hub 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.28% 0.23% 0.22% 0.16%
Selftrade 0.77% 0.46% 0.39% 0.35% 0.30% 0.27% 0.20% 0.10%
Strawberry 0.80% 0.42% 0.39% 0.37% 0.31% 0.27% 0.26% 0.26%
TD Direct Investing 1.02% 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.25% 0.15%
Telegraph Investor 0.40% 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.12% 0.06% 0.03%
The Share Centre 1.75% 0.58% 0.35% 0.18% 0.18% 0.07% 0.04% 0.02%
Trustnet Direct 1.20% 0.52% 0.41% 0.33% 0.24% 0.10% 0.05% 0.02%
Willis Owen 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.35% 0.26% 0.21% 0.18%
PORTFOLIO SIZE
SWITCHING
CHARGES
£5k £15k £25k £50k £100k £250k £500k £1m
AJ Bell Youinvest £20 £30 £50 £70 £120 £220 £220 £220 £220
Alliance Trust Savings £50 £140 £140 £140 £140 £140 £140 £140 £140
Aviva Consumer Platform £0 £20 £60 £100 £200 £375 £900 £1,525 £1,525
AXA Self Investor £0 £18 £53 £88 £175 £350 £500 £1,000 £2,000
Barclays Stockbrokers £0 £35 £53 £88 £175 £350 £875 £1,750 £1,750
Bestinvest £0 £20 £60 £100 £200 £400 £1,000 £1,500 £2,500
Cavendish Online £0 £13 £38 £63 £125 £250 £625 £1,250 £2,500
Charles Stanley Direct £0 £13 £38 £63 £125 £250 £625 £1,250 £2,000
Chelsea Financial Services £0 £30 £90 £150 £300 £600 £1,500 £2,875 £5,375
Close Brothers A.M. Self Directed Service £0 £18 £53 £88 £175 £350 £875 £1,750 £3,500
Clubfinance £0 £120 £120 £120 £120 £240 £600 £1,200 £2,400
Fidelity Personal Investing £0 £45 £53 £88 £175 £350 £500 £1,000 £2,000
Halifax Share Dealing £50 £63 £63 £63 £63 £63 £63 £63 £63
Hargreaves Lansdown £0 £23 £68 £113 £225 £450 £1,125 £1,750 £3,000
Interactive Investor £0 £80 £80 £80 £80 £80 £80 £80 £80
iWeb £20 £220 £220 £220 £220 £220 £220 £220 £220
James Hay Modular iPlan £0 £9 £27 £45 £90 £180 £450 £900 £1,650
rplan £0 £18 £53 £88 £175 £350 £875 £1,750 £3,500
Saga Investment Services £0 £20 £60 £100 £200 £400 £1,000 £1,500 £2,500
Santander Investment Hub £0 £18 £53 £88 £175 £275 £575 £1,075 £1,575
Selftrade £24 £39 £69 £99 £174 £299 £674 £1,024 £1,024
Strawberry £0 £40 £63 £98 £185 £310 £685 £1,310 £2,560
TD Direct Investing £0 £51 £45 £75 £150 £300 £750 £1,250 £1,500
Telegraph Investor £0 £20 £45 £75 £150 £300 £300 £300 £300
The Share Centre £30 £88 £88 £88 £88 £184 £184 £184 £184
Trustnet Direct £40 £60 £78 £103 £165 £240 £240 £240 £240
Willis Owen £0 £20 £60 £100 £200 £350 £650 £1,025 £1,775

So that’s that for ISAs. Let’s move onto SIPPs, and stick with platforms that encourage you to pick your own funds.
SIPP – FUND PICKING
As we saw with the ISA/GIA table, providers are
expensive/inexpensive in particular segments depending
on where they prefer to play. However, it’s even more
pronounced here due to the added propensity (fancy) for
added ﬁxed annual administration fees in pension land10
.
Overall, your target price is still sitting at around 0.30% to
0.40% but you’ll have to shop around a little more to get it.
You certainly wouldn’t want to pay much more than 0.40%.
This market is polarised. Platforms that charge on a purely
percentage basis, or have a price cap (AJ Bell Youinvest,
Bestinvest, Barclays Stockbrokers and Saga Investment
Services to name a few), are generally cheaper for funds
up to around £100k. Beyond that point those that charge
on a ﬁxed fee basis (such as Alliance Trust Savings,
Interactive Investor and The Share Centre) start to look
more attractive.
We’ve said it before but we still fail to get our collective
noggins around the fact that Bestinvest and Saga
Investment Services (Saga uses Bestinvest technology)
are cheaper for pensions than they are for ISA and GIA,
despite pensions costing more to administer. It makes our
brains hurt.
AND IN POUNDS
We won’t spend too long on this table as it’s a very similar
story (not surprisingly), but it lets you see the role that
switching charges play. As switching charges relate to the
investment (funds in this case) rather than any particular
wrapper, they are set at platform level. Which means that the
same providers apply them here as we saw for ISA/GIA.
Presenting the heatmap in cash terms also shines a harsh
light on how percentage based (or ‘ad valorem’ in industry
jargon) pricing can rack up. For instance, does it really
cost Chelsea Financial Services 179 times as much to
administer a £1m SIPP as it does a £5,000 one? Although
in the spirit of fair disclosure we should point out that
Chelsea doesn’t make you pay extra for fund switches.
That’s a relief.
10. Worst theme park ever.
PORTFOLIO SIZE £5k £15k £25k £50k £100k £250k £500k £1m
AJ Bell Youinvest 1.00% 0.73% 0.68% 0.44% 0.32% 0.13% 0.06% 0.03%
Alliance Trust Savings 5.32% 1.77% 1.06% 0.53% 0.27% 0.11% 0.05% 0.03%
Aviva Consumer Platform 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.38% 0.36% 0.31% 0.15%
Barclays Stockbrokers 0.70% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.18%
Bestinvest 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.25% 0.23%
Charles Stanley Direct 2.65% 1.05% 0.73% 0.49% 0.37% 0.30% 0.27% 0.21%
Chelsea Financial Services 0.60% 0.60% 0.60% 0.60% 0.60% 0.60% 0.58% 0.54%
Close Brothers A.M. Self Directed Service 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35%
Fidelity Personal Investing 0.90% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.35% 0.20% 0.20% 0.20%
Halifax Share Dealing 2.80% 0.93% 0.56% 0.28% 0.23% 0.09% 0.05% 0.02%
Hargreaves Lansdown 0.45% 0.45% 0.45% 0.45% 0.45% 0.45% 0.35% 0.30%
Interactive Investor 3.52% 1.17% 0.70% 0.35% 0.18% 0.07% 0.04% 0.02%
iWeb 2.20% 0.73% 0.44% 0.22% 0.20% 0.08% 0.04% 0.02%
James Hay Modular iPlan 4.08% 1.48% 0.96% 0.57% 0.38% 0.18% 0.18% 0.16%
Saga Investment Services 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.30% 0.25% 0.23%
Selftrade 3.15% 1.25% 0.87% 0.59% 0.42% 0.32% 0.23% 0.11%
Strawberry 3.20% 1.22% 0.87% 0.61% 0.43% 0.32% 0.29% 0.27%
TD Direct Investing 2.22% 0.94% 0.80% 0.78% 0.54% 0.40% 0.30% 0.17%
Telegraph Investor 2.32% 0.94% 0.68% 0.49% 0.30% 0.12% 0.06% 0.03%
The Share Centre 4.06% 1.35% 0.81% 0.41% 0.30% 0.12% 0.06% 0.03%
Trustnet Direct 3.12% 1.16% 0.79% 0.52% 0.34% 0.13% 0.07% 0.03%
Willis Owen 3.04% 1.28% 0.93% 0.66% 0.48% 0.31% 0.23% 0.19%
PORTFOLIO SIZE
SWITCHING
CHARGES
£5k £15k £25k £50k £100k £250k £500k £1m
Aviva Consumer Platform £0 £20 £60 £100 £200 £375 £900 £1,525 £1,525
Barclays Stockbrokers £0 £35 £53 £88 £175 £350 £875 £1,750 £1,750
Bestinvest £0 £15 £45 £75 £150 £300 £750 £1,250 £2,250
Charles Stanley Direct £0 £133 £158 £183 £245 £370 £745 £1,370 £2,120
Chelsea Financial Services £0 £30 £90 £150 £300 £600 £1,500 £2,875 £5,375
Fidelity Personal Investing £0 £45 £53 £88 £175 £350 £500 £1,000 £2,000
Hargreaves Lansdown £0 £23 £68 £113 £225 £450 £1,125 £1,750 £3,000
iWeb £20 £110 £110 £110 £110 £200 £200 £200 £200
James Hay Modular iPlan £0 £204 £222 £240 £285 £375 £450 £900 £1,650
Saga Investment Services £0 £15 £45 £75 £150 £300 £750 £1,250 £2,250
Selftrade £24 £158 £188 £218 £293 £418 £793 £1,143 £1,143
Strawberry £0 £160 £183 £218 £305 £430 £805 £1,430 £2,680
TD Direct Investing £0 £111 £141 £200 £390 £540 £990 £1,490 £1,740
The Share Centre £30 £203 £203 £203 £203 £299 £299 £299 £299
Trustnet Direct £40 £156 £174 £199 £261 £336 £336 £336 £336
Willis Owen £0 £152 £192 £232 £332 £482 £782 £1,157 £1,907

GIA – SHARE DEALING WITH TRADING COSTS
BY THE HORNS
11. Sorry.
WOUNDED BULL
TAKING THE
A slight change of pace here as we take a jump to the left
(GIAs or trading accounts). And then a step to the right (share
dealing). With our hands on our hips and bending our knees in
time, let’s … take a look at the heatmap. What? Nurse!
It’s straight to the pounds table this time because it tells
the share dealing story more effectively than percentages.
This is a tale all about trading charges as the majority of
providers don’t charge you a percentage of your assets
for custody – the provider clips the ticket each time you
trade and makes its money that way. Examples include AJ
Bell Youinvest, Charles Stanley Direct, IG, TD Direct
Investing and X-O who form some of the greener lines of
this table.
For many providers you pay 12 times the trading fee and
nothing else (remember we’re assuming 12 trades a year),
which means that those who still charge a percentage fee
of your holdings start to really look out of step. If you’re
lucky enough to be a direct investing GIA millionaire, for
example, you’re looking at in excess of 2 grand to hold
equities on Bestinvest, Close Brothers A.M. Self Directed
Service, Clubfinance, Saga Investment Services or
Strawberry Invest, with others not far behind. While cost
isn’t everything, we’d need to hear a pretty compelling
argument to not look at a provider that only charges for
trades if you’re someone who enjoys this kind of thing.
There is a huge amount of variation across trading charges
and it’s worth doing your homework as several platforms
offer frequent trader or loyalty discounts. However, these
are often aimed at proper share nerds (as opposed to
improper ones) and you generally have to be pretty active –
say ten trades per month – to qualify for lower rates.
The pattern of this heatmap is quite different from the others
as the combination of only applying trading charges and our
assumed number of trades creates an appearance of fixed
fees. And because this applies to so many platforms, the
colours are largely consistent as values increase.
And that’s it for the #heatmaps as you know them. Prepare to
be dazzled and amazed by what follows. You probably won’t
be, but it’s always good to be prepared. It’s worked well for the
Scouts all these years.
Hi again! You made it! This is a gloriously exciting new adventure, isn’t it? Are you excited?
By the new adventure? Us too! Woo! Let’s DO THIS!11
And so we come to the new #heatmap. The previous section dealt
with platforms which offer funds and shares and so forth but leave
you to get on with the thinking and deciding and picking yourself.
This one, on the other hand, is devoted to those platforms that in
one form or another, support you in making an investment choice
(at least in part) based upon your attitude to risk.
Now you might say, ‘Well, hang on,
aren’t most of these platforms
in the other #heatmaps?’
You’d be correct. (And
nice use of the hashtag
there, by the way.)
Quite a few platforms
are happy to let you
find your own way
but also have the
option of ready-
made portfolios,
funds or lists of
funds if you want
a simpler starting
point. Some just let
you loose on these;
others provide a path
you can head down to find the best fit for you. Several take you
through a Q&A process which ends up at a risk-rated portfolio,
but that won’t be advice, just a portfolio that’s a reflection
of the risk rating. Only a select few provide a personalised
recommendation, which is what counts as advice.
As ever, where there is a heatmap there are assumptions, which
are a little different from those for the previous section.
PORTFOLIO SIZE
TRADING
COSTS
£5k £10k £20k £50k £100k £250k £500k £1m
Barclays Stockbrokers £143 £179 £179 £179 £179 £179 £179 £179 £179
Bestinvest £90 £110 £150 £190 £290 £490 £1,090 £1,590 £2,590
Charles Stanley Direct £120 £120 £120 £120 £120 £120 £120 £120 £120
Clubfinance £6 to £30 £150 £150 £150 £150 £270 £612 £1,206 £2,406
Equiniti Shareview £150 £174 £195 £225 £240 £240 £240 £240 £240
Hargreaves Lansdown £143 £143 £143 £143 £143 £143 £143 £143 £143
iDealing £119 £139 £139 £139 £139 £139 £139 £139 £139
iWeb £60 £260 £260 £260 £260 £260 £260 £260 £260
iWeb £60 £260 £260 £260 £260 £260 £260 £260 £260
James Hay Modular iPlan £180 £180 £180 £180 £180 £180 £180 £180 £180
Saga Investment Services £143 £163 £203 £243 £343 £543 £1,143 £1,643 £2,643
Selftrade £143 £150 £150 £150 £150 £150 £150 £150 £150
Strawberry £114 £142 £173 £203 £278 £378 £678 £1,178 £2,178
SVS Securities £95 £69 £69 £69 £69 £69 £69 £69 £69
TD Direct Investing £150 £150 £150 £150 £150 £150 £150 £150 £150
The Share Centre £90 £112 £112 £112 £112 £208 £208 £208 £208
Trustnet Direct £120 £140 £158 £183 £245 £320 £320 £320 £320
Willis Owen £90 £110 £150 £190 £290 £390 £690 £1,065 £1,815
X-O £71 £71 £71 £71 £71 £71 £71 £71 £71

PROVIDER
FUND/
PORTFOLIO
LEVEL
OF
HELP
REBALANCED
FOR YOU
OCF/
TER
£5k £15k £25k £50k £100k £250k £500k £1m
AJ Bell
Youinvest
Balanced portfolio 1 NO 0.22% 1.41% 0.62% 0.46% 0.34% 0.28% 0.24% 0.23% 0.23%
Aviva Consumer
Platform
Aviva Investors
Multi-asset Fund II
1 PARTIAL 0.35% 0.75% 0.75% 0.75% 0.75% 0.73% 0.71% 0.66% 0.50%
AXA
Self Investor
Architas Multi-asset
Blended Intermediate
1 PARTIAL 0.85% 1.20% 1.20% 1.20% 1.20% 1.20% 1.05% 1.05% 1.05%
Bestinvest IFSL Tilney Bestinvest
Growth Portfolio
1 PARTIAL 1.54% 1.94% 1.94% 1.94% 1.94% 1.94% 1.94% 1.84% 1.79%
Cavendish
Online
Mid-Risk Tracker
Portfolio
1 NO 0.15% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40% 0.40%
Charles
Stanley Direct
Balanced Foundation
Portfolio
1 NO 0.64% 0.89% 0.89% 0.89% 0.89% 0.89% 0.89% 0.89% 0.84%
Chelsea Financial
Services
Balanced Growth
EasyISA
1 NO 0.85% 1.45% 1.45% 1.45% 1.45% 1.45% 1.45% 1.43% 1.39%
Close Brothers A.M.
Self-Directed Service
Close Managed
Balanced
1 PARTIAL 1.24% 1.59% 1.59% 1.59% 1.59% 1.59% 1.59% 1.59% 1.59%
Fidelity Personal
Investor
Fidelity Multi-asset
Allocator Growth
1 PARTIAL 0.25% 1.15% 0.60% 0.60% 0.60% 0.60% 0.45% 0.45% 0.45%
Fiver a Day
Mid-risk portfolio 4 YES 0.50% 0.84% 0.84% 0.84% 0.84% 0.84% 0.84% 0.84% 0.84%
Hargreaves
Lansdown
Balanced Growth
Portfolio
1 PARTIAL 1.44% 1.89% 1.89% 1.89% 1.89% 1.89% 1.89% 1.79% 1.74%
Interactive
Investor
Charlie Portfolio (Long
term, medium risk)
1 NO 0.89% 2.49% 1.42% 1.21% 1.05% 0.97% 0.92% 0.91% 0.90%
MoneyFarm
Nutmeg
Portfolio 5 4 YES 0.20% 1.15% 1.15% 0.95% 0.95% 0.70% 0.70% 0.50% 0.50%
Retiready
from Aegon
Retiready Solution 3 3 YES 0.38% 0.88% 0.88% 0.88% 0.88% 0.83% 0.74% 0.71% 0.70%
rplan Active Portfolio –
Medium Risk
1 NO 0.78% 1.13% 1.13% 1.13% 1.13% 1.13% 1.13% 1.13% 1.13%
Saga Investment
Services
IFSL Tilney Bestinvest
Growth Portfolio
1 PARTIAL 1.54% 1.94% 1.94% 1.94% 1.94% 1.94% 1.94% 1.84% 1.79%
Simply EQ
Low Cost Risk Level
5 Portfolio
4 YES 0.15% 1.14% 1.14% 1.14% 0.94% 0.84% 0.74% 0.64% 0.54%
Strawberry Architas Birthstar TD
2026 30
2 PARTIAL 0.55% 1.35% 0.97% 0.94% 0.92% 0.86% 0.82% 0.81% 0.81%
TD Direct
Investing
Vanguard LifeStrategy
60% Equity
1 PARTIAL 0.24% 1.26% 0.54% 0.54% 0.54% 0.54% 0.54% 0.49% 0.39%
The Share
Centre
SF Positive Fund 1 PARTIAL 2.09% 3.24% 2.47% 2.32% 2.21% 2.15% 2.11% 2.10% 2.10%
True Potential
Investor
Balanced Managed
Portfolio
2 NO 0.91% 1.31% 1.31% 1.31% 1.31% 1.31% 1.31% 1.31% 1.31%
Trustnet
Direct
The Consolidator
Portfolio
1 NO 0.86% 1.26% 1.11% 1.11% 1.11% 1.06% 0.94% 0.90% 0.88%
Wealth
Horizon
Before we get stuck in, just a quick word so we’re all clear on what we’re talking about in our two new columns.
LEVEL OF HELP
1. Information about risk ratings and funds but entirely investor choice.
2. Process leads to a risk rating and matching funds but still investor choice.
3. Process leads to a portfolio based on risk rating and goals but can
choose beyond this.
4. Advice process leads to recommended portfolio and that’s your lot.
REBALANCED FOR YOU
No – Not rebalanced: you’re on your own.
Partial – Rebalanced to a target asset allocation
split but not to a specific risk profile.
Yes – Portfolio is fully rebalanced on an ongoing
basis to a specific risk profile.
THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT v2.0
We assume investment in an ISA/GIA.
The biggest difference between this and the other heatmaps
is that here we include the ongoing charges figure (OCF)
or total expense ratio (TER) of the underlying investment.
OCF is the most commonly used measure of what it costs to
invest in a fund, although it’s not perfect and does miss out
some hidden costs. It’s made up of the annual management
charge (AMC) as well as most other costs of running the
fund. You’ll also see TER used here; the two are very similar
and for our purposes are interchangeable. The difference
between the two is all to do with regulation and the under-
the-bonnet wiring of the fund; believe us when we say it’s
too dull to go into here.
We also include core platform and any wrapper (product)
charges that might apply.
What we don’t include, however, are any trading charges.
That’s because the investment Things you end up with here
are either portfolios of funds or multi-asset funds which
are called ‘solutions’ by people who should know better.
Nothing is dissolved in anything, in case you’re wondering.
Whatever the case, none of these guys charge for trading or
rebalancing.
The actual fund or portfolio you end up with will depend on
your risk level and any recommendation. To simplify things
and keep everything fairsies we’ve used a mid-risk portfolio
wherever possible. Terminology differs, so you’ll have to
trust us that we’ve picked comparable ones.
The type of investment can also differ. We’ve used passive
(index tracker) options where available as most new
entrants to the market are using these or ETFs (exchange
traded funds) to keep costs down. But you can also get
actively managed funds and some providers (such as
Fidelity Personal Investing) have layers of options with
in-house active and passive funds as well as external multi-
manager options.
That’s all the fun stuff sorted. Let’s have a look at the table.

First things first. This heatmap is a little different from our usual.
Hopefully you read through the assumptions and the extra
columns won’t be too much of a shock. If you didn’t and it is,
then off you pop back the way to enlighten yourself. We just
went through it all once and don’t feel like doing it again.
Better? OK, let’s analyse.
What’s really pronounced here is the lack of the defined
‘heatmap pattern’ you generally see, where providers become
more or less competitive and so change colour at specific
portfolio sizes. This is because 1) the cost associated with the
underlying investment is often bigger than the platform fee and
2) this investment cost doesn’t change (in percentage terms)
depending on how much money you have.
We’re not showing fund managers in the best light here,
unlike the lighting in their really, really nice offices, so let’s be
even-handed and expand on those two points. You’re paying
one charge to the investment manager for everything involved
in running the fund i.e. research, selecting stock, trading
and (sometimes) rebalancing as well as actually holding the
investment. That stuff never stops happening, which is why the
charges are ongoing. Fund costs are always percentage based,
so go up as your investment grows. That’s despite the fact that
most costs of running a fund are fixed. So why don’t you get a
discount for having a larger holding? Well, you could argue that
those costs aren’t really fixed, except they are. You could argue
that big funds aren’t more profitable than small funds, except
they are. You could say that that’s the way it’s always been, and
no-one seems to care too much.
You could also make the point that fund managers do have very
nice offices. Lots of art.
The range of ongoing charges figures (or OCFs) is wide,
starting at the very small 0.15% to 0.25% mark for passive
portfolios and going all the way up to just over a whopping 2%.
Which can make a very small or absolutely whopping dent in
your fund over time. But costs are only half the story. The other
half, which might well be a bigger half12
depends on how your
investment performs (minus fees of course).
As a rule, the higher the fee, the greater the degree of active
fund or portfolio management, which is another way of saying
that more public schoolboys are involved. A tracker portfolio,
such as Cavendish Online’s at 0.15%, simply follows an index
and does not involve well-spoken people watching the market
very closely indeed and shouting about buying and selling at
the appropriate moments. Those clever, shouty people tend
not to come cheap, which is why actively managed funds cost
more. Such as the Close Balanced Managed Portfolio from
Close Brothers A.M. Self-Directed Service, for example, at
a sprightly 1.24%. This highlights another point; in a number
of cases where a platform points you in the direction of a
specific fund, this will be provided by a fund manager nestled
comfortably in the same family as the platform itself. It’s up to
you how you feel about that but it’s something to be aware of
so you have the choice. Another one.
IT’S GOOD TO COMPARE
Getting to a like-for-like comparison is sometimes
straightforward and sometimes not – some platforms (like
Nutmeg and MoneyFarm) publish their portfolio performance.
Others, who direct investors towards a single fund choice
make this information readily available too, and that’s to be
applauded. The nature of the investment makes others trickier
– for instance, portfolios made up of a number of underlying
funds (rplan and Cavendish Online among others) are
harder to research unless the provider publishes composite
performance stats, and few of them do.
Running numbers is one of our favourite activities, so we did.
Not a full-on quantitative analysis of each fund, but enough to
give us a sense of how various offerings have been performing
for their various charges. And the research we did carry out
gave us a bit of a surprise and an excellent example of why
price isn’t everything. The most expensive solution in our list,
the SF Positive Fund (from The Share Centre), returned
3.71% in the year to 31 March 2016 (the last quarter end at the
time of writing since you ask) which was significantly ahead of
most of its peers for the equivalent period (Nutmeg’s Portfolio
5 returned -4.3%, Fidelity Multi-asset Allocator Growth -4.8%
and Close Managed Balanced -4.4%, to name a few). This
more than balances out the effect of the charge differential.
HEALTH WARNING: past performance is no guarantee of
future performance etc.
YOUR PLASTIC PAL WHO’S FUN
TO BE WITH
While only the robos offer advice, all the platforms in this
table provide some degree of help when making investment
decisions. You can get a sense of who does what by looking at
the column headed ‘Level of help’ and the definitions beside the
heatmap. Here’s what you’ll find:
Not surprisingly the first option is the most common. We
won’t dwell, but it includes the likes of AJ Bell Youinvest,
Chelsea Financial Services and Trustnet Direct.
12. Yes, we know. 13. Yes, we know.
Moving on, the second tier is a more exclusive club,
counting only Strawberry and True Potential Investor as
members. You have the option of a fund to match your risk
rating should you want it or the option to choose something
else, albeit from a limited selection.
Next we have the Retiready category, created just for
Aegon (we hope the Aegon lads are appreciative). You’ll
land on one of the risk-rated funds as a result of the Q&A
process but can choose another risk level if you wish.
Finally, we get to advice. These providers will all take you
through a robo-advice process. Fiver a Day, MoneyFarm,
Nutmeg, Simply EQ and Wealth Horizon make up this gang.
While the degree of help (or advice) on offer to simplify the
process of making an investment is important, it isn’t the be
all and end all. Mainly because that’s far from the end of the
process. In fact, it’s only one small part of the process. There’s
a strong case for arguing that the real work starts once you’ve
made your investment.
Funds and portfolios don’t just stand still and wait for you to
come back and claim your money. They are living, breathing
things13
with a tendency to wander off course. And, like
herding cats, bringing portfolios back into line is less than
straightforward if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.
Now, that might sound like your idea of a good time; if so then a
fully DIY platform is likely to be for you. But if not then the good
news is that, in a number of cases, it’s all taken care of for you
– for a fee. But not in every case and it’s very important to be
clear on whether or not you’re getting the full aftercare package
before you make your (electronic) mark. How do you know the
difference? Worry not, it’s all laid out in the column helpfully
headed ‘Rebalancing’.
Where it’s a ‘yes’ for rebalancing that means the portfolio is
fully rebalanced on an ongoing basis – everything is kept in the
proportions described and within the appropriate risk bracket.
You’ll pay a higher fee (as a rule) but you’ve nothing to do. This is
largely the domain of the robos (Fiver a Day, MoneyFarm, Nutmeg,
Simply EQ and Wealth Horizon) but Retiready does it too.
‘Partial’ rebalancing describes the multi-asset/multi-manager
funds which are rebalanced to keep the split of asset classes
as it should be, but this isn’t to the tune of a specific risk
profile. What this means is that while the exact split of
different types of shares, bonds and so on may stay steady
over time, economics may dictate that what was once a nice
middle-of-the-road option, for example, might turn either much
higher or much lower risk than expected. That in turn could
have an effect on how good a fit that fund is for you over time.
Bestinvest, Hargreaves Lansdown and The Share Centre
fall into this camp.
We’re guessing you don’t need us to explain what ‘no
rebalancing’ means. Examples include AJ Bell Youinvest,
Cavendish Online and Trustnet Direct. Oh, OK we will.
Your initial split is handed to you, but it’s up to you to do it all
from there.

While most of the robo-adviser launches
to date have been small scale startup
businesses, something big is lurking in
the shadows behind them – the high street
banks. Yes, they’re back. And this time
they’re robo.
Like ‘em or not, banks are going to be a feature of the
robo-advice landscape. They have scale, brand awareness,
resources (which they’re ploughing into online and mobile
technology) and marketing and distribution clout, not to
mention a ready-made client bank (pun).
On paper they should rock the robo-world. But they bring a
lot of baggage with them.
It isn’t that long since banks were selling investment products
by the bucketload under the guise of ‘investment advice’, but
which we know now was a high-pressure sales drive. It didn’t
end well. Several found themselves on the sharp end of a
very large fine from the FCA for giving bad advice and were
promptly sent to their rooms to think about what they had
done. Without supper.
And having been through that, it’s likely that, this time, they
won’t be so quick to offer advice, but will opt to give you
automated guidance instead. See our earlier section on
compensation schemes for bad advice for details, but the
TL;DR14
is that you get protection from mis-advising, but not
from mis-buying. Ooops, butterfingers.
BANKS JUST WANT TO BE LOVED
The classic reaction to banks coming back into advice (or
thereabouts) is ‘this won’t end well’. Or, if you read the Daily Mail,
a piece about how robo-advisers either cause or cure cancer.
But, for now, we are giving the banks the benefit of the doubt.
If for no other reason than they haven’t done anything wrong
yet. This time. We’re generous that way. We are also quietly
optimistic (in as much as we are about anything) that they will
do things differently this time round, in the same way that lab
rats eventually learn not to press the button that gives them an
electric shock.
Previously, the banks’ main failings centered on establishing
suitability and ensuring the investments recommended were
at a level of risk that the customer was willing and able to
tolerate. This took a back seat to getting quick sign-ups and
commissions through the door.
This is an area where robo-advice systems can deliver
considerable improvement. Technology is now available to
ensure compliant advice can be delivered consistently and
quickly, really within any size of organisation.
Investment decisions can be made free of any emotion or
bias, with systems and controls in place to ensure adequate
monitoring at a head office level. Crucially, in a lot of cases
this can be without human intervention. The system will be
giving the advice, rather than some bloke in a shiny suit with
a big target to hit. That’s not really fair. It could be a woman
in a shiny suit.
In short, if this goes well, we could find ourselves with an
effective, accessible and reasonably priced advice/guidance
solution for the mass market. Which would be a good thing.
Disturbing, but good.
That’s the optimistic view. The realistic view will follow once
offerings are launched and we can get our paws across them
to see what’s what and how effective it all is really.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Some platforms might shift their offerings upmarket, and
most will expand their digital capabilities to some extent.
Mobile functionality, for instance, is woefully lacking with
too many providers as things stand. The banks can steal a
march here.
However, the majority of traditional D2C platforms will
probably reckon there’s more of a threat from giants like
BlackRock, Vanguard and Fidelity who have already honed
their automated advice propositions in the US. Vanguard is
warming up its UK proposition and we expect to see the cut
of its jib later in 2016.
While banks will undoubtedly influence the direct market to
some extent, they are probably not a serious threat in the
short to medium term.
The firms we refer to as robo-advisers are a different matter. You
can see how they can sit happily alongside the existing direct
platform market. But what happens when the banks enter and
target those investors wanting an easy way to invest modest
amounts of money?
One option for our robo-buddies is to offer something slightly
more sophisticated by adopting the ‘cyborg’ model, where
some degree of human interaction in the process is mixed with
online functionality to drive a personalised recommendation.
So it’s the best of both worlds (kind of like The Terminator but
with less violence. And more chat about ISAs). There’s been
no shortage of research around advice and guidance and the
underlying theme is that most people still want some form of
human interaction, even if they’re increasingly comfortable with
transacting online.
How these platforms fare over the next couple of years will
depend on whether the banks can offer something mass-
market investors will want. There’s a widely held assumption
that the banks just aren’t nimble, customer-focused or trusted
enough to make a success of their robo-ventures. But if
they do – and the good money will be on at least one putting
together a slick and compelling proposition – it’ll be a pretty
effective mechanism for the delivery of mass-market advice
and/or guidance.
But that will pose other questions and challenges. Will
consumer protection be sufficiently robust? What will be left
for the smaller players in the market? How long until we have
a massive mis-buying scandal on our hands?
There may be a price to pay for the rapid evolution of
automated advice – but by whom?
You’ll just have to download next year’s Guide to find out…
WHAT IF, JUST
MAYBE, THE
BANKS DON’T
MESS IT UP?
14. Too long; Didn’t read.

It’s that part of the guide where we cast our feline gaze over the direct platform
market and call out those who we think have something worth shouting about
– and those who ought to be shouted at.
It may not be clear from the next few pages, but we take the awards seriously.
Well, as seriously as we take anything. So there is debate. There are
disagreements. There are biscuits. Perhaps a nap. We update Twitter a bit.
And then, eventually, we decide our winners.
This year’s awards were fun to do. We’ve seen lots of interesting stuff being
developed, so there was lots to discuss. Here’s how it all worked out.
THE LANG CAT HERO AND VILLAIN OF THE YEAR
HERO – PARMENION
Now we accept this is a jarring start to proceedings. Mainly
because, as the eagle-eyed among you will have already noticed,
Parmenion isn’t actually a direct platform. Nor is it a robo. But, it
is the power (and by that we mean the technology) behind more
than a few of the new robo offerings hitting the market.
Whilst (many) others are talking the talk about technology,
Parmenion’s Interact online advice tool is allowing an increasing
number of advice ﬁrms to walk the walk. Services such as Fiver
a Day, Wealth Horizon and Simply EQ from EQ Investors are
all powered by this kit, and whilst they might not be setting
the world alight in terms of volumes just yet, they are live, look
pretty good and offer an advised solution that seems to be
well aligned to the needs of the clients they are targeting. We
expect more providers to move into this space over the coming
months, but for now Parmenion is leading the robo revolution.
VILLAIN – DISINGENUOUS ROBOS
We like lots of things about robos. What we are not in love with
is the collective tendency to trash-talk the existing market, set
themselves up as doing things oh-so-differently and then pretty
much do exactly the thing they are complaining about. Not cool
guys, not cool.
For instance, we just don’t want to see robos attacking opaque
charging structures and promoting a ‘free’ platform or headline
rate of ‘x %’, but not factoring in their own investment costs.
Total cost of ownership (TCO) is all that matters to our readers,
chaps. Clearly tell them what it is and not in the very small print.
Another bugbear is not making it clear what services are on
offer and (and this is important) whether there is an advice
element. Don’t offer a non-advised service (explained in yet more
small print) but promote it using robo-advice articles and Google
paid-for keyword ads. That’s just wrong. We don’t care what
your SEO agency says.
We think certain non-advised services are a suitability disaster
waiting to happen. If the industry is still struggling to work out
the difference between these and advised services, customers
have no hope, and the regulator has already highlighted the
danger of services where the customer thinks they are getting
advice but aren’t. Be warned…
Finally, returning to cost, we don’t like to see robos attack the
‘old school’ for high prices, then charge over 1% for a bunch
of ETFs. Exchange traded funds are cheap as chips, lads.
Your (opaque) additional charges are just too high for what it is
you do. Be ready for new entrants like eVestor and (probably)
Vanguard to give you a good boot in the basis points.

AVIVA CONSUMER PLATFORM
BEST FOR
BEGINNERS
One of the most important things for beginners is that you can get help with
making an investment decision which you can then leave alone for a good
while without having to worry that it’s all going awry. Humans have infinite
potential but we suspect that for most, going from zero to investment expert in
the space of a year or so is pushing it.
Which means that a good multi-asset fund, which will be rebalanced and
otherwise tweaked to respond to whatever is going on without you having to
whip out the Ladybird Book of Investing and re-think your entire portfolio, is a
must for this award. Aviva Consumer Platform has all this and plenty of other
investment options, so you can spread your investment wings without being
chucked off a cliff.
The pension is a little pricey for our taste (at the higher end once you start
comparing against those with a fixed fee or a generous cap) but it’s not the worst
by any stretch. Brand familiarity is a comfort blanket for anyone finding their way
in the market for the first time and Aviva ticks that box with a vengeance. More
folk have Aviva products than think they do; something you’ll find out if you set
up an account on the ACP. As soon as you set one up your other Aviva policies
across pensions and insurance are automatically visible on your home screen,
which is both clever and disturbing.
RUNNER UP – TRUE POTENTIAL INVESTOR
TPI has a good ‘investor journey’ (bleugh) but the final investment choice
(albeit a narrow one) is up to the individual. That’s fine for many but it’s
probably not ideal for total beginners. We love TPI’s work on financial
education, setting up three free online courses with the Open University
Business School. Good stuff.
HONOURABLE MENTION – FIDELITY PERSONAL INVESTING
Has all the necessary basics and does them well with lots of information for
those who want it.
NOBODY
BEST FOR
CLARITY
BEST FOR
FUND/STOCK PICKERS
THE SHARE CENTRE
BEST FOR
ROBO-ADVICE
NUTMEG
There are a number of new platforms
offering restricted advice, which is based
on one particular investment goal or pot
of money.
The process which results in you being
matched to a particular fund or portfolio
based on your goal, investment term
and attitude to risk should be simple and
engaging. The total cost of ownership
should be reasonable and rebalancing of
the investment to keep it on track should
come as standard. New robo contenders
such as Fiver a Day and Wealth Horizon
tick a lot of these boxes. But they are
new and have a long way to go in terms
of securing customers and assets.
Nutmeg isn’t exactly large-scale but
does have a longer track record and a
dedicated, if small, client following. It’s
very easy to use, it’s got a nice pension
wrapper on it now and we like that
you can ‘try before you buy’ to test the
process, even if this does encourage the
Nutmeg lads to bore on about massively
overinflated user figures. Best in class –
but for how much longer?
Fund and stock picking is largely the domain of those investors with
at least some idea of what they’re doing (we hope). Even given that,
knowledge and abilities differ from person to person, so if you want to
win this you’ll need to offer help to choose for those who need it. And
information resources. And an excellent range of investment options.
And low fund and share trading fees. Easy or what?
The Share Centre certainly ticks most of these boxes, being one of
the few to tip shares as well as funds along with a wealth (sorry) of
tools and research materials segmented for different levels of ability.
The charges for trading funds are too high (minimum of 1% or £7.50
per trade with an additional £96 frequent trader fee to secure the
£7.50 rate for larger amounts) but we have a sneaking suspicion that
particular issue will be corrected in time.
RUNNER UP – INTERACTIVE INVESTOR
A close second, II is downright generous with its market information and
research resources. It also has portfolios, lists and recommendations across
both funds and equities.
For the third year running there was not a single platform across the existing direct
providers and the robos that inspired us to hand over the coveted clarity award. And we
know platforms are keen to win it. We’ve had more questions about this than any other
award. Well, just one question really: ‘How do we win it?’. Over and over and over again.
The answer? ‘Be clear’. That means charges, documents and terms and conditions which
anyone (newbies, grannies, numerophobes) can understand and with no hidden nasties
or hidden anything. And a website that makes it easy to do what you want without having
to call for help. Or just give up. Top tip – make it better. Make it clearer. Ignore the way it’s
always been done and do it a better way. And you’ll win.
AJ BELL YOUINVEST
BEST FOR
PENSIONS
This award triggered a lengthy and heated debate
at lang cat HQ. We found ourselves stuck between
exactly the same two platforms as last year (AJ Bell
and Hargreaves Lansdown), suggesting that little has
changed in the market over the last twelve months.
Perhaps everyone is busy designing mobile apps.
There is little to choose between these two high-quality
offerings but what eventually edged AJ Bell Youinvest
ahead was price. The aim of the game is to stack up
some serious pension assets and once you hit £100k
Youinvest leaves HL in the shade on price. Add up those
fractions of a percent over the lifetime of an investment
and it can make a real difference to your pot. Yes, you
get what you pay for but you get a good deal on AJ Bell.

Before the defensive emails
start arriving, we’re not saying
that no-one provides a user
experience worthy of the
award. What we’re saying
is that providing a decent
experience is no longer optional
– it’s expected. Every single
platform of whatever origin
should be on this as a priority.
So we’re putting this award
into hibernation for a year and
serving notice on dodgy front
ends and ropey investor-only
areas. This time next year we’ll
be faming and shaming for user
experience. It’s a subjective
topic but we’ll be getting some
expert help and really playing
with the functionality you only
see once you’re a customer to
make a proper assessment.
PLATFORM
OF THE YEAR
HARGREAVES LANSDOWN
TRUE POTENTIAL INVESTOR
BEST FOR
INNOVATION
True Potential Investor pricked our whiskers last year with impulseSave which, rather cleverly,
encourages you to save on impulse (as you may have gathered) rather than spend. Nice bit of
behavioural psychology there. Anyway, TPI has added a couple of new features which we like very
much. You might think it’s a bit lazy of us to award this gong to TP again but
i. we like it; ii. there’s not much else to get excited about; and iii. it’s our Guide. So there.
The new Scheduled impulseSave knocks the impulsiveness out of it slightly, but it’s a good way
to help build habits and get into the routine of saving. You can also now get instant feedback on
what your latest payment means in terms of achieving your savings target. This instant positive
reinforcement is exactly what saving needs and we suspect it will soon get addictive knowing you are
inching ever closer to your goal instead of stacking up coffees or a new bag. Unless you really like
coffee and bags.
Or the Hargreaves Lansdown Award For Being Hargreaves Lansdown, as we’re
thinking of re-naming it. Dear everyone else, please be better so we can send this
award elsewhere. We won’t dwell as there’s not much to say that we didn’t say when
Hargreaves won this award last year.
While we’re looking at the whole shebang (proposition, price and service across SIPP,
ISA and trading account) we have to mention its impact on the market. Hargreaves
hoovers up more assets in a month than most platforms manage in a year. Or ever, in
some cases. You can’t argue with that.
There are still a few things that rub our fur the wrong way (exit charges for one) but we
are under no illusion that the Bristolian hordes will ever give a single, solitary hoot what
we think. It isn’t necessarily the best at everything but it does most things very well and
continues to set the industry benchmark.
NOBODY
BEST FOR
USER EXPERIENCE
That brings us to the end of our lengthy
sequence of code. If we were all robots we
could have written the whole thing as a string
of 0s and 1s and saved ourselves a lot of time.
Perhaps next year.
Who knows what the next twelve months have in store? As
we write this, the shockwaves of the immediate post-Brexit
vote period are reverberating, the UK political establishment is
committing mass seppuku, and no-one’s quite sure what the
next hour has in store, let alone how this might play through into
people’s personal finances. One thing’s for sure: there’s quite
enough speculation at the moment and anything we have to add
will be wildly out of date by the time anyone reads it.
So we’ll limit ourselves to what we do know, or can at least
take a reasonably informed swing at.
BANKS MAKE THE HEADLINES,
AGAIN
While we’ve devoted the bulk of this guide to robo-advice,
in some ways things will only really start to kick off when the
banks deal into the game and we get a sense of what hand
they’re playing with. They will be the face of robo-advice for
many so, at this stage, we hope they’re on their best behaviour
with clean faces, shiny shoes and a hanky in their pocket.
That’ll only take us so far, though. The banks have a lot to
prove; an awful lot of people are waiting for them to trip up
(again) so they can point and laugh and tell us how they knew
it was going to go that way. Hmmm. Our initial work suggests
that moving the process online may reduce the potential for
high-pressure sales tactics which led to previous mis-selling
naughtiness. We’ll have to wait and see about that, but if we
had the power to see into the future, we’re pretty sure we could
think up better uses for that power than having a pop at banks.
Buying our holiday currency before the referendum results were
announced springs to mind.
WHILE IN OTHER NEWS
But let’s not forget about the rest of the direct market. There
have been a few new (non-robo) entrants to the market over the
last year and we hope to see more developments in the coming
months. The FAMR process will grind along while continuing
to consult on everything that crosses its path. As Monty Python
nearly said: “This calls for immediate consultation!”
We are optimistic that one outcome might be some (eventual)
clarity around what guidance actually means in the regulatory
sense and how it differs from advice or just providing
information. This could lead to some long-mothballed offerings
being dusted off and nudged gently into the light.
Guidance gets a bad press (probably because of questions
around how effective it has been in the pension freedoms
context) but it has a role to play. Not everyone wants or can
afford advice. Robo-advice is a middle ground but some people
don’t even need that much – just a sense check, an unbiased
source and someone to talk to.
AND FINALLY
By the time the next Guide rolls around Lifetime ISAs or
LISAs will have been unleashed (either with or without their
5% exit charge, depending who wins that particular fight).
We’re also seeing signs of serious investment in technology
and development with launches, apps and other toys either
in-progress or being talked about. It’s encouraging and
suggests some relief from a long slog of regulatory pressures.
For now, at least. Will Brexit throttle innovation? Will existing
development programmes be disrupted? Will commentators
ever stop lazily asking questions and answer some instead?
For our money, unless a provider wants to quit the UK, it
has to keep moving. Investment and development are basic
requirements of surviving and thriving in a personal finance
market like the UK, whether or not we’re in the EU; there are no
prizes on offer for just ticking along.
Not from us, at least.
And maybe, just maybe, someone might win the Clarity award
next year. We’re fed up having to dust it.
We hope you enjoyed the Guide. If it’s left you feeling more like
cuddling up to a cyborg instead of raging against the machine,
then we’re happy.
Time to install updates and shut down.
the lang cat
Edinburgh, June 2016
C SUC >0O NIN S< L
/ C SUC >0O NIN SL<

Mark Polson founded the lang cat in 2010 with one simple
aim: to get financial services companies broadly on the same
wavelength as their customers. Ok, it wasn’t all that simple.
And it wasn’t really just the one thing. It was a combination of
convincing providers to design products that customers might
actually want to use and then explaining those products in a way
that doesn’t make everyone want to just give it up and go home.
Scratching complexity in the face, baring our
fangs at jargon and stealing the squeaky
mouse of marketing nonsense
is what gets us out of our basket every
day. That and a large bowl of kibble.
But that’s not all we’re about. These
days we also help companies with
public relations, strategy and product
development. Based in Edinburgh,
we specialise in platforms, pensions and
investments and work with firms who do all that,
as well as large advisory firms across the direct,
advised and workplace markets.
In between all that, we publish annual guides – for the advised
market and, you’ve guessed it, the direct market.
The lang cat has now clocked up over a mighty five years of doing
what we do and despite our best efforts, we haven’t managed to
offend anyone too badly. We’re still optimistic though.
If you’ve enjoyed the Guide (in which case we both thank
you and compliment your discerning palate) and would like
to know more about us or indulge in some of our other
material, you’re always welcome to pop along to our website –
www.langcatfinancial.com – and top up the lang cat in your tank.
COME AND HAVE A GO: RISE OF THE MACHINES46
U
A
H
AG
T
C
AB
E
T
O
L
T
N
COME AND HAVE A ROBO – WHAT’S YOUR DIRECT
INVESTING PERSONALITY?
If you answered mostly A:
You’re a pure DIYer. Fly and be free.
If you answered mostly B:
You’ll make your own decision but like to
have all the information to hand first.
If you answered mostly C:
You’re on the fence. You like the structure of
a guided process but don’t want to be tied to
the outcome.
If you answered mostly D:
A happy union of advice and technology
starts here. You are indeed ready to robo.
If you answered mostly E: You’re a
traditionalist. You like your advisers in human
form, preferably in a suit and in your front
room with tea, biscuits and a nicely printed
update on your portfolio.

dowhatyoulove
www.langcatﬁnancial.com

COME AND HAVE A GO 2016

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