Key Future:
How Invest Engine Works
InvestEngine open cracked
Is Invest Engine good for beginners
InvestEngine account options
How much is Invest Engine
Is Invest Engine safe to use
A quick recap and more info
InvestEngine pros and cons
Invest Engine customer reviews
Thoughts
How Invest Engine Works (investment portfolio)
Invest Engine is designed to be as easy as possible for you to either manage your own investments, or get their experts to manage it for you.
You can either use their websites, or phone app, choose one of the account options below, and you're ready to go.
DIY portfolio
Those are quite special. Aside from having no fees, it's a pretty great way of building and managing your own portfolio. Once you have decided which ETFs you want to invest in (there's over 500), you can then select the weight that each of your chosen ETFs has in your portfolio.
As your investments grow over time, they will grow different rates( and some may not grow) which means the weight of each ETF within your portfolio will change over time too, so one great investment might start at 5% of your portfolio, but end up at 10% after say a year.
InvestEngine will buy or sell part of your portfolio portfolio to get back to the perfect balance that you want.
There also an autoinvest features, which automatically Invest your money into the investment you have chosen. So you can be completely hands-off if you want to.
Experts managed portfolios
Growth portfolio
Income portfolio
The income is also paid straight into your bank account.
InvestEngine open cracked
On the surface, InvestEngine looks like a no-frills investment company somewhere you can invest hassle-free. But it's much more than that. It's an all- round investment platform(that's somewhere you can make investments) perfect for investors of all kinds.
You can choose to manage everything yourself, but there's hand's-off investment options too , where your investment are managed by their experts, you just sit back, relax and watch your money grow (on a long term).
Here's the best bit, it's the best cheapest investment platform out there by far.
There are literally no fee if you want to manage your own investments! And if you want to their expert managed options, the fee is only 0.25%. ( other expert - managed platform typically cost 0.75% )
You still get all the bells and whistles of the good investment platform, such as a great mobile app and website to manage everything, a stock & shares ISA to benefit from tax-free investing and great customer support service.
There's just one limitations- you can only invest in exchange-traded funds ETFs which are groups of stocks and shares (and sometimes other assets such as commercial property and bonds - which are essentially business loans that pay interest), all wrapped up together, into a fund, and the fund itself is managed by experts.
ETFs are a great way in invest, and incredibly popular only use ETFs anyway. You just can't buy individual stocks and shares directly, such as Google or Netflix, they have to be part of ETFs.
If you want to buy individual company shares, unveiling world of sofi invest
Is Invest Engine good for beginners?
The answer is YES it is we wouldn't recommend starting out with a self-managed portfolio if you are a beginner (a portfolio is what your investment are called), which is where you're making the investment decisions yourself.
But with InvestEngine you can benefit from the cheap costs of investing using a portfolio managed by experts.
There's no fees to set up your account, no fees to open and use a stock's & shared ISA (Which is where you can invest tax-free)
There's no fees to InvestEngine when investment are bought and sold. In fact, the only cost you will to InvestEngine is a 0.25% management fee.
But there are other fees included with investing, whichever platform you use( more on those below).
If you compared this with Nutmeg or moneyfarm both popular investment platform for beginners, you will be paying between 0.45-0.75%. And if you use a traditional investment platform like Hargreaves lansdown, it's nearer 2% for them to manage everything for you.
The minimum investment is also only £100, compared to £500 for Nutmeg, and other popular investment apps such as moneyfarm. Although with wealthy it's just £1.
Plus, with InvestEngine, you can create a smaller separate self-managed portfolio when you feel a bit more confident, and start making your own investments too.
InvestEngine account options
General investment account (GIA)
However depending on your investment balance, you might not end up paying tax at all - with capital Gains Tax, you have an allowance of E3,000 profit,per tax year (April 6th to April 5th the following year), before you have to pay any tax- and that's Only when you sell your Investments.
The good thing about these account is that you can have as many as you like, across all different Investment platforms, and you can pay in as much as you like too.
Stocks and shares ISA
Personal pension
Business account
Junior ISA, lifetime ISA
How much is InvestEngine
The only fee you will pay to InvestEngine is 0.25% if you decide you like a managed portfolios. And that's cheap! It's the lowest fee you will find Investments platform for expert managed Investing. Typical fee for digital wealth manger's are around 0.75% which reduce if you invest more money. A rough guidelines of 0.35% for those with over £100,000 invested. The more popular investment platform are Moneyfarm and Nutmeg.
And if you wanted to invest in a more traditional way, with a financial advisor handling everything for you, fees can be as much as 5%! However, you will still have to pay fees that the ETFs themselves charge, which are around 0.2% depending on which ETF, and those fees are paid by everyone who owns the ETF, not just InvestEngine customers
Note: ETFS are held by lots of investors across the world, and used by other investment platforms
And there's also a hidden cost of buying an ETF, called a spread fee, which again everyone who invests in an ETF would pay, and this fee is the difference between the price to buy an ETF and the price to sell an ETF, and it's often 0.07%.
So all in all, if you wanted a managed portfolio, you'd be paying 0.52%, very cheap! Broken down like this:
- Fee : Management fee
- Cost: 0.25%
- Fee: ETF management fee (charged by all investment platforms)
- Cost: 0.20%
- Fee: Spread fee (charged by all investment platforms)
- Cost: 0.07%
- Total Fee =0.52%
Customer Service support
Is Invest Engine safe?
Yep it is. InvestEngine is authorized and regulated by the Financial conduct Authority(FCA), who are the people who make sure your money is safe, by reviewing and approving companies who look after your funds.
Your money is also protected by the Financial service compensation scheme (FSCS), which means if anything should happen to invest Engine, such as going out of business (very unlikely) you d get up to £85,000 back.
But there's even more protection from customers too. Your money is held in a separate protected trust account. Which is completely separate to Invest Engine business bank account. This means all the money would be returned to customers if Invest Engine were to crack down.
An easy recap and more info
Mobile App: You can manage everything from your phone, on both Apple and Android device. These apps are rested 4.6 out of 5 pretty great.
No exist Fee: There's no fee to close your account and use another provider, you can leave whenever you like if you choose too. Invest Engine are confident you won't leave, so no need to charge fee unlike some investment platforms.
Withdrawl: You can make a withdraws for free at any time you like, and it's free to do.
Minimum amount : The minimum amount you can invest is quite low -just £100 (compared to an average of around £500 with other platforms)
Business Account :If you're a business owner, you can invest your company spare cash too.
Invest Engine pros and cons
- Free fee investing (0%fee)
- ISA
- Easy to use
- Personal pension
- Business
- Great range of ETFS
- Very low cost managed option (0.25%)
- Low minimum investment (£100)
- Great customer service
- Not much else
- Only ETF