Interactive Investor Stocks & Shares ISA review

Interactive Investor is one of the big players in investing

Interactive Investor is an investment provider with many products available, including a Stocks & Shares ISA. It lets you choose between ready-made investments or doing it yourself and choosing stocks and funds to invest in. Here’s what you need to know about Interactive Investor to get started. 

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Here at Be Clever With Your Cash, we’re not regulated to give you financial advice. We aim to give you the facts about a provider or investment but it’s up to you to decide if it’s suitable for you. If you’re looking for more personalised guidance, find a financial adviser who can give you specific advice. Remember that your capital is at risk when investing — don’t invest more than you are prepared to lose. 

What is the Interactive Investor Stocks & Shares ISA?

This Stocks & Shares ISA is an account available with Interactive Investor. It lets you use your tax-free allowance of £20,000 per year to invest tax-free. But unlike other Stocks & Shares ISAs, the Interactive Investor isn’t free, costing a flat fee of £4.99 per month rather than a percentage of your investments — we cover the fees in more detail further down. 

If you’ve already got ISAs elsewhere, you can transfer them into Interactive Investor. When transferring over to Interactive Investor, you can move over cash or investments. You just let Interactive Investor know that you want to transfer over an ISA and it’ll handle all the details with your existing ISA provider. 

What you can invest in with Interactive Investor

Interactive Investor offers both managed portfolios and DIY portfolios, and you can do a mix of the two if you want to.

The managed portfolios are best suited for beginner investors as they are created and managed by investment experts. This means that you don’t need to research investments or keep too much of an eye on your portfolio. 

Interactive Investor matches you to a portfolio based on your answers to a questionnaire. This will ask you about your attitude to risk, as well as some questions about how much you want to invest and over what period. Then, it’ll match you with one of ten portfolios — five of which are sustainable.

Here are the portfolios and how much risk you’d be taking on with each of them:

Portfolio name	Risk level	Typical cost of investments (on top of platform fee)
Cautious Index	1/5	0.2%
Moderate Index	2/5	0.19%
Balance Index	3/5	0.19%
Adventurous Index	4/5	0.19%
Very Adventurous Index	5/5	0.13%
Cautious Sustainable	1/5	0.25%
Moderate Sustainable	2/5	0.25%
Balanced Sustainable	3/5	0.28%
Adventurous Sustainable	4/5	0.29%
Very Adventurous Sustainable	5/5	0.27%

You can also invest yourself with funds and exchange-traded funds. These would be the best option for beginner investors who don’t fancy any of the managed portfolios — these are bundles of investments that are already pretty well diversified. 

Additionally, you can choose individual shares. Interactive Investor offers UK and international shares, so you can create a fairly broad portfolio. You’d need a fair amount of investment knowledge to choose this option, as you’d have to pick your investments and manage them yourself. 

Interactive Investor fees

Interactive Investor charges a flat fee on its platform fee. This means that it can work out expensive when investing small amounts, but once you’re investing larger amounts, it can work out cheaper than providers that charge a percentage of your investments. 

For example, the lowest percentage fee for a managed stocks and shares ISA is Dodl, at just 0.15% (minimum fee of £1 per month). When investing £1,000, this works out at £12 per year, the same amount invested with Interactive Investor would cost a massive £59.88 in a year. However, once you invest £50,000, it’ll cost you £75 with Dodl but that set rate of £59.88 with Interactive Investor. 

There are additional fees when you choose to do DIY investing or choose to invest in funds.

Type of fee	Cost	What it’s for
Buying UK and US shares, funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), bonds or gilts	£3.99 per trade	Commission for making the trade
Other international shares	£9.99 (or £5.99 if you’re a “Super Investor”)	Commission for making the trade
Dividend reinvestment	£0.99	Cost of Interactive Investor re-investing the money you receive as dividends
Regular monthly investing	Free	When you drip-feed money into your investments using Interactive Investor’s “Regular Investing” service

What’s a Super Investor?

Interactive Investor has a “Super Investor” plan that costs £19.99 per month (instead of £4.99 per month). You get some additional benefits, including:

• Four free trades per month
• Accounts for five family members
• International trading fee of £5.99

This can be a good plan if you’re a family of six and you all want accounts, as two of the accounts are then effectively free. But most people will be on the standard “Investor Essentials” plan at £4.99 per month.

Interactive Investor features for beginner investors

Interactive Investor is a pretty hefty account, suitable for everyone from beginner to expert. This can be a little daunting for those just getting started, but it does have features just for beginners. 

This includes a free ‘research account’, which is sort of like a demo account. You can track the performance of investments that you’re interested in investing in with virtual portfolio watchlists. These can give you some exposure to the platform before diving in with actual money.

Beginners can simply opt for managed portfolios, which give them a very hands-off approach to investing. If you then want to move into DIY investing, you can delve into it alongside your managed portfolio down the line. 

There are loads of guides and support to help you understand the stock market, so you can learn how it’s done as you go.

Is Interactive Investor safe?

Interactive Investor is one of the biggest players in the investing world. It’s FCA-regulated in the UK, and the money that you deposit is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

FSCS protects you if Interactive Investor or any of its partners were to go bust and you lose money as a result — up to £85,000 is protected in this instance. 

All the money you deposit to Interactive Investor is placed in an account separate to its own money — so Interactive Investor can’t use it.

How to open an Interactive Investor Stocks & Shares ISA

You can open an Interactive Investor ISA on the website or by downloading the app. 

Make sure you have ID and a debit card to hand, as well as your National Insurance number. You’ve got to be 18 or over to open an account.

Then, click ‘Open an ISA’ and it’ll take you through all the steps. If you want to make a transfer, you can select ‘Transfer an ISA’ instead, and it’ll take you through the process of opening a new account and entering the information it’ll need to make the transfer. 

If you want to open a Managed ISA, you’ll be able to choose this along the way, and you’ll be asked some questions about how much you’re investing, your current financial situation, how you feel about risk and what you’re saving for. This will help Interactive Investor match a portfolio to you. 

Pros and cons of Interactive Investor

Pros

• Suitable for beginner and experienced investors 
• Offers managed and ready-made options, including ethical portfolios
• Lowest cost for larger investments (more than £40,000)
• Products available for the whole family

Cons

• Could be overwhelming for beginners
• High fees for investments under £40,000

Interactive Investor reviews

Over on our sister site, Smart Money People, Interactive Investor customers have rated it 4.24 out of 5. 

Positive reviews mentioned the range of investments and products available, and talk highly of the customer service offered by Interactive Investor. 

There’s not a huge amount of negative reviews, but some people said that the website is difficult to use and navigate. 

Read customer reviews of Interactive Investor

Is Interactive Investor any good?

Zoe’s analysis

Interactive Investor is a comprehensive investment provider as it offers both DIY options and ready-made portfolios, but it’s not the most user-friendly for beginners, although this has improved more recently. If you want something even simpler, you’re looking for something like a robo-advisor. 

However, when it comes to cost, whether it’s cheap or expensive depends on how much you invest.  Interactive Investor can work out the cheapest for those investing larger sums — once you’re investing more than £40,000, your fees start to get cheaper than even the lowest percentage fee.

Beginners can stick to the managed portfolios, and those who want to learn more about investing can make use of the demo account and invest in both the managed portfolios and a DIY portfolio to get started. 

You can use and invest with both a mobile app and via a web browser, which I really like, especially when you want to look at the performance of your portfolios, including the charts and further information.