InvestEngine Stocks & Shares ISA review

This funds-only platform lets you invest your money to grow it long-term

InvestEngine is an investment platform with a Stocks & Shares ISA. It’s a good option for those looking to invest passively, as it offers a range of exchange-traded funds, which are bundles of investments, allowing you to diversify in one fell swoop.

You can’t choose individual shares to invest in as you would with other DIY investment platforms, but it does have both DIY and ready-made options. 

Here’s everything you need to know to get started investing with InvestEngine.

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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 InvestEngine Stocks & Shares ISA?

The InvestEngine Stocks & Shares ISA is a free account with InvestEngine, accessed with both a mobile app and a desktop platform. As with other Stocks & Shares ISAs, you can invest up to £20,000 per tax year.

The InvestEngine ISA is flexible. This means you can withdraw money from it in a tax year without losing out on that amount from your allowance, as long as it’s replaced within the same tax year. But you should be careful — investing isn’t for short-term savings. You want to leave the money invested for at least five years so the stock market can fluctuate. 

You can transfer in an ISA from another provider. This lets you keep it within the ISA ‘wrapper’ and therefore won’t count as a new deposit into an ISA, for the sake of your ISA allowance. When transferring ISAs to InvestEngine, by default, it’s done ‘in specie’, which means the investments are transferred over, rather than sold and repurchased. This is as long as the investments are available with InvestEngine — anything not available will be sold and transferred as cash.  

What you can invest in with InvestEngine

You can only invest in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with InvestEngine, but it offers a couple of different options for managing your portfolio.

ETFs are collections of various investments. They allow you to invest passively, which means you don’t need to spend a lot of time diversifying your portfolio or managing it. 

With these, you’d still want to keep an eye on your investments to make sure your portfolio reflects your values and make decisions to buy or sell depending on performance.  

Alternatively, you can also choose from ready-made portfolios – these are portfolios of funds that have been created by experts. There are five LifePlan portfolios — these are risk-based, which means you choose one that suits your feelings towards risk. This is determined by the amount of ‘equity’ in the portfolio. 

Equities are shares of companies — these are higher-risk investments as company performance can be shaky, but because of this, they offer a better chance at long-term growth. 

The more equities in your portfolio, the higher the potential returns you can make, but the more risk you’re taking. This means that if you’re a bit cautious of your investments losing value, you’d be better off with a lower equity portfolio. 

Here are the LifePlan portfolios that InvestEngine offers:

Name of portfolio	Risk level	Suited for
LifePlan 100% Equity	5/7	High growth-focused investors
LifePlan 80% Equity	5.7	Growth focused investors
LifePlan 60% Equity	4/7	Balanced investors
LifePlan 40% Equity	3/7	Moderately cautious investors
LifePlan 20% Equity	3/7	Cautious investors

There are also fully managed portfolios that InvestEngine can suggest for you depending on your answers to a quiz. These are questions about how much you’re investing, what proportion it represents of your total wealth, how long you plan to invest and how you feel about market downturns. It then allows you to choose your investments based on your goal and the amount of equity in the portfolio. 

InvestEngine fees

The fees you’ll pay depends on whether you opt for a DIY portfolio or want to choose a managed portfolio. 

DIY fees

Fee	Cost	What it’s for
Platform fee	Free	A fee for using InvestEngine
Trading fee	Free	Buying and selling funds
Deposits	Free	Topping up your account
Withdrawals	Free	Withdrawing money from your account
Custody fee	Free	A fee for holding your investments
Fund costs	0.03% – 0.89%, depending on which ones you choose	A charge to invest in funds

LifePlan portfolio fees

You’ll pay a platform fee of 0.25% when you choose a LifePlan and average fund costs of 0.12%. 

Managed portfolio fees

When you choose a managed portfolio, you’ll pay the platform fee of 0.25%, average fund fees of 0.12% and ETF spread costs of around 0.07%. 

Features for beginner investors

InvestEngine is a good platform for beginner investors as it offers ready-made portfolios. With the DIY option available as well, you can learn about choosing your own investments. 

If you wanted to eventually venture into buying individual shares, you’d need to do it with a different provider, as InvestEngine only offers funds, but funds are a really good way to start. 

There isn’t a demo account with InvestEngine, so you’d need to go with another provider that has one, such as Trading 212, if you want to try investing with virtual money and using the tools the platforms offer. 

Is InvestEngine safe?

InvestEngine is FCA-regulated in the UK. 

Like most investment providers, your money with InvestEngine is ring-fenced, which means it’s kept separate from InvestEngine’s own money. Any uninvested cash in your account is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), which protects up to £85,000 — this can be claimed if InvestEngine were to go bust. 

Investments in your account are also kept separate from InvestEngine’s assets — this means that InvestEngine doesn’t have a legal right to your investments. This means that if InvestEngine or its partners were to go bust, you’d still be able to access them.

What’s the InvestEngine platform like?

InvestEngine can be accessed on a desktop through your browser as well as in a mobile app. It’s really easy to sign up and choose investments — you can choose whether you want to opt for DIY or one of the ready-made options once you’ve signed up. 

When it comes to choosing investments, InvestEngine has organised the funds into categories, such as ESG (ethical investments), dividend-focused funds and leading global indices. It also has thematic collections, which are funds that fit specific themes, like video game companies, biotech companies or renewable energy companies. 

The platform is well suited to beginner investors as it offers explanations of some of the investing jargon you’ll come across and has everything well organised. 

There are some things beginners might find difficult to decipher, such as some of the key stats it gives you about each of the funds. However, you can certainly get started without understanding every stat offered to you, and InvestEngine defines each one when you click on them.

On the other hand, advanced investors would likely feel that there’s not enough detail and that the charting tools aren’t advanced enough.  

InvestEngine offers webinars for different themes and investments to help you learn how to invest. These feature experts who can answer your questions about the subject. 

How to open an InvestEngine Stocks & Shares ISA

To open an InvestEngine Stocks & Shares ISA, you must be 18 or over and have a valid form of ID. 

You can sign up on the mobile app or on a desktop on the website. You just need to select ‘Get started’ and follow the instructions to sign up. It’ll ask you for your personal details and your National Insurance number. 

In addition, you may need to take a selfie and provide a photo of your ID to help InvestEngine verify your identity.   

Pros and cons of InvestEngine

Pros

• No extra ISA charges
• Use DIY option with no fees
• Offers ready-made portfolios
• Has a mobile app
• Large range of ETFs, organised into categories

Cons

• You can invest in funds only
• No demo account

InvestEngine reviews

On our sister site, Smart Money People, InvestEngine customers have rated it 4.82 out of 5. Positive reviewers find the platform to be really easy to use and think the customer service is excellent. 

There aren’t many negative reviews, but some customers had issues with transferring investments, unaware that they couldn’t transfer shares from another provider.  

Read customer reviews of InvestEngine 

Is InvestEngine any good?

Zoe’s analysis

In my opinion, InvestEngine is a great balance between DIY investing and robo-investing. Beginners can leave it to the experts with a ready-made portfolio, either chosen themselves or with the answers to a quiz that helps you choose one that matches their risk profile. Those with some extra knowledge of investing can go down the DIY route and buy ETFs. You can also do a mix of the two if you want to. 

You don’t have to pay extra to use the Stocks & Shares ISA and you can transfer existing ISAs, although you should be aware that they’re done in-specie where possible, however, if the investments aren’t available with InvestEngine then they’ll be sold to make the transfer. 

The ISA is also flexible, although you ideally aren’t withdrawing money from investments within a year, otherwise, it’s probably not money you’d want to invest.