Moneybox started as a simple robo-advisor, but now it offers individual shares and ETFs
Moneybox is an investment app that lets you invest in a tax-free account. You can choose between a range of ready-made portfolios, exchange-traded funds and individual US shares and start with only £1. Here’s how this robo-advisor works.
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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.
The Moneybox Stocks & Shares ISA is a free account with Moneybox. It can be accessed on its mobile app. Like other Stocks & Shares ISAs, you can invest up to £20,000 per tax year in your ISA.
The Moneybox Stocks & Shares ISA is a flexible one, so you can withdraw money from it and replace it in the same tax year, without it counting twice against your allowance. But beware, investing isn’t for short-term savings. Ideally, you want to leave the money invested for at least five years so the stock market can fluctuate.
Moneybox lets you transfer over an ISA from another provider. An ISA transfer (as opposed to just moving it yourself) would let you keep your ISA allowance intact while changing providers.
When transferring an ISA to Moneybox, it’s not done ‘in specie’, so your investments will be sold and the cash will be transferred in.
You’ll get 3.25% AER interest on uninvested cash in your account.
Other Moneybox products
Moneybox also has a General Investment account, which doesn’t have the tax-free allowance that the ISA’s got. If you want to invest for your children, you can open them a Junior ISA, which has a £9,000 tax-free allowance.
There’s also a Lifetime ISA and several savings accounts, including a Cash ISA.
What you can invest in with Moneybox
When I first got Moneybox back in 2017, it was a simple robo-advisor, offering three ready-made portfolios. Now, it’s got a huge range of investment options.
Complete beginners will be interested in the three ‘Starting Options’. These are funds, each with a different amount of risk that you choose between. There are also three ESG (environmental, social governance) options, which are more ethical portfolios.
The three portfolios are Cautious, Balanced and Adventurous, with another three with the same names if you opt for an ESG portfolio. The lower-risk options have lower portions of shares and some holdings in cash, while the riskier ones have a high portion of shares and no cash.
You could also choose your own investments by browsing the range of funds available. Moneybox has a nice collection available. It doesn’t provide much information about each fund, but you can get further information looking at each of their Key Investor Information Documents.
There’s also a very small range of US stocks available to invest in — just 20 to choose between. You wouldn’t be able to create a diversified portfolio with just US stocks, and certainly not with a choice this small, but it’s a chance to dip your toes in alongside your other investments.
You can invest in fractional stocks with Moneybox, so you could theoretically invest a small amount across several of the ones available. Moneybox offers a service called ‘Weekly Stocks’ where it spreads a weekly deposit across several different stocks. This lets you drip feed money into investments, so you’ll buy in both the ups and downs of the stock market. It’s an investment strategy known as ‘pound cost averaging’.
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Moneybox fees
Moneybox’s fees are pretty simple, and they don’t depend on which type of investment strategy you go for. Here are the ones you’ll pay.
| Type of fee | Cost |
| Monthly subscription | £1 per month (free for first three months) |
| Platform fee | 0.45% |
| Commission (for buying US stocks) | 0% |
| Currency conversion (for buying US stocks) | 0.45% |
Features for beginner investors
The Moneybox Stocks & Shares ISA is designed for beginner investors, with a simple range of ready-made portfolios to choose between. It’s really easy to get started and go through all the options available.
Moneybox has lots of educational guides and videos available for beginners who want to learn about investing. It’s not really the account you’d want to stick with if you do want to venture into DIY investing eventually, as the range of US stocks isn’t very extensive.
Is Moneybox safe?
Moneybox is FCA regulated in the UK and authorised to hold client money.
Moneybox keeps your money segregated from its 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 Moneybox were to go bust.
Investments in your account are also kept separate from Moneybox’s own assets.
You can open a Moneybox Stocks & Shares ISA on its website or in the app. You start by simply making an account with an email address and password. Then, it’ll ask you for simple personal information.
At this stage, you’ll choose the account you want to go with. Annoyingly, for the Stocks & Shares ISA, at this stage, you have to move to the mobile app. A pain if you started on desktop.
Once on mobile, you can choose between the “Wealth Builder bundle” and just a Stocks & Shares ISA.
The Wealth Builder bundle is simply opening both the Cash ISA and Stocks & Shares ISA it offers. Although if you want to put money in a Cash ISA as well, you really ought to compare the best rates elsewhere — there’s no obligation to have it with Moneybox too.
Once you’ve chosen the ISA you want, you’ll pick how you’d like to invest and go on to open the ISA.
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Pros and cons of Moneybox
Pros
- Simple, easy to use app
- Offers ready-made portfolios
- Small number of stocks to try buying shares
- Large range of funds available
Cons
- Stocks & Shares ISA is mobile-only
- Little information about the funds on offer
- Only three portfolios to choose from
Moneybox reviews
On our sister site, Smart Money People, Moneybox customers have rated it 4.97 out of 5. Positive reviewers find the app really easy to navigate and find the customer service is good.
Some customers feel that it’s quite expensive, which it can be for very small investments.
Read customer reviews of Moneybox
Is Moneybox any good?
Zoe’s analysis
Moneybox is a pretty good Stocks & Shares ISA, especially if you’re mostly interested in ‘set and forget’ investing rather than a real hands-on approach. Moneybox was the app I started with nearly a decade ago, and I liked that I could drip-feed money into my investments without too much effort or any investment knowledge.
The fees can be a little high with a £1 a month subscription fee on top of the 0.45% platform fee. In comparison, Dodl, which offers a pretty similar service, costs just 0.15%.
If you want to graduate to choosing your own investments, this isn’t the platform for buying individual shares, as it only has a very small selection of US stocks, making it impossible to create a diverse portfolio of shares.
Moneybox Stocks & Shares ISA
| Investment styles available | DIY and fully managed |
| Investment types available | Ready-made portfolios Funds US stocks |
| Welcome bonus | None |
| Platform fees | £1 per month and 0.45% |
| Minimum deposit | £1 |
| Interest on uninvested cash | 3.25% AER |
| Flexible ISA | No |