NuWealth Stocks & Shares ISA review

NuWealth offers DIY investments in its mobile app

NuWealth is an investment app that offers individual shares and exchange-traded funds. You can invest tax-free in a Stocks & Shares ISA. Here’s everything you need to know about NuWealth 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 NuWealth Stocks & Shares ISA?

The NuWealth Stocks & Shares ISA is a free account within the NuWealth platform. Until December 2024 it was known as Wombat Invest. It’s owned by the financial advice firm Quilter. 

You can use your ISA allowance with it, so you can invest up to £20,000 in each tax year without paying any tax on your earnings, though beware that the allowance is split between other ISAs you have. 

You can transfer your existing ISA over to NuWealth. This is done either as cash or ‘in specie’, which means that you retain your existing investments as long as they’re also available to invest in with NuWealth. Transferring an ISA would mean you don’t double up on using your ISA allowance when moving to a new provider and can let you move ISAs from previous tax years. 

What you can invest in with NuWealth

NuWealth is a DIY investment platform – it doesn’t do any ready-made portfolios. It offers exchange-traded funds and individual shares, as well as fractional shares. You’ll be in control of your own portfolio with NuWealth, so you’ll need to keep track of how they’re performing. 

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are funds that are bought and sold on stock exchanges. These are probably the best option for beginners to invest with a DIY platform, as they’re collections of investments created and managed by experts. You can just choose a few ETFs to create a diverse portfolio.  

NuWealth has a huge range of ETFs available, including a few “thematic funds” — these are pretty much just funds that have been renamed to identify what sort of companies they invest in. For example “The British Bulldog” themed fund is really just the iShares FTSE 100 UCITS ETF. While this could seem unnecessary, it does help beginners understand what makes up a fund and make better sense of what they’re investing in. 

One thing I really like about NuWealth is that it shows you how risky each of the funds are with a “chilli scale” that’s not unlike a certain cheeky chicken shop’s scale. Two chillis reflect conservative funds, while seven chillis are for “aggressive” funds.

You can also opt for individual or fractional shares. If you choose these, you’d need to have a pretty solid understanding of investing. You can choose a mix of funds and individual shares if you just want to dip your toes in. Fractional shares are exactly what they sound like, they’re small parts of shares — so for companies that have a high share price, (for example, just one Samsung share is more than £1,000 at the time of writing) you can buy half a share or another fraction. This gives you more opportunity to diversify, as you can have several different companies in your portfolio instead of buying one share of one company. 

NuWealth fees

NuWealth charges a 0.25% platform fee — worked out using the value of everything in your account. Plus there’s a £2 subscription fee each month. The subscription fee covers all the accounts you have with NuWealth. 

There aren’t any commission fees, so you won’t be charged for buying or selling investments, but there is a 0.75% foreign exchange fee, which is the cost of changing your money into another currency — something you may need to do if you buy shares of companies abroad, like Apple or Amazon. 

When you invest in funds, you’ll have to pay a fund provider fee (this is the case no matter which platform you opt for). This depends on the funds you choose, but ranges between 0.07% and 0.75% and can be found in the fund information before you invest. 

NuWealth features for beginner investors

Despite being a DIY investment app, NuWealth is a pretty good option for beginners as you can invest in exchange-traded funds and choose which ones you want to invest in based on their risk. It also has a range of guides on how to invest and choose investments. For those that want to try out choosing their own investments, you can have a go with only small amounts by buying fractional shares. 

If managing your own portfolio is a little too faffy for you, or you just don’t feel comfortable investing yourself, you may prefer a robo-advisor or a provider that offers ready-made investments, such as Wealthify, InvestEngine or Dodl. 

Is NuWealth safe?

NuWealth is FCA-regulated in the UK, and the money that you deposit is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

FSCS protects you if NuWealth 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. 

How to open a NuWealth Stocks & Shares ISA

If you want to open a NuWealth Stocks & Shares ISA, you’ve got to be 18 or over and have valid ID to hand. Then, you need to download the NuWealth app — this is an app only provider. 

Then, you choose “Create an account” and follow the instructions — you’ll be asked for personal details and guided through setting up a password.

Once in, you choose which account you want to open. If you want to transfer your existing ISA to NuWealth, you can open an ISA then contact NuWealth to initiate a transfer into it. 

Pros and cons of NuWealth

Pros

• ETFs organised by risk
• Suitable for beginner investors
• Low cost investing

Cons

• £2 monthly fee
• App only
• No ready-made options

NuWealth reviews

Over on our sister site, Smart Money People, NuWealth customers have rated it 4.83 out of 5. 

Positive reviews find the app really straightforward, think it’s great for beginner investors and rate the customer service offered when they needed help. 

There aren’t many negative reviews, but they tend to relate to issues with buying shares or accessing the app. 

Read customer reviews of NuWealth 

Is NuWealth any good?

Zoe’s analysis

I really like NuWealth, and have been using it for several years for my own investments. It’s a really simple app with a pretty good range of investments. I find it to be a good one for beginners because of the way it presents its funds and the fact that you can get started with just a small amount of money. 

However, with the fee being doubled in March 2025, it can be a pretty expensive investment platform against those that charge a percentage fee. While this isn’t the most expensive platform, it’s certainly not the cheapest one. 

NuWealth is let down by the fact that it’s app only — sometimes you do just want to be able to open up your portfolio in your web browser, but it’s not a huge issue. 

The number of guides available and guidance for finding investments are pretty good — it’s not overwhelming and you feel like you understand every stage. Plus, the Stocks & Shares ISA is free, unlike some other investment platforms where you’ve got to pay for a subscription to be able to use the ISA.

If you’d prefer a less hands-on approach to investing, this may not be the one for you. You might be better off with a robo-advisor or platform that offers ready-made portfolios.