Interactive Investor

Interactive Investor is one of the leading UK investment platforms. Along with AJ Bell and Hargreaves Lansdown, II has one of the widest investment universes. It is difficult to find a UK stock or ETF that they do not list on the platform.

As is the case with AJ Bell and Hargreaves Lansdown, they also have RSP access for UK shares and ETFs and provide you with a 15-second fixed-price quote. This is a huge advantage over some competitors, especially the “free” platforms, that do not offer this execution certainty. The RSP quote is typically within the spread quoted on the exchange, so the saving made (RSP price vs exchange price) more often than not pays for the commission cost. When trading in large sizes, this advantage means that II and other RSP-enabled platforms are far better for order execution than their “free” competitors.

Customer service is regarded as very good. ISA transfer speeds are also very good, with transfers in benefiting from a tracking service.

The monthly platform costs can be a double-edged sword. If the investor is willing to consolidate a large asset base on the platform, potentially with family members, then the costs can work out quite low. If you insist on diversification across investment platforms, which may be more relevant in the future given growing cyber risk, then the monthly fee can become costly for more modest portfolios. If you avoid investing in costly funds and stick to ETFs and shares, then AJ Bell can prove better value while retaining the best-in-class investment universe and order execution.