FAQ - Investing - Personal Investment Plans - ISAs (2024)

Our experts use a range of passive investment funds (like Mutual Funds and Exchange Traded Funds) to build your Plan. An investment fund is a bundle of lots of individual assets (like stocks, bonds, or property) which you buy all in one go, making funds a cost-effective way to invest.

The mix of funds and investments in your Plan will depend on your attitude to risk. Low-risk Plans will contain a higher percentage of low-risk investments like bonds. Higher-risk Plans will include more shares. Since financial markets are always changing, we’ll make adjustments to the mix of investments in your Plan from time to time.

We’ve created five investment Plans – from Cautious to Adventurous – so you can choose a level of risk that’s right for you. Find out more about what’s in each of these Plans by downloading the Plan Factsheets below.

Original Plan Factsheets

Cautious Plan [download pdf]

Tentative Plan [download pdf]

Confident Plan [download pdf]

Ambitious Plan [download pdf]

Adventurous Plan [download pdf]

Ethical PlanFactsheets

Cautious Ethical Plan [download pdf]

Tentative Ethical Plan [download pdf]

Confident Ethical Plan [download pdf]

Ambitious Ethical Plan [download pdf]

Adventurous Ethical Plan [download pdf]

Capital is just another way of saying 'the money you invest'. There’s always a risk with investing that you might not get back everything you put in as markets can go up as well as down depending on a variety of factors.

Why invest in one company, when you can invest in them all? That’s the essence of passive investing. Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket and relying on one particular company to perform well, you spread your money across all of them, so that you benefit from their collective strength. To do this, you need funds like Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and Mutual Funds (known as passive investment vehicles). These let your money track an index like the FTSE 100, which is composed of the 100 largest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Passive investing is generally accepted as a more effective long-term strategy than the alternative, active investing, where fund managers try to pick the stocks they think will do best. The Dow S&P Indices show that as few as 14% of active fund managers actually manage to beat the market each year, when looked at over a long time period.

Yes, you will always own the underlying funds in your Wealthify Plan. There is no master fund into which your money is invested, as you’ll find with some services. This is an advantage for you, as it means you can see exactly what we are buying and selling for your Plan. We list the assets you own in the Plan detail screen, found in your dashboard and we send you a transaction receipt for every purchase and sale – so you always know where your money is.

No, that’s what we’re here for. Tell us your investment style, theme and how much you want to invest, and we do everything else. Our Investment Team have pre-selected a range of passive funds, and programmed our automated investment system with algorithms (mathematical formulas) that build your Plan based on what you tell us your goals are.

Cash is a type of investment (or asset) itself. It’s a low risk asset, so the return on cash is typically low, but it’s a good way to help protect investors from losses if there’s an indication that markets might lose value. The amount of cash and cash equivalent assets in your plan will depend on the level of risk you choose and will be adjusted periodically in response to market movements.

It is important to remember that with investing, returns are not guaranteed. There is risk associated with investing and you could get back less than you initially invest. To provide you with a sense of what you might expect from Wealthify’s risk-based investment styles, we do provide you with a prediction of performance when creating your Plan. Moody’s Analytics is an independent data provider, who assist in predicting what your Plan values could be in different market conditions over the period of time you plan to invest. It is of course impossible to predict the future, so the projections should only be taken as a guide, not a guarantee. Our investment team have provided factsheets for each investment style which outline their aims for each risk category and will give you an overview of what they are trying to achieve for you in each style. If you have any queries or concerns about the risks involved with investing it is best to seek advice from a financial advisor.

We publish our benchmarks in the valuations we send to all customers, to give you something to compare the performance of your plan against.

We use ARC Private Client Indices as the benchmarks for the majority of our Plans, rather than an index such as the FTSE 100, because we feel it more closely matches the type of diversified investment plans that Wealthify offers. The ARC Private Client Indices are a peer group benchmark which show how other companies’ investment styles have performed. The Indices are based on real performance numbers from hundreds of other Plans. Learn more aboutARC Indices.

For our Cautious Plan, we use the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is the UK’s main measure of inflation, or the speed at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise and fall.

It’s important to remember that benchmarks and predictions are never perfect and past performance is not an indicator of future growth.

Here are the benchmarks we use for each of our five Investment Styles

With investing your capital is at risk and you could get back less than you put in. As an investor, it’s important to understand that stock markets have good periods and bad periods and that you shouldn’t panic at first sight of a bad period. You should think of investing as a long-term prospect, and remember that markets will generally see growth over the long-term.

Yes, if you are a UK tax resident (England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland) you can use all – or part of – your annual tax-efficient savings allowance of £20,000 (current tax year) to invest in a Stocks and Shares ISA with Wealthify. We don’t offer Cash ISAs, Innovative Finance ISAs, or Lifetime ISAs.

Yes, you can build as many Plans as you like. Some people prefer to keep their money all in one pot, while others will prefer to split it into separate investment pots; Wealthify lets you do either. You can even choose different investment styles for each Plan. Whatever you decide, rest assured that there’s no additional charge for creating more than one Plan; you’ll only pay us a simple management fee of 0.6% per annum. Fund charges and transaction costs also apply, and you can find full details on our fees page.

Yes, they are. All your investments in our ISAs and General Investment Account products are held with our custodian bank, Winterflood Securities, a global financial services provider and part of Close Brothers Group, who have been trading for more than 130 years. The custodian of our Pension products is Embark Pensions, who are part of the Embark Group – the UK’s fastest-growing digital retirement platform.

Winterflood Securities and Embark both hold your assets separately (ring-fenced) from Wealthify, soeven if we went into administration, our creditors would not have a claim to your investments.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme may also cover the first £85,000 of your investments, however, it’s essential to understand that the FSCS doesn’t cover you if your investments do not perform as expected and you get back less than you originally invested. For more information visithttps://www.fscs.org.uk/

Yes, we will always let you know if we make a rebalance or substantial changes to your plan, as this can have a significant impact.

We don’t want to bombard you with emails, so it wouldn’t be practical to let you know each time we buy and sell shares in your plan. That said, every transaction appears in your Wealthify dashboard so you can monitor it there if you wish.

There is currently no facility for this, but there may be in future. You can access and withdraw your money 24/7 (Pensions and Junior ISAs can only be accessed upon maturity), although it’s worth remembering that making regular withdrawals will affect how quickly you reach the investment goals you set when you created your Plan.

We typically invest your money within two working days of receiving it. However, it may take a couple of extra days for the investments to show on your dashboard, due to the investing process.

We’re not a fully-automated investment service. We automate certain parts of the investment process, like monitoring how well global markets are performing, using computers programmed with algorithms (mathematical formulas). This is more cost-effective than having highly-paid fund managers do it and we pass those savings onto you. Our experts use the market information along with their own knowledge and experience, to make small adjustments to the mix of funds in your investment plan, where appropriate. So Wealthify uses a mix of smart algorithms and human expertise to make sure your plan stays on track.

We’ll show your returns for each Plan as a percentage and actual monetary value, so you always know exactly how your investments are performing.

We calculate your returns using the ‘Time-Weighted Rate of Return’ (TWRR) method, which is widely used within the investment management industry. This is the most transparent way to show you your actual return (i.e. how much your money has grown) because it ignores any cash deposits or withdrawals you might have made in the meantime. In other words, it only tells you how much you’ve gained or lost from your investments, not what you’ve put in or taken out yourself.

Here’san explanation about Time Weighted Rate of Return.

No, that’s what we’re here for. We build your Investment Plan based on what you tell us about your attitude to risk with money, how much you have to invest, and by when you hope to reach your investment goals. Then we monitor your investments to make sure they’re on track.

Your money is looked after by a team of qualified investment managers with experience in established firms all over the world. Our experts have developed an investment system that uses algorithms and industry experience to pick the best funds available to you, then builds you an investment plan that suits your goals and attitude to risk. And because things are always changing in the financial markets, our team monitors and adjusts your plan regularly, to make sure your money works as hard as you do.

We’ve aimed to make it as affordable as possible to open an account with us. You can start your ISA, GIA or Junior ISA account with us for as little as £1, and open a pension with just £50. You can then choose if you want to make additional one-off or regular monthly payments. There’s no minimum top up amount for our Junior ISA, ISA or a GIA accounts, but each payment to your pension needs to be at least £50.

With Wealthify, you have 24-hour, year-round online access to your investments. You can view and edit your Plans, and add or withdraw funds, in just a few clicks. Your Plan detail page shows you the lifetime performance of your Plan, the assets you hold, and your full transaction history (including monthly fee payments). It’s good to check in from time to time, but remember: investing is a long-term savings strategy.

Please note: withdrawals for Pensions and Junior ISAs are only available upon maturity.

Yes, all investing carries an element of risk, but Wealthify lets you choose the level of risk you’re comfortable to take. Our five-point scale lets you pick from a 'cautious' (low-risk) approach, to a more 'adventurous' (high-risk) approach. We also build you a diversified Investment Plan, meaning we don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Instead, we spread your investments (eggs) out across a number of different assets and markets (baskets). That way, you’re not relying on one particular ‘basket’ to get a return on your investment. Spreading (or diversifying) your risk is generally accepted as the most sensible way to invest, but it’s still never risk-free.

Please note: customers are all subject to a suitability quiz prior to opening an investment Plan.

Yes. We believe we offer the best-value investment plans for those with a small amount to invest because no matter how much you start with, you still get a plan containing lots of investments from markets around the globe, meaning you’re not reliant on just a few investments to perform well (this is known as diversification!)

Customers investing smaller amounts of below £750get a plan containing around 15 funds, made up of approximately 6500 investments in total. We use mutual funds for these Plans, because they can be broken up into smaller pieces, which is ideal for lower-value plans because it means we can buy you more of them. Plans of more than £750 will contain up to 20 funds, including some more expensive funds known as Exchange-traded Funds (ETFs). These Plans will contain around 8000 investments in total. Ethical plans may contain ETFs, regardless ofhow much you invest.Lower value Plans may hold a larger proportion of cash than higher value plans, but will still contain as many as 15 funds.

All this means that every Wealthify Plan, no matter what its value, will contain an appropriate level of diversification for your investment style, so it doesn’t matter whether you start investing with a large or small sum, you’ll have a Plan that suits you. If you have a particular investment goal, you can see how much you need to invest and how much you could add each month to reach your target, on ourcreate a plan page.

From our clear and simple platform to our flexible Investment Plans and excellent customer service; there are hundreds of great reasons why you might want to invest with Wealthify.

We’ve also won a number of awards over the years, including:

• Best Investment Platform for User Experience at the YourMoney.com Investment Awards 2023
• Best Managed Stocks & Shares ISA @ Good Money Guide Awards 2023
• Best Buy ISA, Best Buy JISA, Best for Beginners @ Boring Money Best Buys 2023
• Best Wealth Investment Platform @ Online Money Awards 2023

Not only that, but our Junior ISA has been named the Best Junior ISA at the Personal Finance Awards five years in a row!