Here are my initial impressions of the platform. I donāt know if the developers are at all interested in this, but this is mainly for them. Please donāt flame as this is just my experience of the site. Please take note this is all about the website, and I donāt use the app and probably wonāt ever as I donāt put financial stuff on my phone being a bit old-school.
ISA Loading
I manage to find the place I deposit funds into an ISA fairly easily. I liked the fact that it integrated nicely with my bank and I was able to setup a transfer painlessly. On the one hand this was a much better system than simply giving me a sort-code and account number for the transfer, on the other, some platforms would allow loading via debit card for free anyway. Still, overall no complaints here, although I found it a little odd that the first time I used the loading feature it was asking for both an ID from my banks hardware token to login and also a token generated from the payees account ID and the amount, second time I used this to add further funds there was just an ID. I donāt know if this is in any way less secure, but at least the token was involved, so some MFA involved.
ISA Spending
Hereās where I started to have issues with the site. Top-left my ISA account is pre-selected. Clicking on it gives an āAccount statusā page with my ISA selected. Perhaps for mobile compatibility this pop-up follows the modern trend for reducing the screen real-estate of my display down to a few inches wide when I have a 34 inch monitor. I guess this is just part of the world we live in where trends like this have to be followed and so I shouldnāt lean too hard on 212, however it means I have to scroll the top of the pop-up to reach the āinvestā display, when there should be no need. A large amount of the pop-up area is consumed with the amount, the Portfolio and Free funds, then there is a the āDeposit Fundsā button, which has no function once the ISA limit is reached. It would be nice if that button was removed at that point, but clicking it gives a warning as youād expect. No particular problem there, but now how about actually investing. Or enabling interest. There are no other exits from the pop-up from this page. What would be really nice at this stage is to see an option to enable interest from here. Instead I need to close that and find the settings to earn interest on cash. It would be nice if it prompted you after loading.
Invest/CFD/ISA areas
The site seems to be split between these different investment types. Itās slightly odd how this is done. Top-left is an icon, an amount, and a chevron. Iām expecting the chevron to offer a drop-down so I can select the overall area. In other sites the chevron would give a drop-down, the icon or the text amount would launch the pop-up. Instead the entire area just launches the pop up which (again as I said above) potentially needs an extra click to reach the desired area.
Pies
OK, so here is something that had me stumped for a while. I knew about pies because obviously Iād watched a video or two about them before joining T212, and decided I didnāt want to use them. Unfortunately, after investing in a fund, I then was at a loss to understand where the information on my fund was found. The pie symbol in the website was basically the last place I looked for my investments, because the word āpieā is effectively overloaded here, and it was only by chance I clicked on the pie and realised itās a different kind of pie. It would be nice to use a different symbol for the portfolio. Iāve obviously learnt this now!
Mouse-overs
There are almost none. In some cases itās completely obvious what a button does, in others having some text appear on hover explaining stuff with links to further information would go a long way to making the site easier for noobs. I found myself looking for videos showing what happens when you click on something. In most cases thereās a confirmation, but it was a bit nerve-wracking worrying Iād be making a mistake.
Fees
It wasnāt very obvious how fees are managed, whether they are coming from the invested amount or not, and how you configure this. I still havenāt found the exact sequence of clicks to take me to this option. I asked the AI bot and it gave me a non-existent location. Itās unclear if this is just the bot being wrong, or the fact that I donāt have this option on my investments. I guess this is one area where the high-level site split between investment/CFD/ISA will potentially confuse. I think I can add cash to any of these areas (apart from if my ISA allowance is used), but there seems to be no cash account separate from the investment type. This makes me wonder if I do finally find an option to take fees from my cash balance, which balance will it take from for which investments?
2FA
Itās surprising this isnāt enabled by default with an opt-out instead of having an option that allows it if you want it. This isnāt generally a good security posture and many companies now just insist on 2FA, itās great that itās optional for people who donāt want it. But considering one authenticates for the device and not for the session, I think it wouldnāt be particularly inconvenient to force this on initially.
Personal Info
Thereās a lot of personal info being asked for on the site and itās unclear what this is going to be used for. In particular a DOB was requested. It was unclear to me whether this was for the purpose of authenticating my ID, and thatās why I supplied it. I suspect itās not. The fact that this data is being collected doesnāt bother me as much as the fact that itās shown on my account. I donāt need to be able to see my DOB, and since itās often used as an authentication mechanism (by other sites that have no idea about security) it shouldnāt IMHO be displayed in plain text when perusing my account info. It should be treated like a password and blanked out, either accessible with some extra auth, or not seen at all. Possibly personal address is also in that category. A lot of sites with this kind of info obscure it in some way for the casual viewer.
Child ISAs
It isnāt clear to me how to setup a child ISA that I manage, and I think if I have to create another completely separate account it will be quite a faff. That also brings me to another thing which is allowing another user to view my account.
Linking accounts
I use the Vanguard feature that allows me to view my partnerās account so I donāt have to keep logging in as another user to view investments. This is really nice and I assume not available in T212 as I couldnāt see it in the settings. I hope this will be added at some point. It remains to be seen whether I can authenticate against two accounts on the same device simultaneously maybe it will work well enough that I donāt need this feature, but the way Vanguard lays out the info about my ISA, my kids ISAs and my partnerās ISAs is really nice. Vanguard is not perfect, and it gets worse from there as you try to dig into the actual performance but they nailed the initial display.
Hope this helps,
Cheers!