Not sure if i can post this in this community. Please suggest me if anyone has explored InvestEngine.
(If my post is not relevant, let me know.)
Product:
Review:
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I would be keen to understand if anyone had tried this. I like trying different things with an open mind to making up my own view if it is for me.
I’ve steered clear from this as the signup offers seem a little too good to be true.
I don’t see the harm posting on this forum, they are also providing a financial service, but a completely different service. They are not competing in the same space as 212.
https://investengine.com/terms-incentives/
As I read, if you sign up using a referral and deposit £100 for 12 months(and do not withdraw anything including bonus), then you will get a £25 referral bonus each, and a £50 signup bonus paid to your account.
It’s a pretty damn good ‘head start’.
Their only fee I can see is 0.25% for a managed basket of ETFs, and they appear to be competing more with Wealthify and Nutmeg.
Good on them for trying to lower fees.
Nutmegs fees are 0.75% on the first 100k, and 0.35% thereafter.
Wealthify’s fees are a flat 0.6%
IE also have a platform/service fee free version where you self manage a basket of ETFs. That’s the only similarity I see to 212, no platform or trading fees for ETFs.
The logic to ‘manage’ a basket of ETFs will be standard for everyone I suspect based on varying levels of risk appetite. As such, we could compare the fees to say a popular ETF such as VWRP - it’s all in running charge(OCF) is 0.22%, but it’s management fee is likely 0.1-0.15% of that so take that.
These other players are operating on a smaller scale, hence higher fees.
I hope they succeed, the more competition in the robo advisor space, the better.
*fund fees not included in above view.
https://register.fca.org.uk/s/firm?id=0010X0000482GkLQAU
As far as I can see they are appropriately regulated and authorised as well so usual protections apply.
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Also for DIY portfolio’s, there is no fee (which is 0.25 for managed portfolio)
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Ha! If you look at their Key Documents you’ll see they’ve started to use Oppl.io as one if their data vendors. Nice! 
Maybe @Team212 should look into using them so their KIIDs can be more accurate!
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So after signing up, I can give a bit of background.
1 Incorporated 20 October 2016, and authorised & regulated by the FCA since 7 Jan 2019
https://register.fca.org.uk/s/firm?id=0010X0000482GkLQAU
2 Currently not profitable
3 Have sufficient capital in bank
And in addition this should provide additional funding as allotted for cash:
So overall they should have plenty funds in the bank to run them the next few years, and if £1.2m is their annual cash burn, with charging a fee of 0.25%, only need £500m managed AUM to reach break even.
Overall anyone who signs up, their funds should be protected up to £85k by the FSCS, and the company has cash to run for another 3-4 years at least. I would revisit on an annual basis if you do not want the hassle of funds being stuck should the company not be expected to reach profitability and subsequently struggle for funding. They are however significantly cheaper than their competition, but only time will tell if they actually achieve better returns over time.
The signup process is relatively simple, however they do appear to do their KYC checks up front. The regulations say these can be completed prior to onboarding customers, which most companies dont, or before a customer tries to withdraw funds.
I have only just joined, so cannot comment on the withdrawal process as of yet.
Their software is relatively basic. Much like Nutmeg and Wealthify, it asks a series of questions, to determine your risk profile and builds a strategy from that in order to pick ETFs. I suspect most of this is automatic and operate on a sliding scale.
A couple of perks I would say.
- You can manage your own portfolio of a shortlist of ETFs with no platform costs.
- You can provide some basic details, and InvestEngine will pick a basket of ETFs to invest in on your behalf.
- You can have multiple self/auto managed portfolios, with different strategies and risk profiles.
The strategy I have chosen, holds 87% stocks, the rest is a mix of bonds and gold/silver.
What is interesting, is 1% of the portfolio is in the iShares Ageing population ETF.
It also has a couple of other interesting ETFs as well in its portfolio.
I plan to top it up for the first year, and compare it against the FTSE All World TR Index. The £75 signup bonus should more than cover any fees.
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I thought this might be worth adding.
I signed up to Wealthify and InvestEngine this year. This is the comparison to VWRP.
Wealthify - Adventurous plan. 9.28% Time weighted return from the 14th January. VWRP during that time returned 17.17%. The difference probably because only 79% is invested in shares, so perhaps a Lifestrategy 80 is a better comparison with a return of 12.6%
InvestEngine - Growth 10 - 5.59% TWRR since the 19th August. VWRP returned 7.16%, and Lifestrategy 80 returned 4.48%. In fact this time 88.5% is invested in equities, so on a very short period, its almost performing like a Lifestrategy 90.
I’ve factored out bonuses from both to do a like for like comparison. The only other difference is Wealthify has 0.6% fees on top of the ETFs it buys, and InvestEngine 0.25%.
In reality - in a good year, a 100% equity strategy should provide the best performance, and the opposite in reverse. I’m going to stick with both long term, and run a comparison, but I do not see how an 80% equity strategy is ‘adventurous’. Its more adventurous than most, but still.
Note There are EUR Lifestrategy ETFs, but we dont yet have these on 212(but would be a great addition). Either way, you could almost make your own using a Pie, with a combination of VWRP and some of their global bond ETFs. A few of these are also missing to complete the pie - IE00B50W2R13 Vanguard Global Bond Index Fund GBP Hedged Acc, a 23bn ETF. Perhaps 212 can add them in the new year?
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Sorry to go off topic, do you hold bonds in your portfolio?
IE does on its Growth 10:
Wealthify has some as well.
I only have them because its part of how they’re managed 
I have opened an account with investengine couple of months ago . They only offer etfs. They are purely for passive users and not for active trading.The Morningstar like breakdown of etf individual holdings is a great feature .I have a mixture of DIY etf with them and their breakdown shows that I hold more 6000 holdings via etf .They can only offer ETF in GBP mode.
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Having maxed my ISA with T212 for this tax year, i decided to create a fun portfolio with invest engine. My contrarian aim was to open a position on ticker BNKS etf and i couldn’t find it.
So either i buy via T212 GIA or wait till the next tax year
I do like InvestEngine as a platform - it’s simple, and they have AutoInvest.
But the thing I don’t like -
- they brag they have no FX fee, unlike other brokers
- in fact, they don’t give you access to non-GBP-denominated ETFs
A bit sneaky. That’s why you can’t find BNKS etf.
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I also like IE and initially signed up when they offered a £75 bonus for the first group that invested £100.
They are still learning and misquote some things but I’ve posted on their forum and they have since corrected after checking what I highlighted.
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why cant those in UK get access to spdr kbw regional banking (etf) - a good contrarian play
Is it available for sale to UK retail investors - answer is probably not hence your question.
Correct not available for sale - i also cant find equivalent with similar composition of companies