Interactive Investor
Interactive Investor offers fundamental research for stocks, funds, investment trusts, and ETFs. The traders pay a low rate on stocks and ETFs, it offers great pricing, with education and trading tools. Interactive Investor, founded in 2004 has over 300,000 customers and those who trade three or more times a month will find superb value in the Super Investor Plan, ETF, and fund trades in return.
Interactive Investor finished top 3 for multiple categories, including Commissions and Fees, Research, Offering of Investments, and Ease of Use. They offer limited education for new investors and a recommended list for beginners. Interactive Investor Limited is a privately owned company, operates several different companies and also Moneywise publishing which publishes both Money Observer and Moneywise.
The Interactive Investor group is 100% equity funded and it is one of the largest retail brokers in the country. The group is majority-owned by J.C. Flowers & Co. with investments in 49 banks and financial companies across 16 countries. Moreover, the group operates an execution-only broker service on behalf of 300,000 customers provided by Interactive Investor Services Limited. Also, it does not operate as a bank and does not lend any of the stock it holds for customers.
How are assets protected?
Your investments are registered in the name of Interactive Investor Services Nominees Limited, or other appointed custodian. However, investments held in this way are afforded trust status, which in the event of the firm becoming insolvent. Your assets are protected from the firm’s creditors. Any money in your account is treated as ‘client money’ and is held separately in bank accounts. Money held in these bank accounts and in the event of the firm becoming insolvent, your money is protected from the firm’s creditors.
Interactive investor carries out due diligence on any banks, and they diversify the money to ensure that clients’ money is placed with institutions which are covered by the FSCS deposit protection scheme. So, if one of these banks were to fail, you would be able to make a compensation claim through the relevant deposit protection scheme. For deposits held, current compensation limits apply per person to include any deposits you hold directly with the same institution.
Interactive Investor operates robust policies and controls to ensure that records of your assets are accurate. Moreover, reconciliations are carried out to ensure that the assets being held correspond with your account records. These arrangements are subject to regular oversight by the firm’s Compliance teams. These arrangements are further subject to formal review by external auditors who subsequently report its assessment with its obligations to the FCA. Also, in the event of this financial institution being declared in default, the assets held and your account balance would be protected by the FSCS. From April 1, 2019, this scheme may pay compensation claims up to a maximum of $85,000 per claimant. Moreover, the value of International Investments may be affected by currency fluctuations which will involve different risks (in some cases the risks will be greater) from the markets.
