About us

Retail investors

We believe investing should help people achieve the best future for themselves, the people they care about and wider society, at every step of the way

We commit to always championing the rights of the UK retail investor, and to lobby government, regulators and industry to make a positive difference for our customers. We also commit to being clear and transparent in our services and pricing and providing the necessary guidance, tools and support to give people the opportunity to invest on our platform.

Sustainable investing

We have a range of tools to help investors navigate the world of collective investments, from our Super 60 rated list, our Quick Start range for beginner investors.

We have also led the way in creating a framework to help customers navigate the world of responsible and sustainable investing. Investors can find further information regarding sustainable investment options on our dedicated Sustainable Investing page.

We also launched ACE40, the UK’s first sustainable investing rated list of what we believe to be the 40 best-in-class sustainable investments.

Our rated lists have a clear methodology, strong governance, and are completely impartial.

Our objectives in compiling the ACE40 list are to provide investors with a menu of high-quality choices from the available universe of sustainable investments, ensure that all ACE40 investments are managed in a genuinely sustainable manner, with no greenwashing and to only choose investments with the potential to deliver strong financial performance.

Our awards and recognition

Which?Recommended SIPP provider 2024

ADVFN Awards 2023: Best Online Stockbroker, Best Stockbroker for International Dealing.

Boring Money Best Buy 2023: Best Buy ISA, Best Buy Pension.

Which? Recommended SIPP provider 2023

See all our awards.

ii Private Investor Performance Index

We are proud to provide regular insight into how private investors – the majority of whom manage their own investments - are faring, both through the good times and the bad. Our private investor performance index, updated quarterly, provides a unique insight of private investor performance, in median terms. We also look at top holdings, asset class diversification, and much more. As the UK's second largest investment platform for private investors, it is a useful barometer.

Read our latest report.

Shareholder democracy

We want to stand up for the rights of retail investors and help them make better financial decisions by providing the right support, intelligence, choice and value.

Shareholder democracy is an integral part of this and includes:

Pre-emption rights

In 2020, we started campaigning for retail investors – individual and non-professional investors - to be included in listed company fundraisings. The rules had been relaxed to help companies raise emergency cash due to pandemic-related cash constraints. We saw too many circumstances where private investors could not automatically participate in fundraisings in the same way as institutional investors and buy new shares when they were issued, often at a discount, consequently diluting their holdings in the process.

From December 2020, the Financial Reporting Council gave individual investors a seat back at the table once more, but this is not the end of the story – we need to be vigilant and call out poor practice when we see it.

Shareholder voting

We have been running a campaign to help raise awareness among retail shareholders about voting and AGM issues and how they can make their voices heard. Over the past several months we have:

Enhanced our shareholder voting and information page with educational articles and videos
Published regular articles to alert customers to upcoming AGMs, highlighting relevant corporate voting issues
Switched on customers to our UK online voting service, making it opt out instead of opt in
Published quarterly data on our customer voting trends, to help raise the profile of voting
Launched in App voting for UK shares and investment trusts, so customers need never miss a UK voting opportunity again
Written to Government, regulators and UK PLC on the importance of plain English in shareholder AGM notifications

Marks & Spencer partnered with us in a pilot project as part of the Share Your Voice campaign, enabling us to connect with nominee shareholders to encourage participation and voting at our AGM. Read More

Richard Wilson - quote on shareholder voting

IPO campaign

We have been engaging with government and regulators on fair access to IPOs for private investors. This has been an ongoing campaign, and in June 2022, we wrote again to The Rt Hon John Glen MP, the (then) Minister of State (Economic Secretary) to the Treasury, on shareholder democracy, pre-emption rights, and the importance of including retail investors in IPOs. We also talked about the need for clearer shareholder communications, enshrined in legislation. You can read that letter, which came with a suite of recommendations, here.

We have been very supportive of Government plans to make the UK a more competitive place to list. But without a quota system to ensure a level playing field for retail investors, we fear there will be very little change.

Campaigning for fair treatment for investment trust investors

Funds and investment trusts play an equally vital role in helping people build long-term financial resilience. ii charges the same for both, because it would be unfair to treat them differently. The same cannot be said, however, when it comes to stamp duty on investment trusts.

interactive investor calculated that in 2022, customers buying investment trusts paid an average of £102 each in government stamp duty. In fact, over the past three years, interactive investor estimates that its customers have collectively paid out a staggering £30 million in stamp duty on investment trust buys.

We believe this is unfair and anti-competitive, and we need to level the playing field. After all, private investors buying ETFs and funds do not pay stamp duty. Therefore, interactive investor has written to HMRC ahead of the 2023 Spring Statement, in support of the Association of Investment Companies (AIC) campaign to stamp out stamp duty on investment trusts.

At ii, we continue to advocate for the fair treatment for private investors, and a big part of this is transparency and the removal of unnecessary charges or fees. Investors can control costs, and while the 0.5% levy on investment trusts doesn’t sound like much in percentage terms initially, like any cost over time - it adds up.

Financial education

We have long called for financial education to be moved higher up the political agenda. We think that:

Financial education should be made a standalone subject in both primary and secondary schools.
Financial education should be given more time in classrooms.
There should be clearer guidance for teachers on what financial education should cover.
Greater support and tools are needed for teaching financial education.

We also put our money where our mouth is: we run the interactive investor Personal Finance Teacher of the Year Award, with meaningful cash prizes for schools.

Transparency

Flat fees

Our flat fee means that as customers wealth grows, the amount we charge stays the same. This provides transparency, in an industry where most providers charge a percentage fee. Our research suggests that for over half of UK adults, percentage fee charging structures are difficult to understand (Opinium Research surveyed 2,000 adults between 26 and 28 January 2021). This can have massive implications for long term wealth, making it hard to shop around.

Struggling to work out and understand percentages can create difficulties in many areas of life. In the world of investment, the numbers at stake are often much bigger. There’s a big difference between being able to work out what 15% off a new pair of shoes amounts to, and the impact of percentage fees on your investments over the next 10 or even 30 years. Even a tiny percentage of a decent-sized sum, like the typical pension pot - soon mounts up. A flat fee structure, in pounds and pence, is far easier to understand as it means that as your investment pot grows, the amount you pay stays the same – what you see is what you get.

Rated lists

Knowing where to begin is a major barrier for beginners. Our Quick Start range is a great one stop shop, and our ii rated lists are broken down into ‘core’, ‘adventurous’, ‘income’ and ‘smaller companies’, making ease of navigation a focus. Our rated lists include funds, investment trusts and low-cost options, scouring the whole market to help identify the best in class from across the industry.

In January 2022, we outsourced our rated recommendations to Morningstar Manager Selection Service, with the methodology owned by us. Our Head of Funds Research oversees the Morningstar relationship, adding challenge and ensuring Morningstar follows ii’s processes and methodology. As and when ii’s methodology evolves, Morningstar may add external challenge, and it is important they are comfortable with ii’s intellectual framework.

All of this means that our customers can be even more confident that our recommendations are free from commercial considerations.