Account switching 🔁

[Mitchell (Mitchell Petrie)]

Yesterday I shared a little sneak peek of account switching in the app. Obviously, this doesn’t give you any context as to why we’ve chosen to do it in this way so that’s what this post is for.

Your account is one of the core structural pieces of the app - with lots of information tied to, or dependant on it. Each account type has its own value and positions, its own list of stocks that can be purchased to it, its own activity feed and its own cash balances.

Currently, we offer two account types. A Freetrade account and an Investment ISA. Right now, if you open an Investment ISA then that’s all you’ll see. This has a few limitations:

1. You cannot see the other open accounts you have with us.
2. If you were to reach your £20,000 ISA limit you’d not be able to invest any more through our app.
3. Some shares cannot be held in an ISA meaning if you only have access to your ISA then there may come a time when you’d be unable to buy those shares through Freetrade.

There’s lots more to consider but those are some of the reasons why we need account switching.

We have some much fancier, longer-term plans for how we manage multiple accounts throughout the app but our aim right now is to have a basic version of this in place ahead of the new tax-year and of course we’ve got a ton of exciting things that we’re working on for you and we don’t want you to wait any longer than you need to.

So for now here’s how things will be in the first version. You’ll see a switch on both the Portfolio and Account screens (as these are the places we felt you’d most likely be when wanting to switch account).

Tapping it will bring up a list of your accounts. Once you choose one the app will refresh to show you all the information that pertains to it.

We considered a wide range of different designs including changing the title from saying “Portfolio” to the name of the account i.e. “Investment ISA”. Ultimately, we moved away from this idea because it didn’t allow us to create a consistent pattern that we could use in multiple places in the app. As seen above with the same pattern used on both the portfolio and the account screens.

There’s a couple of downsides to the approach we’ve taken. Most obviously that you will still only be able to see your portfolio value on a per account basis rather than a single view of all accounts. However, right now this mitigates a lot of the problems we were solving for and we can get this live without needing to re-write huge portions of the app.

As always, we love to hear your feedback on the work we’re doing as it helps us better understand what you all need and allows us to make Freetrade the best it can be.

[kenny (Kenny Grant)]

Thanks for that, really interesting to hear the reasons behind the decision. Glad to hear you may reconsider the presentation of accounts long term - it’d be nice to see all accounts together eventually in some place (and not have important info hidden away in that switcher menu), but I totally appreciate you want to get changes out ASAP and have to balance a lot of different requirements. I hope it’s useful that users share their perspective sometimes.

Personally I’d lose these huge heads on every screen, it’s unusual to have heads on mobile tabs and when you scroll down on these screens the heads move to a more normal size anyway. You could then put the switcher top left everywhere, since it is a global switch which affects all screens.

[Mitchell (Mitchell Petrie)]

We will definitely be revisiting the way we approach multiple accounts as we have so many things we want to try. Honestly, it’s great to hear from everyone in the community around as it really helps to have as many perspectives as possible.

As for the headings on the screens we may one day do away with them but at least on iOS they are a native component (meaning we get them for free, built by Apple) and they work pretty well for way finding i.e. guiding people through the product and giving them clear points of reference to return to. Something that’s really important to us as people who are maybe less familiar with investing join the platform. That said, they do also have their disadvantages.

[Certi.Curti]

@Freetrade_Team1 When is multiple accounts expected to launch? I got some stocks to buy lol!

[Freetrade_Team1 (Freetrade_Team)]

Haha we just need to you hold on for a little while longer account switching will be rolled out in less than a month.

apologies to anyone who read my previous (now deleted) post a few minutes ago, we got a little bit ahead of ourselves there

[Certi.Curti]

Haha can I not just “beta” it for you?

[saf]

@Freetrade_Team1

account switching will be rolled out in less than a month.

I’m planning on what I should do about the 18/19 ISA allowance, but before I make any big decisions.

Does it look likely it’ll be ready for the 18/19 ISA year? If you are unsure right now do you know whether it’s better to wait until next week?

[Freetrade_Team1 (Freetrade_Team)]

I’m not sure I understand the question so just to clarify - assuming you’d like to use a Freetrade ISA in the new tax year, is there any situation that you’re anticipating that would stop you from being able to use it?

If you could let me know I should be able to let you know whether there may be any blockers

[saf]

Sorry let me try again

Will Freetrade let customers open a ISA without selling their GIA holdings before 5 April, 2019?

[Freetrade_Team1 (Freetrade_Team)]

Got it, thanks it’s hard to say for sure but we might - so it could be worth holding out a little bit longer, if you can.

I’m sorry I can’t give any more concrete info!

[saf]

Thanks, I have a backup plan so I can wait another week, after that it gets too risky. Always happy to test it for you

[Richard (Freetrade 2 Financial Freedom)]

So we may be able to transfer our existing holdings from a GIA to an ISA without selling them in the GIA and re buying in the ISA ?

[Vlad (Vladislav Kozub)]

@Richard

So we may be able to transfer our existing holdings from a GIA to an ISA without selling them in the GIA and re buying in the ISA ?

No, unfortunately, you would need to sell assets in GIA, transfer the funds and then buy in an ISA:

@Nicola

We are indeed testing 2 accounts at the moment, we will keep you posted on this!

The only way of moving stock from a GIA to an ISA is to sell it and buy it back, as unfortunately you cannot transfer stock between the 2 accounts in this direction.