Brand new for Plus members — earn 3% interest on cash, up to £4,000 :plus_:

So what is the 11th working day of Feb? 18th again?

The 15th

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This month is the perfect month, 4 weeks Monday to Friday :grin:.

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Do SIPPs get interest too or just GIA and ISA’s?

I don’t believe so

FAQs say no interest on SIPPs:

Where will my interest be applied?

Shanice Friday avatar

Written by Shanice Friday
Updated over a week ago

Interest will be added to your Freetrade account/s. We will give preference to paying interest to your ISA over your GIA, if you have a cash balance in both.

For example, if you have £3,000 available cash in your ISA and £2,000 in your GIA, we will apply the interest to the £3,000 in the ISA first, and then to the remaining £1,000 of the £4,000 threshold in your GIA. The interest payment will then be split accordingly between the two accounts.

Any interest paid to your ISA does not impact your annual allowance as this is considered as a return on your investment and not a contribution.

Cash held in a SIPP will not be eligible to receive interest.

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Thanks for clarifying Shanice

Are there any links in the community forum to the FAQs pages?

If not I think it would be useful. Maybe a link on the top!? Right next to language selection, products and get free shares

If your screen is wide enough :desktop_computer: there’s a fourth menu that appears beside the three that you mentioned, which partly does what you are suggesting. Unfortunately you can’t see it on a typical phone, presumably because someone thought ‘get free shares’ was more important!

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I’ve just saw Tools on landscape mode.
I think it would be useful to put FAQs up there

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I am right in thinking that if I have say £5,000 held in an ISA account with Freetrade Plus and say I decide to invest £1,000 over the next year then my monthly subscription fees are essentially free due to the 3% AER? If this is correct I guess the only concern in the future would be if Freetrade decided to increase their monthly fees or lowered the interest rate.

Hey, welcome to the community!

Interest is capped at £4,000 so you’re thinking is right, it basically covers the monthly cost of Freetrade Plus.

You can find more info here :point_down:

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Yes, they’ve designed the interest payment scheme so that the maximum interest they will pay matches the fee on the account. You can probably feel pretty safe that they won’t bait-and-switch.

However, your chance of earning more than 3% by investing the money in stocks is pretty high, in which case you’ll not only cover the account free but earn a bit of profit, too. Depends on your risk appetite I suppose.

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ok brilliant thanks

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Anyone had any issues with the correct interest being paid?

My cash balance has been over £4,000 every day in April, but I’ve received £9.72 and not the £10.

Small difference, but just wondering why…

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Not in the same position but if I had to guess it would be because 3% is annual and April has 30 days not 365/12. In May I suspect you will get more than 10.??

I was thinking about this when I got the notification as well.

I’ve been assuming it’d be £4000 * 3% / 365.35 * 30 = £9.85 (or £10.18 for a month with 31 days), but I suspect the headline rate of 3% is actually APR even though that’s a bit disingenuous as almost nobody will be compounding it as most people will have a cash balance over £4000 at all times to take full advantage of that.

So, I guess we can assume that over the full year we will earn £9.72 / 30 * 365 = £118.26 and so effectively spend £119.88 - £118.26 = £1.62 on plus.

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Wouldn’t it be because the interest is compounded?

eg. The interest on the next month’s payment would be calculated from the £4000 + the interest from this month, so next month you would receive the interest from £4009.72 … and so on…

Over the course of the year the interest per month would get slightly higher. After the full year, it would add up the overall expected figure.

The interest is only on a maximum of £4000 balance, so compounding only generates a 3% APR with a starting balance of £3883.49.

It’s AER

How does the 3% rate work?

This is a 3% annual equivalent rate (AER) which is paid to you on a monthly basis. You can put it toward your next investment, reduce the cost of your membership, or withdraw it anytime and have lunch on us.

I believe this does include compounding. Incidentally I rarely have the max balance in, I tend to buy stocks with it :smiley:

I don’t think you can assume most people keep £4K in their account at all time just to max the interest