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

Freetrade Chat 🔥
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We’re excited to announce the latest addition to your Plus membership.

From today, you can earn 3% interest in uninvested cash:

This new feature of Plus is a 3% interest rate on up to a maximum of £4,000 of cash holdings in your ISA or GIA.

This is the latest improvement we are shipping as part of your Freetrade Plus membership, which also includes:

  • Limit orders
  • Stocks and shares ISA
  • Priority customer support
  • Access to thousands more stocks, ETFs, and trusts

When you invest, your capital is at risk. The value of your portfolio can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invest.

Tax rules for ISAs can change and their benefits depend on your circumstances.

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Chips away at that £10 fee and is way better than other savings accounts

I can’t find the terms on this so don’t know the true value

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I just saw this. Anyone have a link to the T&C’s?

3% on 4000 is 120, surely that pays for the account?

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I would be interested to read them too. Do you think this would be interest paid out of the marketing budget?

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You beat us to it!

Read all about on the blog:

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Great news - fantastic initiative team.

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Its interesting as this is well above the base rate, and consider that other providers (im thinking HL and Vanguard specifically) have dropped there interest to 0%.

However, the amount of people who will actually hold £4k in funds for a year is probably not going to be that high so the potential is there but it really just helps provide a little discount.

interesting though that’s its so high at 3%, that’s unexpected.

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WOW. Great news and unexpected

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It is a nice incentive though to have people hold funds and to plan for purchases rather than trying to load up their account on the go to make snap purchases?

I cant imagine many people if any are holding over £4k a year in their account? Unless they have significant holdings and £4k+ is for future potential buys.

Who has a balance under 10p? and who has a balance over £4k?

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so i can deposit £4000 (which would earn my virually 0% in most accounts currently) - this will pay for Plus itself in interest payments and as a result I get all the benefits of Plus for zero additional cost? - seems like a winner to me!!

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I have 17p cash balance! :laughing:

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This is certainly making Plus a much better proposition than it was.

I love it when FT surprise us like this.

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I don’t want to be a skeptic, but; I’ve read the blog post and would like to know what FT is legally allowed to do with that cash whilst it sits, unused - can FT reinvest it short term?

My reaction to this is that I’d potentially earn much more investing that £4k than having it sit there for an entire year to get the (maximum) £120 interest.

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Would be interested to know if you earn interest up to the value of £4k, but would assume that the interest in itself is not compounded once it hits the 4k allowance? Therefore the balance held would have to be less than 4k for it to compound… Is that correct?

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Maybe thats what they’re hoping people will think

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I see it as a discount on the Plus fee for people who keep a larger balance, but also as a way to:

  • increase the average balance per customer metrics (a great metric to look at for future rounds!)
  • entice customer signups and their going through the application funnel (and can thus be seen as a proxy for marketing spend/customer acquisition cost). I don’t know what the application dropout rate is, but surely it’s not low (particularly at the signed-up to funded stage).

It’s a hit to short term revenue numbers. Lower customer net value, but much higher potential for larger customer volumes.

Fully supportive!

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These are the terms related to available funds

25.1. Plus users

If you are a Plus user, you will receive interest on a capped amount of the Available Funds which you hold in your General Investment Account or Freetrade ISA. The interest rate, which you will receive, and the capped amount, on which interest will be calculated, can be viewed on the Plus section of our website, which can be found here. We can make changes to the interest rate and capped amount from time to time.

Where you hold both a Freetrade ISA and a General Investment Account, the amount will be capped according to the combined Available Funds in the accounts. You will not receive any interest on any Available Funds held in excess of the Capped Amount.

Where you hold both a Freetrade ISA and a General Investment Account, the Available Funds held in your ISA will take priority over the Available Funds held in your General Investment Account for eligibility for and receipt of interest. This means that if the amount of Available Funds held in your ISA is equal to or greater than the Capped Amount, you will receive interest on the Capped Amount in your ISA and you will receive no interest on the Available Funds held in your General Investment Account.

We will calculate how much interest you have earned daily, based on the combined Available Funds held in your General Investment Account and Freetrade ISA at the end of each working day. Any deposits received on weekends and on some bank holidays will not be eligible to receive interest until the next working day. We will add any earned interest monthly to the Available Funds in your General Investment Account or Freetrade ISA. Ordinarily, the earned interest for a calendar month will be added to your Available Funds on the 11th working day of the following month.

While we endeavour to allocate any funds received to your accounts as soon as possible (for example, deposits or dividends), there can be delays to this allocation. If funds are allocated to one of your accounts after the monthly interest amount is calculated for payment, due to issues outside of our reasonable control, they will not be eligible to receive interest in respect of that month period.

If you cancel your Plus membership, you will be entitled to receive interest for the days on which you held a valid Plus membership. If you fail to pay the Plus subscription fee on time for a period, you will not be entitled to interest for that period.

If you do not wish to earn any interest on your Available Funds, you can opt out of receiving any interest, provided that you get in contact with us to communicate this.

‍25.1. Other users

If you are not a Plus user, your Available Funds will not attract any interest, even if they are in credit. You acknowledge that we may receive interest on all of our clients’ funds held by our Custodians, and hereby waive your right to claim payment of any part of such interest.

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I think this is a great move. I signed up for Monzo plus for £5pm mainly because the interest covered a lot of the fee. This month it didn’t though and I only got £1.33 interest meaning Monzo got to keep a lot of that £5. FT are in an even better position because even with 3%p.a. interest, you are better off investing that money unless you are going for some boring bond fund.

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This is major!

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I recon its a loss leader however it may incentivise plus signups.

For example someone may think Plus cost (£10) - ISA (£3) - interest (£1-3 e.g.) = £4/m

Same as what banks do

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