So yesterday when I was just finishing work for the day, I glanced at my phone to find a notification on the Freetrade App. The notification was for a questionnaire about the ISA cost and what extra features I would like for an extra £2 a month for my ISA.
Now feel free to call me cheap, I have been investing for just under a year and opted into the Freetrade ISA at £3 a month. I wasn’t aware that competitors like T212 and InvestEngine offered free ISA’s at the time, but was happy with the FT layout and offering, although always have and will disagree woith their paywall on any paid for service. I can understand on a GI account, but not once you start paying.
I really don’t understand why FT would change the current offering from £3 to £5 for a service that others offer for free, potentially losing a lot of investors to T212 or others. I am wondering if I am alone in this, begrudge £36 a year, but pay in support of FT and the ease of App. If this almost doubled to £60 a year, I am actually tempted to switch providers and move back to T212.
For full disclosure, I am a boring dividend investor with probably 80% in established FTSE 100 regular dividend stocks and ETF’s with a little bit in TSLA and AAPL to keep in with the crowd.
Thoughts?
I’m going to go the annoying route I usually go. I take it you never read 212s terms and conditions? Long story short have a look about who holds your assets then ask the question of where your assets are held? The answer is you give 212 the rights to hold assets directly (highly unusual) or with anyone. But they never tell you who assets are held by (tip, it’s not IB, even IB don’t hold customer assets).
Nothing is free and if your being offered something for free, especially for something as important as your investments then make sure you thoroughly do your due diligence.
Anyway as to your question. I’ve not had that notification, but with the current state of Freetrade lacking basic reporting and statement features I’ve already been considering leaving. And funny enough I’ve been considering paying higher fees for a more complete platform.
I do like the platform, but it’s getting annoying. So if they were to ask me what I’d pay £2 more for I’d laugh at them. Not because I wouldn’t pay £2 more for advanced features, I would depending on what they are, but that I’m not even getting basic features for £3 yet they shouldn’t even be thinking about charging more yet.
Anyway £3 or £5 Freetrade is still far less suspicious than the likes of 212, I wouldn’t put my investments there even if they paid me to.
But it’s really up to you to decide if you think your getting what you need and presumably they’ve not changing the £3 tier. There’s also plenty of reasonably priced platforms out there that are far more reliable and and better structured than the ‘free’ platforms imo.
What’s stopping you switching your ISA to T212 now if they’re currently offering a free service ?
You do make some very good points, and T&C’s is something that I tend to shy away of. The fact that they have 3,000,000 of legal jargon that pretty much makes no sense to 90% of the population, see’s me hitting that accept button faster than the page loads.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t even consider switching and changing. I do still have my T212 account for the likes of BAE and RR as FT have been very slow to sort out the issues with Nationality Declaration. I would have happily moved ALL of my T212 stocks into FT had they sorted this out, but it seems their direction keeps changing. It was first National Declaration after the US stocks, and then it was after EU stocks. It seems that growth is more important than sorting out the mere basic offering for someone in the UK.
I am done ranting, and hopefully they will keep the £3 option as my brother has the £9.99 option and having a look at it, actually offers me nothing I would want, so can’t see why I would pay £2 more for the current offering.
Well my portfolio is down on a few stocks and with you only being able to sell out and transfer the cash value, I would be waiting anyway to get those pesky red back into the green 
I read it as the survey being about extra ISA features - such as the LISA and JISA which I imagine both carry an additional administration burden/compliance requirements for providers above and beyond a bog standard ISA.
I always expected ISAs and JISAs to be treated as separate products just like SIPPs.
I’m here for the free trading aspect of Freetrade. I’m happy to pay for them hosting my financial saving thingie wrapper product wotsits. I’d give my back left udder to be free from the hell of AJ Bell and it’s astronomical fees.
That’s not what the survey was. It was asking if you would pay an additional 2 quid a month and for what additional features, would it be worth your while. E.g. adding a LISA or SIPP or transferring in other ISA’s or additional stocks becoming available.
I have old ISA’s and a LISA with HL, not transferred the ISA part (would like to) but not all the stocks I hold are available currently in my FT ISA. If they made them available I would transfer over. Obviously no LISA either, but for 2 quid more I’d happily transfer that too.
I noticed the Crypto aspect of the survey too. Seems like Freetrade are wanting to gather further data to see what people actually want.
If I could put Crypto in my ISA I would more than happily pay an extra £2 a month!
Here is the actual message for thise that didn’t get it. It does state for a new price of £5 a month. I have voted with the last option, so if it does come into effect I guess I shall have to view my options.
Yes but it says for an additional 2 quid what would you want. I assume they are looking at a premium version of ISAs with additional options. So you either pay 3 quid for basic (same features as now) or pay a little extra for add ons.
Who holds the assets on freetrade?
Survey the users is something the insight team do on a regular basis before 
spend too much effort they need to assess the desire. This community has made their voices heard but direct targeting means they can make sure the data is representative.
I don’t know if @Greig is able to answer any questions but he’ll likely be the person / one of the people behind this work.
Oh any just for the record JISA & JSIPP please!
Junior isa is the one that I would pay for tbh
But like what has already been mentioned they haven’t covered the basics yet for 3 pound
Pre market trading i would love tbh but know this is difficult
How does that differ to what T212 do?
I use both. It appears similar to me, it’s hard to differentiate what the difference is.
I assume survey was general and not ISA specific?
As cryptocurency cannot be held in an ISA, I wouldn’t be happy with an increase in ISA fees being used to subsidise crypto trading.
Freetrade nominees limited and drivewealth are the companies who hold freetrade customer shares.
212 don’t have a nominee company in the UK (note it is standard practice and a requirement unless you opt out that shares are held in a nominee). They have in the past tried to claim the IB hold your shares but this would be highly unusual and likely incorrect. IB don’t normally hold customer shares and it would be unusual for them to break that practice, IB nominees limited hold IB customers shares.
212s terms and conditions state that a nominee, third party or 212 themselves may hold your shares, but when questioned will not tell you who actually has your shares. Note that for 212 to hold your shares you must opt out of the requirement that brokers use use a nominee company. It’s not clear is accepting the terms and conditions is enough for that but that seems like it might be the case.
The only claim 212 have ever made is that IB hold your shares, which not only seems to go against what their terms and conditions say, but also doesn’t add up, as IB wouldn’t take on the high risk of holding a startups customers shares directly under their broker company rather than in a nominee company as they’re required to do.
End result is that the terms are unfavourable to the customer, and the location of your shares is still questionable.
For a bit of fun (if you can call it that) almost all brokers have a nominee company in the UK. You can look them all up, just not 212 as they don’t seem to have one