Negative Account Balance

Help 👋
1

Hi - the issue has resolved itself, so I’m happy, but I’m posting this here (a) to find out whether this may become an issue further down the line, and (b) it may be of interest to others.

Following the execution of a basic order yesterday, my account balance ended up below zero. I would have expected a reduced number of shares rather than being in the red - just a few pence, and a dividend payout today pushed me back into credit, but it left me wondering how this could happen and what your policy was on this. I did a quick forum search and scanned through the order execution policy and the help articles.

Is this something that might happen every now and then, e.g. due to share price fluctuations at the time of ordering?
Would a negative balance affect me in any way, e.g. interest, top-up demands or similar?

As mentioned, it’s not a real concern, it’s just something I didn’t quite expect.

2

Hi Tim - as you suggested, while we take lots of steps to avoid this, share price fluctuations around the time of ordering can lead to accounts going overdrawn by a small amount.

We track these every day, and if it is likely to come back into credit without any further action we let it resolve itself. However if there is no cash expected to come into the account, we would get in touch and ask you to either top up your account or sell a position to take it back into credit. Clearly until you have cash in there you can’t buy or withdraw anything! But we don’t charge interest on these or anything similar

Rob

7 Likes
3

Thanks, Rob, appreciated!