Smart Investor is Barclays' online direct investing service. It is designed to make investing accessible to those who are happy to make their own investment decisions.
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Barclays Smart Investor is probably best-suited to:
If you're a happy Barclays customer, you could do far worse than choose Smart Investor for your ISA or general investment account, although you could get a better deal elsewhere on your SIPP.
If you're not an existing banking customer, I don't see many reasons to choose Barclays Smart Investor over one of the low-cost specialist investment platforms such as AJ Bell, Fidelity or InvestEngine. The one place where Barclays stands out as a possible option that these providers, is in their ready-made portfolio performance which is an exception 50% over the past five years, compared to an industry average of 26.4%.
Accounts
Barclays Smart Investor offers its customers access to:
That's the widest range of investment options of any UK high street bank.
Under the Barclays brand umbrella (although not within the Smart Investor brand), Barclays also offers access to various cash ISAs including an instant access cash ISA, 1-year flexible cash ISA and 2-year flexible cash ISA.
An investment ISA (Individual Savings Account) is a tax-efficient wrapper in which you can buy, hold and sell investments.
The Barclays investment ISA is a ‘flexible' ISA, meaning it's possible to withdraw funds from your ISA without it affecting your overall allowance. In other words, you can withdraw funds and repay them at a later day within the year without it counting as a separate, second payment.
Discover our best-rated investment ISAs
The Barclays SIPP isn't actually administered by Barclays – it's an AJ Bell product so you'll be subject to some additional third party fees. That's not a bad thing, however, as AJ Bell's SIPP is well-administered and you'll find plenty of investment choice. You'll still be paying Barclays prices for the SIPP, which is a shame as dealing fees are higher than AJ Bell's. Going directly through AJ Bell for the SIPP, therefore, might be the better option.
Discover our top-rated SIPPs
Assets
Barclays provides customers with access to over 8,000 different investments to choose from, including:
That is not a huge choice when compared to the likes of interactive investor, or Saxo, or even AJ Bell.
When you invest with Smart Investor, you will need to factor in the following costs:
Up to £200,000: 0.25% of your investment value
Over £200,000: 0.05% of your investment value
If you buy and sell shares, ETFs, investment trusts, bonds or gilts, you will pay £6 for each deal.
First £5,000: 1%
£5,000 – £10,00: 0.75%
£10,000 – £25,000: 0.5%
£25,000 – £250,000: 0.25%
Value over £250,000: 0.1%
These are levied by the fund provider and – unless you’ve chosen a Barclays-managed fund – the product costs don’t go to Barclays. Product costs vary and can be found in the Key Investor Information Document.
SIPP costs
Barclays' SIPP is actually administered by AJ Bell, so it is subject to additional costs on top of the standard annual fees charged by Barclays. There's an annual £150 SIPP admin fee and, if you're in flexi-access drawdown, there's an additional annual £120 fee. That means Barclays comes out as quite an expensive option for a SIPP. Given that it's administered by AJ Bell, you might want to go directly through AJ Bell. They also charge 0.25% in annual fees (reduced to 0.10% for accounts holding £250k – £500k, and removed altogether for accounts holding £500k+), but you'll avoid the costs of using a third party provider that you'll incur with Barclays, and AJ Bell's dealing fees are also cheaper.
Transfer costs
There is no fee for transferring investments.
Interest on uninvested cash
When you open a Barclays Smart Investment Account, you’ll gain access to the Investment Saver service. This means you can earn interest on any uninvested cash you're holding in your account.
Current rates of interest are:
Yes, Barclays Smart Investor is safe. It is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and part of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) meaning that you could be entitled to compensation of up to £85,000 in the unlikely event that Barclays was so go out of business.
Barclays charges 0.25% for investing sums up to £200,000. Amounts over benefit from a reduced rate of 0.05%. That's very competitive. However, although funds are free to buy and sell, dealing fees for buying and selling shares, ETFs and bonds and gilts are comparatively expensive at £6 per trade.
Barclays' investment ISA is reasonably priced and offers a decent choice of stocks, funds, ETFs, bonds and gilts. It's not the lowest priced ISA on the UK market and the range of investments available to investors isn't the largest when compared to other providers. But you're getting a trustworthy platform and access to good research and education tools.
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