Insiders score
More info4.5out of 5
AJ Bell was formed in 1995 and is now one of the UK’s leading online investment platforms. AJ Bell serves more than 484,000 customers, providing them with investment portfolios within SIPPs, ISAs and dealing accounts. It holds £76.2 billion of assets under administration and is listed on the FTSE 250.
Capital at risk.
4.5out of 5
32.6%
24.8%
32.6%
24.8%
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The answer is – no, we proudly do things a little differently at Investing Insiders. Our sole criteria is what's best for you – the consumer. So, although we do receive a commission if you choose to click through and open an account from any of our reviews, we will never bend our opinions to suit the requests of providers, or the needs of our bank balance. Bottom line – what you read on this page is what I'd recommend to my family, friends and colleagues, and indeed, what I choose for my own money.
1 April 2024 AJ Bell improves the rates of interest paid on cash balances. Rates now extend to 2.70% for ISAs, and 3.95% for SIPPs.
1 April 2024 AJ Bell also announces reductions in dealing fees to £5.00 per trade, or £3.50 per trade if you trade more than ten times per month.
10 May 2024 Junior SIPP information updated based on feedback from James D.
AJ Bell is a great option for both experienced and inexperienced investors alike.
Although AJ Bell is pushing those who are new to investing towards their streamlined, ultra-low-cost investment service, Dodl, the main AJ Bell platform is still a solid option for beginners. The platform design is smart, making it simple to use, and oodles of FAQs, explainers, articles and guides mean it’s easy to get to grips with the hows, whys and whats of investing.
AJ Bell’s low-cost fees, charged on a percentage basis, means it’s a viable option for those with smaller portfolios, who won’t be disproportionately impacted by the flat fees charged by some competitors. A note of caution on fees, though: while custody fees are capped for those holding shares in their account, if you add funds, the custody fees on that proportion of your account value will not be capped until you reach the £500k threshold, beyond which, custody fees are no longer applied: that can work out pricey! (See my ‘Fees’ section for just how pricey.)
Even though AJ Bell provides some suggestions in the form of ‘Starter portfolios’ and ‘Favourite funds’, this is still very much a platform for those who have the time and confidence to manage their own investments. If you are looking for tailored advice on an investment strategy, this kind of DIY platform isn’t right for you. You could try a robo-advisor instead, such as Moneyfarm which offers human advice alongside its robo-advice.
At AJ Bell, you can invest in any of the following products:
It’s one of the widest selections in the UK investment market as you can see, although it’s a shame they don’t offer a
All AJ Bell investment accounts are free to open and there’s no account minimum unless you choose an AJ Bell fund. You can pay into your account whenever you want by setting up a direct debit, or by using your debit card. If you want to save smaller amounts regularly, the regular investment service lets you put in as little as £25 every month.
Note, AJ Bell’s LISA is a stocks and shares LISA, and not a cash LISA. That means you’ll need to feel confident choosing stocks or funds to invest your savings into. Read our guide to LISAs for more information on the different types of LISAs available and who they may be suitable for.
Assets
You’ll find an impressive choice of investment options at AJ Bell, including the majority of UK shares, 24 international share markets, over 2,000 funds as well as investment trusts, bonds and exchange-traded funds (
You can also invest in:
– Warrants and covered warrants (you'll need to complete an online test to demonstrate your ability to trade in these)
– Exchange-traded commodities (which are similar to ETFs, but track a commodity instead of an index).
One real disappointment with AJ Bell’s asset offering, however, is that it does not offer fractional shares. So, if you want to invest in big-ticket stocks, you’ll need to be willing to spend enough to buy at least one full share, which can be hundreds of pounds in some cases. You may not want to commit that much to just one stock if you’re building a diversified portfolio on a small budget.
Ready-made portfolios
While AJ Bell doesn’t offer any personal financial advice service, if you’re looking for guidance selecting investments, there is some help in the form of AJ Bell funds. You pick your fund and then let AJ Bell do the management legwork.
Funds can make investing easier as they avoid the need to pick individual stocks and shares. However, with thousands of funds to choose from, this can turn into an arduous task. To help with selection if you’re feeling in the dark, AJ Bell has a ‘Favourite funds’ list. The list, compiled by AJ Bell analysts, highlights the funds from across their whole selection that they believe are most likely to provide you with an income, or with medium- to long-term growth.
Alternatively, you can reduce the number of decisions you need to take by choosing an AJ Bell Starter portfolio. These are ready-made portfolios which are built by AJ Bell’s in-house investment research team. This option might be suitable if you're finding it difficult to choose investments for your ISA or SIPP, but remember, once you’ve invested in a Starter portfolio, the responsibility for managing it rests with you. In that sense, this is still only an option for those who have the time, knowledge and confidence to keep on top of their investments.
These portfolios aren’t completely rigid – you can still top up with other funds from the ‘favourite funds’ list, making them a good middle ground for those who wouldn’t know where to start with a list of thousands of available funds, but would still like the option to tailor their portfolio in some way.
You’ll need to make a minimum investment of £1,000 with these funds though, and each portfolio is designed to be held for the long term – five years or more – so they’re not suited for those pursuing short-term income growth goals.
We conducted in-depth fund research into AJ Bell’s ready-made portfolio performance, to analyse the performance of AJ Bell’s funds over the past five years against the industry average. To find out whether AJ Bell performs well or not, skip to the portfolio performance section below.
Savings account
AJ Bell also offers a ‘Cash savings hub’ where you can browse competitive interest rates for your cash savings.
This is a really nicely designed feature – ideal for those who have money left over after reaching the limit on their tax wrappers, and want the best possible fixed interest on savings. (Remember that even at interest rates of 5%, it’s very unusual for cash to outperform the stock market.)
It’s free to use as AJ Bell is paid by their partner banks, not customers, although you’ll need a minimum of £1,000 to get started. And you’ll need to be an existing AJ Bell customer – you can’t open a savings account in isolation.
Joint account
AJ Bell allows for Dealing accounts to be opened in joint names. ISAs and SIPPs cannot be opened in joint names (as is standard).
Corporate account
Directors of limited companies can apply for a corporate AJ Bell Dealing account. That’s helpful for those wishing to use their limited company status to take advantage of more favourable capital gains tax rates or offset losses against personal income.
We've conducted in-depth fund performance research, gathering data from 160 different funds across 24 different providers. Here’s how AJ Bell’s
AJ Bell's ready-made portfolios have averaged 32.6% returns over the past 5 years. Compared with the median industry average of 24.8%, that's an excellent average return rate.
However, there is some considerable variation across different portfolio risk categories. The more adventurous and Global Growth funds have performed particularly well with AJ Bell's Passive Adventurous fund seeing returns of 53.7% over 5 years. Cautious funds have not seen returns as high as that, although they are in line with the industry average for cautiously structured portfolios.
Of course, it's important to remember that past performance does not guarantee future performance and that you should not, therefore, base decisions entirely on this analysis.
4.5out of 5
Mobile platform
The AJ Bell mobile app is great. You can manage and monitor your portfolio, apply for new accounts and fund your account. You can deal on the go with ‘at best’, ‘
It’s available on both iOS and Android and is well-designed with a clean and tidy user interface, making it worthwhile downloading for use on the go. It doesn’t have exactly the same functionality as the website, however, so there are some requests (such as requesting a transfer of an old pension into your SIPP) that you'll need to do on the web platform.
Biometric authentication can be enabled to protect you in the event someone tries to hack into your account.
On the Google Play Store, the AJ Bell app scores an impressive 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Web platform
I find the web platform very intuitive and easy to navigate with a bit of practice. The same amount of information is accessible on the mobile platform, but there’s more space for more data to be displayed on one screen on the web platform, making it my preference.
Demo account
There is no AJ Bell demo account.
4.5out of 5
On the whole, AJ Bell’s fees are very low. Charges primarily consist of a custody charge, paid monthly, with an additional ‘dealing charge’ which you pay each time you buy or sell shares or funds.
I’ve discovered a couple of areas you don’t want to get caught out on, however. I’ll explain more in my verdict on fees, below.
SIPPs / Junior SIPP / Stocks and shares ISA
For
Custody fees
Share dealing fees:
Lifetime ISA
If you open a
Custody charge:
If you want to trade, you’ll need to pay dealing charges:
Junior ISA
Unlike Hargreaves Lansdown, which offers a fee-free
Custody charge:
Shares dealing charge:
The verdict?
AJ Bell’s custody fees come with one of the lowest headline rates in the UK market – 0.25% – and thanks to a recent reduction in dealing fee rates, it’s possible to keep overall fees lower than those of most other investment providers.
However, there are a couple of things it’s worth noting:
You may have noticed from the fee listings above, that there is a cap on how much you can be charged when your account consists of shares / ETFs / investment trusts / gilts / bonds. This is not the case where you hold funds. Therefore, if you intend to solely invest in funds, beware: your custody charge could work out far more expensive with AJ Bell, than with their competitors. Just take a look at these examples to see the differences I’m talking about:
£625 to hold funds vs £42 to hold shares is crazy! Of course, this is assuming you only hold shares / ETFs / investment trusts / gilts / bonds, or funds. Many people will hold a mixture of assets so your fees will be somewhere between the two extremes listed in the table above.
I should also point out that once you own over £500k of assets in funds, AJ Bell scraps the custody charge on anything above that amount, so you won’t find yourself paying ever increasing amounts if you hold millions. For those somewhere in the middle, however, it’s a pricey way to hold funds.
Dealing fees of £5 / £3.50 per trade soon add up. If you want to trade shares regularly, it might make more financial sense to look at one of the newer trading platforms offering zero commission. Trading 212, Freetrade, and AJ Bell's pared-back, no-frills investment app Dodl, offer zero dealing fees on shares. More on Dodl, below.
If you’re happy having a slimmed down selection of assets to trade, you could check out AJ Bell’s ultra-low-fee brand, Dodl. It’s well-suited to those wanting to start small and keep costs to the bare minimum (custody fees are 0.15% vs 0.25% with the mainstream AJ Bell accounts). And, as I pointed out above, there are no dealing fees on shares and funds either.
Interest paid on cash
AJ Bell pays interest on uninvested cash in SIPPs and ISAs, and additionally, doesn’t apply its annual platform custody charge to cash balances.
Current rates are:
Although not bad at the top end, these are far from the highest rates available, especially for those with smaller balances. For comparison:
All figures were correct at the time of publishing. While we attempt to update figures as soon as we become aware of changes, the most accurate way to obtain the latest data is to check with the provider directly.
Transfer fees
There are no fees for transferring in or out of your AJ Bell account.
Deposit fees
There are no charges for depositing money into your AJ Bell account.
Minimum deposit
The minimum amount you can deposit into a cash savings account is £1,000. For all other accounts, there is no minimum; you can pay in what you want, when you want. If you want to save smaller amounts regularly, you’ll need to commit to a minimum of £25 per month.
A foreign exchange charge is levied when trading in an international currency. At AJ Bell, the rates charged are:
Those rates, especially on the higher amounts, compare very well to other providers:
4.5out of 5
AJ Bell provides excellent research tools that will more than meet the needs of the average investor.
With the help of a stock screener, you can select the stock you want to research and view insights such as:
Events and indicators including:
There are also customisable and interactive charts which give you the ability to draw trend lines, Fibonacci Arcs, and Fibonacci Fans, among others.
You won’t find any analysts ‘Buy’/’Sell’/’Hold’ ratings or forecasts for stocks, however. But those can be accessed externally without cost quite easily.
You won’t have access to some of the bells and whistles of an advanced trading platform like Interactive Brokers. But that isn’t what AJ Bell is set up to do. AJ Bell products are designed primarily for people looking for medium- and long-term investments and not day-traders.
All round, an excellent research offering that is designed to be clear enough on first view to be helpful to new investors, with a toolset which allows that first view to become so much more detailed for those seeking in-depth data.
4.5out of 5
Executing a trade is clear and simple with AJ Bell.
You can set up a limit order which automates trades to happen at specific buy or sell prices. I couldn’t, however, find any way of setting price alerts which is a real shame as they’re useful for keeping an eye on prices without committing to a limit order.
For shares, investment trusts and exchange traded funds (ETFs), your deal will be processed immediately, but it could take 1-2 working days for the deal to settle after a trade.
Trades on funds are processed each business day at a time that is dictated by the fund in question (check the research page for that particular fund for more details). Trades placed after the dealing cut off time, will be executed the next working day.
Order types
You can execute trades using the following order types at AJ Bell:
5.0out of 5
When selecting a provider for your investments, it is very important to first ensure they meet certain minimum safety standards. We judge AJ Bell to meet the threshold for a ‘safe’ provider because:
Account safety
AJ Bell uses biometric authentication to secure mobile app login, and two-factor authentication whenever you login using a new device or browser.
Remember that investing involves risk. The value of your investment can go up as well as down, and you could get back less than you put in.
More information on AJ Bell and whether this platform might be a good addition to your portfolio can be found here:
5.0out of 5
AJ Bell’s new ‘Learn to Invest’ hub contains a mountain of helpful information and insights on useful topics. There are detailed investment guides, a ‘jargon buster’ feature, and two podcasts: the Money and Markets podcast; and the Money Matters podcast aimed at closing the gender investment gap with advice tailored to women.
It’s all delivered in a welcoming and easy-to-digest format. As AJ Bell describes it: it’s the “hows, whys, and whats of investing, from the basics to the nitty gritty.” Perfect for beginners.
You'll also have the chance to join regular webinars on a variety of useful topics, which are recorded so you have the opportunity to watch back at your convenience if you miss the live event. Again, these are pitched just right considering their audience includes investors at all different experience levels.
5.0out of 5
AJ Bell does really well on customer service with a very quick response time when I called their UK-based customer service phone line, and a similarly quick response when I used their web chat service.
AJ Bell has an exceptional score of 4.8 stars on Trustpilot (at the time of writing) from over 5,000 reviews.
The three options for contacting AJ Bell are:
Phone lines are open 6 days per week and there’s a choice of email addresses to help you get straight to the department you need:
A solid 5 out of 5 for AJ Bell’s customer service.
5.0out of 5
Account opening
Opening an account with AJ Bell is straightforward and fully digital. You’ll just need your personal details, National Insurance number and details of any account you want to transfer.
Closing your account
It’s not possible to close an account without getting the help of AJ Bell customer services. You can either log in and contact them via a secure message in your account, or via the customer services team at help@ajbell.co.uk.
You can only cancel a
Transferring accounts
Transferring into AJ Bell is easy. First you’ll need to open the account you want to transfer to, if you haven’t opened it already. It takes less than ten minutes to open an account, and you can do it online. During the application, you'll be asked to enter the details of the account(s) you want to transfer.
If you already have an account you want to transfer into, you can start the transfer process by logging in and from the ‘My account’ menu, choosing ‘Transfers’ and entering the details of the account(s) you want to transfer.
AJ Bell and interactive investor (ii) are two of the largest UK-based investment platforms. Both have been around for three decades and have reputations for high standard of customer service, bringing a sense of reliability and trustworthiness. The two providers offer the same product range, with the exception of the
On price, both are known for being low-cost platforms. But how much it’ll cost you to become a customer does vary significantly depending on the amount you have to invest. While AJ Bell charges fees as a percentage of invested assets, ii is a flat-fee platform. That means that for those with larger portfolios, ii could work out cheaper. It also means that for investors with smaller pots, the inverse could be true. To test both theories, I calculated the costs of a
AJ Bell is cheaper for
In interactive investor’s favour, it is unbeatable on asset selection, offering 40,000 UK, US and international shares on 17 global exchanges plus funds, ETFs, investment trusts and VCTs. AJ Bell can’t compete with that range of assets although its offering is also plenty wide enough to satisfy the average investor, with almost every share from the London Stock Exchange and 24 other global markets.
Ultimately your choice will probably come down to how much you have to invest and which is therefore the best on price, as there isn’t much between them in most other respects.
Wondering about the difference between opening a Dodl account and opening an AJ Bell account?
Well, despite the latter being owned by the former, there are some quite big differences between the two brands.
All the shares and funds you can trade on Dodl are taken from AJ Bell’s full menu of tradeable assets – there are just far fewer of them. That’s the first major difference; the amount of investment options you have. Think of a Dodl as a simplified, slimmed down version of AJ Bell. Great if you’re new to investing and don’t know where to start: not great if you want to invest in some under-the-radar Asian stock you think will go on to achieve great things. You won’t have access to anything other than seven AJ Bell funds, and the most popular US and UK stocks with Dodl.
Because of that simplicity, however, you’ll pay less to invest through Dodl. Dodl’s annual account fee is just 0.15%, whereas the minimum you’ll pay to invest on the main AJ Bell platform is 0.25%. Of course there are fund fees to add on top for both, but the other major advantage of Dodl is the absence of dealing fees. You’ll have to pay these separately with AJ Bell.
Trade execution tools and research tools are very basic on Dodl. As basic as they can be. AJ Bell has all the research capabilities and different order types you’d expect from a large, well-established investment house.
Think of Dodl as a platform to build confidence as you learn what kind of investing works for your future. You may choose to graduate onto AJ Bell or one of its competitors in time, or you may decide Dodl suits your needs just fine.
AJ Bell and Vanguard are both large, well-established, well-regarded investment brands, and both offer a quality service for a reasonable price.
Vanguard might suit you better if you don’t want to face too many choices and don’t want a lot of maintenance to keep your portfolio ticking over. That’s because while AJ Bell offers a wide choice of assets, Vanguard only offers funds, and only offers its own funds. They are incredibly popular funds, however, making them a solid choice whether you have an adventurous approach to risk, or more on the cautious end of the scale.
If you do decide to go for a
Both offer well-designed, user-friendly platforms and websites, although Vanguard inexplicably doesn’t have a mobile app, so if you live on your phone and want instant access to your accounts wherever you are, AJ Bell is your one.
On cost, both are hard to beat on price, but Vanguard’s no-frills service is generally cheaper. You don’t get as much as you do with AJ Bell though, so it really does depend on what you’re looking for. And, as I’ve pointed out in my Vanguard review, it’s actually possible to get Vanguard funds cheaper on other platforms than directly through Vanguard. So it’s worth reading the full review if you’re considering a Vanguard fund.
AJ Bell is good for those looking for an investment platform offering a wide range of products and assets to invest in, at a reasonable price. It offers great customer service, helpful education materials and a strong selection of research tools for investors of all experience levels.
No, AJ Bell does not offer a
Have a question about AJ Bell that I haven't covered? Ask it here and we’ll come back to you with an answer.
This review is the result of my first-hand experience as an account holder at AJ Bell and in no way represents financial advice.