Platforms I would avoid

Antonia says

I couldn’t find a single reason to recommend this platform. Sure, the app is super simple to use but I can’t help feeling that some of the reason behind that was the complete lack of options. There are 3 investment accounts, 1 savings account and a pension.

In terms of investment options, your money is passively invested into funds, and while I believe this can actually be a more lucrative strategy that’s simply not the case here as the portfolios have performed poorly over the past 5 years. In fact, Wealthify account holders would have seen the least growth out of any robo-advisor.

So what about the cost? Passive investment requires very little human intervention, which should also help to keep costs super low. However, in the robo-advisor space, the fees at Wealthify are at the top end of the scale. If you want the lowest fees available you need look no further than InvestEngine.

So there it is – high costs and low performance. The perfect recipe for a platform that you should definitely avoid. If you already have an account here or would like an alternative for opening a new account, then check out my best robo-advisor article here.

Fees

• Management fee: 0.60%
• Average standard fund charge: 0.16%
• Average ethical plan: 0.7%

Investments

• ETFs

Antonia says:

Penfold is a perfect solution for small business owners looking for a quick and painless way to fulfil their legal obligation to provide staff with a workplace pension.

However, for individuals looking for the best place to save for retirement, this is a less favourable option.

Firstly, let's take a look at their historical performance. Only the previous 3 years' data is available, presumably due to the new nature of the business. Penfold runs down the middle of the pack in terms of performance, with the past 3 years averaging returns of 10.8% just beating the industry average of 9.1%. This means they were beaten by the likes of Vanguard, AJ Bell, Moneybox, and Plum who all experienced better returns across the last 3 years.

Whilst returns are not awful, when you look at them alongside the higher-than-average fees charged at Penfold, they start to look a little gloomy. As an example, a £20,000 investment would attract an annual fee of £150.00 at Penfold, but the same investment would cost just £50 at AJ Bell or £100 at PensionBee where your average returns across the past 3 years would have amounted to 14%.

Fees

• 0.75%

Investments

• 5 Ready-made funds to choose from

Antonia Says

I have a few issues with this provider. They do have a Lifetime ISA, which is a great product for anyone saving for their first home. However, there are better Lifetime ISAs available, and I would definitely choose the Moneybox Lifetime ISA over this one simply because the returns have outperformed Nutmeg for the past 5 years, and it comes with a Cash Lifetime ISA on the side that has the best interest rate around.

When you look at the 5-year returns on their pension product, you get a similar story as Nutmeg was one of the poorest performing pension funds we analysed. Also, this platform is limited to ETFs, and if you're happy only investing in ETFs then InvestEngine is the lowest-cost way to do so.

In fact, Nutmeg comes in as more expensive than both Moneybox and InvestEngine, and they have a high starting amount of £500. This makes them very difficult to recommend over the other two platforms I’ve mentioned.

Fees

• Management fee: 0.60%
• Average standard fund charge: 0.16%
• Average ethical plan: 0.7%

Investments

• Fully managed
• Fixed allocation
• Socially responsible investing
• Thematic investing