ETC Removed - What happened?

Help & FAQs
1

What happened to ETCs like SGLN on the platform? They seem to have been removed and could not be invested in recently.

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2

This deserves a response, a significant portion of your customers will hold ETCs. The total lack of information on this is concerning, I say that as a customer of almost 4 years who has referred several friends and family to the platform.

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3

This is a customer service response from another thread about this:

“We have temporarily stopped offering a small number of funds while we investigate a permissions issue. We take our regulatory obligations seriously and are liaising with the FCA, and those ETFs are temporarily unavailable for buying.”

5

So if my existing portfolio already contains one of those ETCs, will it be invested in the next monthly contribution? If not, will the investment percentage of my other ETFs be adjusted automatically to use up the whole contribution amount, or will the investment proportion of that ETC be simply kept as cash?

6

I successfully added to a portfolio containing SGLN on 7th January and the correct proportion of my added cash was allocated to that ETC, so I think if you’ve already got it you won’t notice a difference.

7

Hi there, I have SGLN in both a GIA and an ISA. I added money to my GIA twice and placed orders twice last week and both times the order executed and bought more shares of SGLN in my GIA. And I rebalanced my ISA as well and there too it purchased more shares of SGLN this week. So, it looks like if you already have this in your portfolio, it is not making any difference as of now. But who knows, maybe in some time I will not be allowed to buy more shares in SGLN anymore! That will be very disappointing!

But the fact that I can still buy more shares of SGLN seems to suggest that this is not really some regulatory issue, otherwise I am sure no one can trade that ETC on InvestEngine anymore. It seems like a strangely specific and limited regulatory issue which will be very very odd. I wonder what the real reason for stopping offering this to new customers is.

8

Its likely it is, given that at Hargreaves Lansdown and AJBell retail punters are now required to do a sophisticated investor test (aka “appropriateness test”) for buying SSLN silver ETF and other Precious Metal ETFs.

Investengine probably do not have any capability to assess "appropriateness” for now; unless you already own it having bought at much lower prices. My wild guess.

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