New to ETFs and InvestEngine? Here’s a step-by-step guide to buying an ETF…
(1) Open an investment account
Choose between our flexible Personal Account and tax-free ISA. Or, if you’re a business owner who wants to invest through your limited company, you’ll need our Business Account.
Whichever account you go for, there are no paper application forms to fill in — you can do everything online via the InvestEngine website or, for personal investors, using our mobile app.
All our accounts offer a choice of DIY investing or Managed portfolios. If you want to pick your own ETFs, our commission-free DIY investing service is the one for you.
If you’d prefer us to pick your ETFs for you, our Managed service will select and manage your investments for a fee of 0.25% a year (ETF costs also apply).
(2) Choose your ETFs
Our DIY investment platform offers a choice of more than 500 ETFs. These cover a wide range of stock markets, bonds and commodities, and are managed by iShares, Vanguard and other leading investment providers.
If you already know the name of an ETF you want, or its stockmarket ‘ticker’ (IUSA, for example, is the ticker for iShares Core S&P 500 ETF) you can find the ETF via the search tool in your InvestEngine account.
There are also a number of filters in the search tool, making it easier to find ETFs that, for example, offer an income or screen investments using ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) criteria.
(3) Add cash
Don’t assume you need to have huge sums to start investing. You can open an InvestEngine account with just £100, then top up from just £1. Plus we operate ‘fractional investing’, letting you invest as little as £1 in any ETF, regardless of its individual share price.
To add your cash for investing, make a standard bank transfer or use our integrated Open Banking service.
You can also set up a direct debit from £50 for monthly investing.
(4) Start investing!
You place your investment orders using your online InvestEngine account or the mobile app.
We offer a choice of order types. You can buy a £s amount of an individual ETF.
Or you can place an order that splits your cash between multiple ETFs according to percentage weights you choose for your portfolio.
We execute all orders in the stock market in our daily trading window between 2.30pm and 4.30pm, Monday to Friday.
Orders submitted before the start of our daily trading window are executed during that window (orders submitted after 2.30pm are generally executed the following day).
And if you’d rather not worry about placing your own orders, you can also automate your investing using our popular AutoInvest feature.
Got a question or want to give some advice for first-timers with InvestEngine? Leave your comment below!
When investing, your capital is at risk. Tax treatment depends on personal circumstances and may be subject to change