So I now have 5 separate trades in the dreaded “Awaiting Settlement” stage. I appreciate that this is a known issue with comments and responses going back several months, but I’m less than satisfied with what is happening, or not happening.
Currently have over £500 locked in this state and all I get is the standard response of “Our Brokers aim to settle orders on T+2”, well we are currently at T+23 for the oldest one and the youngest is T+6 so the aim was and is well off!
I am a little concerned, I have 177k and growing in IESU 14% gain in the last month, I know this will not last forever and will want to sell at some point. But with your post and the other it seems odd ?
Please keep this post up to date with what is happening.
We see your messages and hear the feedback. Although the majority of our stocks are settling on T+2 - I appreciate it is highly frustrating you’re waiting so much longer.
We’re seeing this issue primarily affect the more niche EFT we have on the platform (typically some of the thematic funds which see lower trading volumes). I will see if I’m able to share some data on this & the specific funds.
We do have agreement from our brokers/market makers on how we’re going to resolve this issue - It’s requiring development on our side (to allow us to net off unsettled trades on CREST). This is going to us take a bit of time though. I think this has been said before but it is our top priority & we’ll keep you posted!
The challenge still exists in 2023… I wish they had pointed this out earlier.
If they really want to help investors, they should put up a visual sign for each ETF in terms of being a low-volume or high-volume trading ETF. This will help investors take a calculated risk. With settlement challenges, I believe we will all prefer buying the same normal ETFs such as S&P500 to ease transactions and this itself works against InvestEngine’s growth.
I hear what you are saying about S&P 500, since August 2021 my ISA and SIPP, have been with Vanguard S&P 500
With Invest Engine, I took a risk with the IESU S&P 500 Energy in GIA, which has done well, on Friday 1:56pm, I put in an Sell Order of 156k They all sold at the 3.30pm trading window.
I think I must have been lucky, as it is ETF of Energy Sector within the S&P 500, it probably has an high daily volume.
Once the cash arrives in my account, I am moving it to Vanguard, and just stick with S&P 500 for a long time.
After reading your post, I did Google to see if it is to find trading volumes, I could not find anywhere. So if I do try another Thematic ETF, I will probably stick to something with the S&P 500, like I did with IESU iShares S&P 500 Energy Sector (IESU) | InvestEngine
you can check the trading volume on LSE on CNBC and morningstar.co.uk platforms. Only regular ETFs such as S&P500, FTSE 100, etc have high volumes. The specialist /niche ETFs have very low trading volume, so funds could be stuck for a long time. This is an industry challenge, as well as for ETF companies. I feel quite disappointed with InvestEngine because they did not share this information with investors/customers upfront. It does not take much to show the average trading volume along with the price.
Also, they should have by now worked out a cancellation of the trade if the settlement does not occur in X number of days.
Thanks for the information, I have never been on LSE, it looks like a good site, it was good to see the Trading Volume.
The cash has hit my IE account, so now in the process of investing it directly with Vanguard, where my ISA and SIPP are. I know we are not suppose to time the market, but I did with IESU, and consider myself lucky. I can imagine I will just stick with S&P 500 for the next fives years at least.
That’s a very good article. May I ask you a question? What about syntetic ETFs? Does the liquidity work the same? Because when we buy Syntetic ETFs we don’t buy the underlying assets. How does it work with them?
During the first lockdown of 2021 I learnt alot about Index Funds, and moved from managed funds, most to S&P 500, and as of this week I am now fully in S&P 500.
As part of learning about index funds via YouTube educational videos etc, I did learn about Physical vs Syntetic. I never chose Syntetic, due to the potential risks, check out ETF structures | BlackRock. Synthetic vs Physical ETFs
Yes, there have been a few developments & improvements over the last few months/weeks. Let me share some detail.
Most recently, we’ve added Jane Street to our panel of LSE Market maker
Tweaks to our Request for Quote (RFQ) process – I don’t want to go too technical here but we have specify volumes, trade types, have quote response times etc. and we’ve been looking at these on how we achieve best execution on trades
Working with market makers to flag/chase those last settling order. Its also helping at we continue to grow a a business’ with our trades getting bigger over time
I don’t think I can share any settlements stats (we have audits on our order execution + likely other reasons). But we have seen a dramatic improvement (especially in August).
There a few more longer term improvements were still working on here too.
But what is the update to my trade? And if that cannot be settled in 2 months, then what is your process of cancellation? You will need to take a call on that…you cannot have an investor hanging with trade unsettled and no cancellation option.
Is InvestEngine paying interest on the loss of earning potential?
I’m attempting to move my ISA to T212 because of this very reason and low and behold I’ve been informed today that I can’t because a randon £1.05 is still awaiting settlement from August 10th. What am I supposed to do?
Hello. Unfortunately we cannot tell the exact date when your order is going to be settled as the delay is due to market forces beyond our control. Please be assured that our team is working on the cancellation option and we will let you know once there is any update. Currently we do not pay interest on the loss of earning potential.
Please be assured these scenarios are always followed up on and the team is constantly pushing for an urgent settlement. The team is also actively working on a long term solution to mitigate the issue going forward.
