Posted Date: 15th August
Purchase of 0.005754 JP Morgan USD Ultra-Short Bonds @ £86.44. External Ref = IO00259857
Still waiting on 7th September…
Hi @markl23 . Could you kindly submit a request to our support team who will be able to look into your unsettled trade and advise? Please be assured unsettled trades is something we have prioritised as a business and will soon be an issue of the past.
I appreciate your good intentions and undoubted efforts, but this has been going on for a r e a l l y long time now …
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Hello @dlp6666,
A late settlement can occur to any investment provider, but we’d like to assure you that we are constantly working with our counterparties to ensure timely settlement of stock.
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IO00411173 - since 12/01/23
IO00415785 - since 17/01/23
At time of this posting I have one outstanding for 52 days since 9 Dec 2022 14:55 for External Ref = IO00379427 and then a few from the beginning of this month.
Makes a joke of the so-called “Rebalance Portfolio” feature as you are never able to do so with Awaiting settlement transactions. Not to forget the cheeky comment of “Trades typically take 2 days to settle after they are executed in the market.”
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I fully agree. My oldest outstanding trade is from 14/12, just a few days behind yours.
This is the main reason why I can no longer recommend IE to others. What use is zero platform fees when your investment is being held hostage for months?
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Please see below a further detailed explanation which helps highlight the reasons why unsettled trades may occur and how we aim to resolve the issue for you as soon as possible:
Why are you, as a customer seeing this issue?
- We use registered Market markers on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) to place all our ETF trades; these providers allow us to achieve the best execution for our trades.
- However, due to the generally lower volumes and values for many of InvestEngine’s trades, it’s not always practical for our Market makers to fulfill these orders immediately (or within the expected two days time frame). They often group trades together and manage their book of orders.
- It is important to understand that the prices are locked in once we’ve made the trade; if the price goes up or down, you are locked into the price at the execution time. However, we have seen a delay in the settlement/delivery of shares.
What is InvestEngine doing about it?
- Firstly, engaging with our market makers - to make sure they settle more of our trades on time. As we get bigger, this is becoming less of an issue.
- Secondly, working to eliminate the impact on our customers. We will be changing our trading rules in the future to allow customers to sell those holding impacted (without waiting for settlement). This will eliminate the practical issues customers are experiencing not being able to sell and rebalance.
This solution is actively being worked on as our top priority - we need to ensure we’re still meeting our regulatory obligations with segregated client funds and assets being held in client nominees on CREST, so it’s not as straightforward. But we believe we’ll be able to provide an update in the coming few weeks, which we will share here first.
We do understand your frustration with unsettled transactions, and we hope to have this sorted very soon.
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Thanks for the feedback
Thanks for the feedback, but… this is the same statement that was posted a half a year ago and nothing has changed so far.
It is not acceptable to freeze a customers investment money for such a long time in my opinion.
Going on 60 days today that I am still “Awaiting settlement.” Another one is 26 days overdue, two other transactions stand at 19 days, another two at 11 days and one at 5 days. Not to forget an ISA top up deposit still processing for 2 days.
Very frustrating. Looks like karma is biting me in the backside for lying on the British Bank Awards vote survey by saying everything about IE is perfect and awesome and 5-star ratings.
One of my three “unfinished” orders has settled now (from Jan 10th). Still have two more in “Awaiting settlement” status… another one from Jan 10th and one from Dec 14th. Not 60 days like yours, but 54 days and waiting 
Very frustrating indeed!
Yeah. I’ve been waiting a long time for this one transaction to settle because I really, really wanted to rebalance my portfolio as advertised but this outstanding transaction is preventing that from happening. After the generic copy/paste response I got from support I decided its best to just cash in and sell this portfolio. I’ll keep my ISA portfolio for now but this GIA is history…
Interesting… how were you able to sell your portfolio? Mine always says “Settled holdings: 0.00” when I click on “Sell portfolio”, therefore I can’t sell anything because of the unsettled orders.
I sold each ETF individually. If you select an ETF in your portfolio you have that buy/sell button on the right. By default the Buy option shows but to the right of Buy you will see Sell. Select this then either enter the monetary value you want to sell or click the sell all option.
The only one that I cannot completely sell is the one stuck with the awaiting settlement nonsense since 9 Dec 2022. When that one eventually settles, that I will sell that as well.
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Ah OK… yeah, I did the same. Will sell my last postion and close the portfolio as soon as the last two orders are finally settled.
Aaa wow!
This is not very good.
Looks like they are working on it but still will take some time to sort?
So the market makers are locking the price that IE customers get, but aren’t actually executing in the market until the size gets larger (ie more customers want to buy). I can see a conflict of interest where the market maker doesn’t want to execute in the market as perhaps the price has risen and they’d execute at a loss compared to the price locked for the IE customer? How is that conflict managed?
Good point shrimper! That could be the reason…
My investments are being held hostage for two months now (how else shall I describe it?) and still no other reply from IE than “we’re working on it”… 
Well I have an ‘Awaiting settlement’ transaction which is hung up since the 1st Feb. Have emailed support a few times and had the same message back about the generic reasons but this is simply not good enough. I think that when it finally clears I will withdraw everything and try elsewhere. I only left Freetrade after 2 years because I felt the fee for the ISA was a bit much. Currently have a GIA with Trading 212 and that works well from my limited experience on that platform. It’s a great shame because I like Investengine in principle but this is a deal breaker for me.