Any update on this issue please? Many thanks
Anyone currently have a unsettled trade? If so does your contract note say a venue of execution?
Thanks
Nope. Just had a look at the “Here’s how your portfolio looks now” email on one of my outstanding trades.
It starts off by saying
Client name: <yours_truly>
Trading venue: London Stock Exchange
Type: Market Order(s)
Date: 9 February 2023
Then the trade details and in lighter coloured grey text it says:
“ISIN: IE00B23LNN70, Order ID: 212271/2313561, Traded at 2:55pm GMT/UTC”
Nothing else. Basically all the emails I have lists the venue as London Stock Exchange.
No, I dont have any unsettled trades anymore because I’m no longer holding smaller ETFs and am about to sell all my IE portfolios (just waiting for the March ex-dividend dates).
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If you create a ‘trading statement’ report for the time period and portfolio that you want, you can see the exact time time (down to the second) that the unsettled trade was executed, where it was executed (LSE) and which market maker made the trade.
Here’s an example from my unsettled trade from last month:
Curiously, it says it was settled on the 15/02 but on the transactions tab it is still saying ‘awaiting settlement’ and the value of the holding is still showing up as £0.00 when I click to sell.
So either the trade has not been settled yet and the report is only entering the settlement period based on the t+2 business days expectation, rather than the actual settlement date, or more worryingly, the trade has been settled but not yet accredited to my account. I will follow this up.
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So do we think the unsettled trade has actually been executed on the LSE as described on the contract note? The earlier explanation made me doubt that.
No, I don’t think it has. The report included other trades made on that day (it was when my ISA transfer had been completed) and they all show the settlement date as the 15/02. Whilst most did settle around that time, given a day or two, I know there was one or two that had longer settlement periods so I think the report gives incorrect settlement dates. I will follow up with IE either way, but it’s important that the report reflects accurate information.
Next trade I’ll try and see if I can find it on the LSE trade history on their website - I think you can only check on the trade date. I guess though if IE and/or the broker are only trading net positions it may be impossible to identify
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Thanks! Much appreciated 
So today I sold £500 of an ETF - equates to just under half a share. Contract note says traded at 14:27.
Trade history on LSE website shows no trades in this ETF at 14:27. Trades at 14:26 and 14:48 in much larger size. I also note the price of my trade was 1057.89. There is one trade at 1057.86 but that was a £300k trade. Average price today was 1058.32 - bare in mind this is an incredibly low volatility ETF.
I’ll be asking IE for their thoughts on this.
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Ah ok, now I get why I was having problems with rebalancing last month! I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t allowing me to rebalance saying awaiting settlements even after so many days
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“We do understand your frustration with unsettled transactions, and we hope to have this sorted very soon”
As far as I can see, these were the last words from IE on this topic.
They were made on 31st January 2023.
The fact that almost three months have passed without further updates etc. reflects poorly, I think, on IE, not least on its customer service/communications team.
My trades eventually settled towards the end of March. Long before that after I did not get any meaningful assistance from IE support I contact their complaints “team” to formally log a complaint towards the end of February. They sat on it for a month and then very conveniently right after my trades have settled they came back telling me they are not upholding my complaint. Basically telling me to eff off (that’s what it felt like reading their response) and that the fault lies with their brokers and there’s nothing they can do about it.
Then, to rub my nose in it further, and I copy/paste the quote here: “Delayed settlement is one of the risks of investing and we acknowledge that this is the case and highlight in our Terms and Conditions that “whilst trades are in the settlement process, you will be unable to create any other order, transaction or withdrawal regarding the assets or funds relating to the trade”.”
Not a peep of what can be done to prevent reoccurrence or any other hint of that they will even attempt to fix or improve things. Nothing about following up with the broker and getting their take on the situation.
Worst “customer service” I have experienced to date and it left me quite bitter.
After all this my take is this; avoid 90% of the 550+ funds the platform brags about and only invest in the very large “mainstream” funds where it would appear that more reputable brokers are used for those trades. I am not saying that is the case; this is just my opinion.
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Hi! Sorry to hear that you’re unhappy with our services.
We understand your frustration and we are working on a lot of developments at InvestEngine, including unsettled orders.
We want all of our clients to not be affected by any unsettled orders outside of the standard T+2 basis that our brokers work.
It is certainly being looked at, but we can’t give an exact date as to when the Development and Business team will deliver the resolution.
I wonder, if 98% of trades settle relatively quickly (in a few days) and it is only very specific brokers &/or etfs that are slow, would it be possible to add an icon or similar to indicate a “slow settler” or “low volume” allowing users to make a more informed decision when purchasing?
Whilst I have not experienced this firsthand myself, I feel it is the only valid complaint with the service that crops up every now and then, and one that potentially can hurt the reputation of IE. I can understand how it could be stressful to users not knowing when they may receive their money after a sale, and then hiding behind T&C’s.
#edit; that said re-reading the thread, if the issue is not specific brokers or etfs, but rather the locked in price moving against the counterparty due to high-volatility and then them not executing until a more favorable position which could be an unlimited timeframe, then that does feel scammy and maybe the recommendation should be to not sell into volatility…
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Hi Uncle Bob, can you name the ETF involved in the hold-up? Thanks
Sorry just looked it up from the ISIN number, PSRU. This is a very small fund according to justETF.com at just £9m and if bought in fractions could take forever to sell. Quite what it is doing on IE bearing in mind the business model, I do not understand. Any fund under £100m is more likely to suffer this drawback.
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Playing devils advocate here but it seems like these long settlement times are really because the ETFs are niche/have a low trading volume.
Might be a good feature for IE to add an “average settlement time” to the information supplied when you trade. So at least the customer would know.
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Hiya Onedrew,
Yes, I knew from an early stage the ont thing these trades had in common was the fund size being below £100 million except UBS MSCI Australia (AUAD) which is just over £300 million. That is why I made a point of it indicating fund sizes in my earlier posts. However, small fund or not; they do buy and sell. It is the settlement of the trade that does not get completed for whatever bullshit reason. From what it looks like to me is that IE uses low quality brokers for funds that are not mainstream large or popular. I am not saying it is the case but that it what it looks like from my point of view.
Buying the same fund (PSRU as example) on Trading212 and then selling it a few weeks later with all money returned as the trades settled very quickly. You have to ask why does this not happen on IE? Even Freetrade settles the most obscure trade within a week or less.
IE themselves place the blame on their brokers.
Here’s a scenario for you. Lets say you invest in a particular fund and every month you buy some more but then “world events” happen or whatever situation that convinces you to cash in or cut your losses or any other reason you may have not to invest in a particular fund. It could even be something as simple as you changed your moral outlook and now you just want to invest in ESG funds and the one you want to distance yourself from is not ESG rated.
Whatever the case may be but you decide to sell, meanwhile the price of this particular fund starts to drop but now you cannot sell a portion of it because the last purchases you made months ago into this fund still has not settled so you cannot sell those portions. Meanwhile the the value keeps dropping, eroding your money away and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Yes, the price might recover in the future but it might also not. That’s not relevant. What’s relevant now is that you want to sell.
So I ask of you; do you still feel your money is safe with this platform?
Lastly, looking on the LSE website under Trade Recap there is multiple trades so it’s not like there’s no movement.
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UncleBob, that’s very helpful. Were you trading a whole number of units or were there fractions?
Both actually as transactions are done on monetary values, example buying 100 quid of xyz at £13.25 per share will get you about 7.4-ish shares. Same goes with selling entering a monetary value or other option is to sell all.
Having said that, on some platforms you do have the option to either buy/sell by value or by numbers of shares. On IE you only have the value option.