Popular neobank Revolut has expanded its investing offering in the UK.

As a consequence, you can now quickly access global markets and asset classes on the platform via Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). You can also tuck up your investments inside the cosy tax-free confines of a stocks and shares ISA. There’s lovely. 

These welcome moves come on top of Revolut’s existing range of shares, precious metals, and crypto tokens.

More is always definitely more. If not always, contrary to popular opinion, ‘the merrier’. (Invite TI to a party and find out.)

So while we’re always happy to see new options, we must ask: is Revolut good for investing? Whether you’re an existing user or thinking of becoming one?

Let’s dive in.

Investing with Revolut

Revolut Invest is an app-only experience. And a very attractive, streamlined app it is too. It’ll take you all of about ten minutes to get the hang of the investment features. Albeit that’s mostly because there aren’t many.

Here’s what you can do…

Invest in US, UK, and European Economic Area stocks

There are over 4,000 shares to choose from. Though relatively few are priced in pounds – and that will matter when we come to the fees.

Trade a range of 161 ETFs

That’s not many, especially when many of them are priced in euros. (Currency exchange fee alert!)

Stock up on precious metals

There’s gold, silver, platinum, and even palladium if you fancy it.

These aren’t ETCs.1 You’re buying physical quantities of shiny metals as expressed in troy ounces.

Sadly, you can’t take delivery of the bars nor see a photo of your personal treasure chest. But you can pay a mate in gold – if they’re also a Revolut customer. This may get expensive.

The crypto service isn’t contained within the investing section of the app. That’s because crypto is not an investment! [Hollers into the void / at his own co-blogger.]

How much does Revolut investing cost?

Okay, it couldn’t be simpler. Ahem. [Draws a deep breath.]

You pay the trade fee once you’ve used up your free trades for the month. The fee is levied on the value of each order.

For example, a £1,000 trade incurs a £2.50 fee – once your free trade allowance is exhausted.

For £180 a year, you can be a Trading Pro. This tier grafts on to your existing plan and reduces your trading fee to 0.12%. It also bestows other benefits like Level 2 market data and the ability to trade up to $250,000 a throw on US stocks. Handy, for someone I’m sure.

FX fees

FX fees apply only when you breach your monthly currency exchange allowance.

The allowance per plan is:

• Standard: £1,000
• Plus: £3,000
• Other plans: No FX charges

Want to exchange currency at the weekend? That’s an extra 1% (Standard) and 0.5% (Plus) on top of the FX fee detailed above.

Your monthly allowance does not apply at the weekends. It must be visiting its nan.

Precious metals fees

Standard or Plus: 0.99% of the trade’s value or £1 – whichever is higher

Other plans: 0.49% of the trade’s value or £1 – whichever is higher

And…

Revolut’s spread.

And…

The FX fees as explained above.

This can all mount up.

Other fees

Do note that these plans also cover Revolut’s broader range of services, beyond investing.

Set against that, there are extra banking fees to think about if you’re considering Revolut. They may not be what you’re used to. (Look out for the cashpoint withdrawal charges!)

How do Revolut’s investing fees compare?

You can invest more cheaply elsewhere, even if you’re a Revolut customer paying into a plan already.

Trading 212 (affiliate link) and Lightyear are app-first investment platforms that offer stocks and ETFs for a keen fee. They’re both so-called zero commission brokers and their FX charges are lower than Revolut’s.

InvestEngine focuses purely on ETFs and has also eliminated trade fees and platform costs for DIY investors.

Check out our broker comparison table for more options. And this is how to smash your investment FX fees.

What if I want to pay a fee?

Many investors worry that the zero commission broker business model could be unsustainable. If that’s you then Revolut’s Standard and Plus plans look reasonable value – provided you can avoid racking up trading charges.

You could, for example, pound cost average into one GBP-priced ETF per month on the Standard Plan. Fees incurred: £0 per month.

However, the Premium Plan et al look expensive if purely chosen for investing services.

What investment account types does Revolut offer?

Revolut provides two types of investment account:

1. Stocks and shares ISA 
2. General Investment Account (GIA)

The Stocks and Shares ISA is flexible. Revolut doesn’t offer JISAs or pensions.

You can’t transfer into the stocks and shares ISA. (Yet.)

Transfers out are cash only.

That is, you’ll need to sell your investments (potentially incurring fees) and spend time in cash and out of the market if you want away from Revolut. Exit fees do not apply.

It looks like you can transfer in General Investment Accounts2 from some brokers.

The minimum order value is one pound, dollar, or euro, depending upon which currency you’re trading in.

You can hold fractional shares for stocks but there’s no mention of whether the same is true for ETFs.

Finally, customer service is chat-only. Forget telephones.

Is Revolut safe for investing?

If Revolut went bust and the value of your stocks or ETFs was irrecoverable, then you’d be covered by the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). 

In a nutshell, the scheme is designed to pay out up to £85,000 per person if your FCA authorised investment platform fails. 

Revolut says its investing service is protected by the FSCS scheme.  

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Firm Reference Number (FRN) is 933846 for the investment arm of Revolut.

Precious metals are a different matter: they’re unregulated. FSCS compensation does not apply. Other FCA regulations do not apply. Moreover, Revolut states the Financial Ombudsman probably wouldn’t step in if you had a complaint.

Read the Risks section of this terms and conditions page before you invest in precious metals with Revolut.

Cash isn’t FSCS protected either.

Is Revolut good for ETF investing?

The ETF range is limited at the moment. In my opinion it’s not very well curated.

Many funds are priced in Euros. That isn’t ideal if you’re keen to avoid FX fee entanglements.

Precious metal ETCs are entirely missing. This prevents you from investing in gold holdings that can benefit from FSCS protection. (I don’t suppose that’s because Revolut would rather not cannibalise its precious metals business, huh?)

You can put together a reasonably-priced passive portfolio with the ETFs available. But many categories are only represented by one GBP-priced fund. And some sub-asset classes are missing altogether.

Searching for ETFs is also finickity.

Granted, they all appear as a big long list in an obvious place. But the only way to filter is by popping your best taxonomic guess into the search field – which is hit-and-miss.

For instance, the term ‘Emerging Markets’ elicited only euro-priced ETFs. The GBP-priced versions didn’t show up, because they were tagged with the infinitely cooler-sounding ‘EM’.

Meanwhile, the term ‘bonds’ snubbed ETFs identifying as gilts. And so on.

Given the app’s general slickness, its ETF-tracing powers seem unnecessarily cumbersome. Perhaps that will change with future updates.

In other news, there’s no regular investing plan. Though those wily European Revolut customers have one, so maybe this feature will come to Blighty one day, too.

Finally, there’s very little on the investor education side. Happily though you can get that from Monevator. Start with this piece on passive investing and this one featuring low-cost ETFs.

Revolut investing review summary

Revolut offers existing customers an easy pathway into investing. However, cheaper, better-featured alternatives are available from the dedicated investment platforms.

Pros

• Clean and navigable app that doesn’t overwhelm
• Straightforward if you’re an existing customer
• Low minimum order value

Cons

• Limited range of ETFs
• Complicated fee structure
• Unregulated precious metals offering
• Can’t transfer ISAs in. Can only transfer out in cash

Trustpilot review score: 4.5 (but most reviewers are commenting on Revolut’s banking services.)

Take it steady,

The Accumulator

1. Exchange Traded Commodities. [↩]
2. That is, ordinary share trading accounts, not ISAs or SIPPs. [↩]

What caught my eye this week.

For most of the week, my Weekend Reading links included articles warning that Rachel Reeves was finally going to cut the cash ISA allowance at her Mansion House speech next week.

The rumours had run for months. At last reality was at hand!

Yet by the end of the week, it was all change.

From the BBC:

Rachel Reeves was thought to be considering reducing the allowance for tax-free cash savings, in a bid to encourage people to put money into stocks and shares instead and boost the economy.

But strong opposition from banks, building societies and consumer campaigners mean any such move has been put on hold.

The Building Societies Association said it welcomed the Treasury stepping back from making any “hasty decisions” on ISAs.

So, we’re finally out of the woods on this one?

Not so fast. That same BBC article quotes a Treasury spokesperson as saying:

“Our ambition is to ensure people’s hard-earned savings are delivering the best returns and driving more investment into the UK economy.”

…and it adds that changes have not been ruled out for the future.

Similar pieces in The Guardian and the FT tell the same on/off story.

Stranger than fiction

Perhaps you blame the media for this.

After all, nothing gets a certain class of drive-by readers clicking and sharing like a threat to their personal wealth.

That was my co-blogger The Accumulator’s initial take.

TA compared the early cash ISA rumours to the annual ‘Pension Allowance to be SLASHED’ bogeyman that’s brought out every March – apparently almost in concert with wealth-gathering (and advertisement-running) financial services firms – only for things to stay the same most years.

But I judged there was more substance to the cash ISA threat. And by Thursday I was readying myself for some modest but smug satisfaction at being proven right.

Foiled again.

Smoke and fire

There are reasons why I don’t entirely blame the media for the ISA story however.

Firstly, many people want to hear about this stuff. Even if it is all rumours.

When the threat to cash ISAs flared up for the second or third time earlier this year, I ignored it in these links. I felt it was time to wait for concrete news from the Chancellor.

Yet readers asked me afterwards why I’d not included the story. Some even sent me links to it themselves.

The more important reason not to shoot the messenger however is it’s the Government itself that is cranking the handle on this rumour roundabout.

That’s why all the main outlets ran with the ‘no change’ story within hours of each other on Friday.

The official word had come down from on high that cash ISAs were to be left alone. So could they please mention this ASAP to their readers?

Make up, break up

For decades now government policy has been more and more determined by focus groups, public relations concerns, and the electoral calculus, as much as by what the country really needed.

And for the past 15 years or so, this strategy has included a much more explicitly open dance to trail potential policies in the press to see how the public reacts.

Whoever is running stuff up the flagpole in Downing Street must have severe tennis elbow by now!

Of course, politicians have rarely ever given us entirely what we needed, unencumbered by worries about the democratic popularity contest. Perhaps unity governments during wartime were the exception.

But with the present crew the situation is getting out of hand.

We saw it before Rachel Reeves’ first Budget. Her doom-laden stocktake on Labour winning the General Election raised more questions than it answered, leading to months of speculation. From an early mood of relief and even optimism, Britain fell into almost a paralytic stupor waiting to find out what Reeves would axe, or where taxes would rise.

And now savers have endured many months of wondering about their cash ISAs – thanks entirely to trial balloons being floated up from Whitehall.

Ask the audience

I understand why they feel the need do this.

Much of the electorate has lost all interest in evaluating policies. The Overton Window to make outlandish pronouncements in opposition about everything from immigration to taxation to nuclear submarines is wide open. But that same fact-free tribalism narrows the freedom to act when in power.

On top of that, judging by last week’s welfare U-turn Labour can’t even predict how a few hundred of its own MPs will respond to its policies. The electorate must be a black box by comparison.

However making up legislation as you go – based on how much furore your hints caused on the Internet and whether you think you can handle any further backlash – is no way to run a country.

Many of us despair at the US president’s reality TV show-style decision making.

But this policy-by-public-plebiscite experiment we’re running is arguably only a more genteel version.

Deal or no deal

There are consequences everywhere – but at Monevator our concern is with people’s finances.

On the one hand, MPs and mandarins alike lambast the public for not thinking long-term about their investments, or for not putting enough money towards their distant retirements.

Yet at the same time ministers fiddle with our savings and pensions vehicles with every other Budget – and threaten to make twice as many changes in between.

Enough is enough. This government started with five long years ahead of it and a big majority. Plenty of time to do what it thought was right upfront, and then to manage the consequences in the aftermath.

Pull the bandaid off if you’re going to do it. Picking at it will just make it worse.

Have a great weekend.

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