With a range of investment tools and guides, ready-made portfolios and extensive research, the company aims at making investing simple for its clients. Regarded as a secure FTSE 100 company, Hargreaves Lansdown hold quite a reputation. But the question is – how user-friendly is this platform? Here is a quick Hargreaves Lansdown trading platform review for you.
- How safe is your investment with Hargreaves Lansdown?
- How is your account protected by the Hargreaves Lansdown platform?
- Retirement plans by Hargreaves Lansdown
- Awards and recognition
How Safe is your Investment with Hargreaves Lansdown?
When you are investing in the highly volatile markets of shares and commodities, you will definitely need a stock broker to assist you with your trading and investments. When looking for the best Hargreaves Lansdown broker, the first and perhaps the only matter of concern is the safety of your investment, as there is always a risk involved with trading in shares. In this regard, Hargreaves Lansdown can be a safe bet for a number of reasons. Firstly, the company is a constituent of the FTSE 100, an index that lists the biggest companies of the UK. Another fact to take into consideration is that the company is regulated by FCA and is bound by its rules and regulations in the conduct of investment business.
Investors using the Hargreaves Lansdown platform are also covered by the provisions of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). With this coverage, investors can be sure that their funds will not be at stake even if Hargreaves Lansdown ceases to trade or the banks it is associated with for holding clients’ funds defaults. Apart from this, the company is registered in England and Wales with the Companies Act applying to it. All these regulations and affiliations with the regulatory bodies ensure that your trading and investment with Hargreaves Lansdown is safe.
How is your Account Protected by the Hargreaves Lansdown Platform?
When you make your broker comparison, you will first want to look at the reputation of the broker to ensure your money, in the form of your investments, is safe with them. This is when it becomes very important for you to keep a check on the security of your accounts. Hargreaves Lansdown utilises several measures to ensure that its clients’ accounts receive the best protection in the form of physical, procedural and electronic controls. To start with, there is a two-step login procedure that uses drop down menus. This helps secure client data that may be obtained through ‘key-logging’ software. The company has a secure encryption and validation feature in place, which is evident with the gold padlock symbol that appears on the screen as well as with the address bar turning green, indicating a genuine website.
Next, the company freezes or locks your account after several incorrect attempts with the password. This ensures that your account is protected from any unauthorized access. You can unlock the account by contacting the respective department and answering some security questions. The trading platform also displays the exact date and time of your last login, which is a good way to check that you are the only person accessing the account. There is a secure withdrawal process that requires a separate trading password. All these measures show a high degree of care taken by Hargreaves Lansdown to secure its clients’ accounts.
Retirement Plans by Hargreaves Lansdown
For most financially independent people, planning for their retirement days is quite an important concern. As a matter of fact, many investors make investments in some low risk trading instruments as a security for their retirement. Whether you are in your retirement days, moving towards it or a long way away from this phase, Hargreaves Lansdown can offer you several plans that can ensure you have a carefree as well as a financially independent retirement life. For those who are saving for retirement and have some time for it, they can try the SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension), which is a flexible and tax-efficient way to save for your retirement.
Unlike regular investments, the SIPPs do not allow for any withdrawals until the investor’s 55th birthday and are solely perceived as beneficial post retirement. Of course, there are some tax benefits that the investors can claim from the time they make an investment in SIPP. The advantage with the Hargreaves Lansdown SIPP is the security of investing with a FTSE 100 company, using the HL app to check the pension account and having access to expert advice with your investment decisions. Using the right pension strategies can have a major impact on how you manage your finances post retirement, so it is important to consider the right advice.
Awards and Recognition
Awards and recognition are an essential aspect of judging any investment trading platform when doing a Hargreaves Lansdown broker comparison. The Hargreaves Lansdown platform has a collection of prestigious and highly reputed awards since the time of its inception. The company has been recognised annually by some of the best names in the industry for their top-quality service. In 2017, the company received a brilliant recognition as the ‘Best Direct Share Dealing Provider.'
The company was also the proud recipient of the ‘Best Direct SIPP Provider’ in the same year, while the readers of Investment Magazine voted the company ‘Best SIPP Provider, 9 Years Running.’ These are just some of the awards the company has been bestowed with in the years from its inception till today. With the innumerable awards the company has received in the past three to four years, the reputation of Hargreaves Lansdown has increased manifold. Awards are a hallmark of any company in any industry, but particularly in the stock broker market. The below are the awards the company has received during 2018.
- Britain’s Most Admired Companies – Management Today
- Best Online Presence – City of London Wealth Management Awards
- Regional Wealth Management Company of the Year Wales & Western England – City of London Wealth Management Awards
What can you Invest in Using Hargreaves Lansdown?
The variety of investment choices available with the Hargreaves Lansdown trading platform is one of the key aspects that makes this platform very popular. The company offers its investors a choice from over 2,500 funds, giving them the liberty of choosing any investment instrument that would be ideal for their investment goals. The trading platform offers a variety of funds including shares, ETFs and other investment trusts. While most investors may want to start investing with shares, it has been noted that many gradually take up ETFs and investment trusts as well.
These are usually cheaper forms of investment yet are not commonly available across other trading platforms. Some advice for investors here would be to look for all the investment choices they have, gather research information related to these investment choices, check their historical performance and decide on the ones you find most appropriate as per your investment goals on whether you are looking for quick short-term returns or a stable long-term revenue. Here is a quick breakdown of the investment instruments you can invest in with Hargreaves Lansdown:
- Over 2,500 funds
- Shares listed on the UK, European and Canadian stock exchanges
- Bonds – both government-owned and corporate
- ETFs
- Investment trusts
Share Dealing Review of Hargreaves Lansdown
Hargreaves Lansdown offers a variety of trading vehicles, shares being the most common as well as the more varied of them all. The trading platform offers you the opportunity to deal in shares of your own choice and remains a favourite trading platform for most investment professionals with their personal investment trading accounts. Getting started with your online share trading using the Hargreaves Lansdown trading platform is simple, with a quick account opening process that will usually only take a few minutes. The platform makes it convenient for you to add funds into your account using your debit card.
The investment choices include a wide range of UK-based shares as well as shares of overseas companies along with ETFs, gift bonds and investment trusts. When trading on the Hargreaves Lansdown platform, investors get free live share prices, stop loss alerts and interactive charts with expert research and analysis for wise and profitable investment decisions. The charge or the trading fee that Hargreaves Lansdown takes depends on your investment frequency. For those investors who had 20 or more investment deals in the prior month, the charge is £5.95 per deal, while for those who had over 10 to 19 deals, the charge is £8.85 per deal. Those investors who had less than 10 deals in the previous month will have to pay £11.95 as the charge per deal.
Tools and Investment Advice for Customer Reference
Hargreaves Lansdown offers a whole set of investment guides and other such free tools, which help investors, both inexperienced and professionals, to take well-informed investment decisions. The guides provided by the Hargreaves Lansdown trading platform are made in collaboration with industry experts, and this information, if you use correctly, can take you places with your investment decisions. These guides and tools can also be accessed by non-members of the Hargreaves Lansdown investors’ community.
The Pension Calculator is a helpful tool for people in retirement or nearing retirement, as it provides information on how much your investment will be worth when you retire. Not just that, the website offers suggestions on various investment options apart from Pension schemes such as an ISA Calculator, a guide to SIPPS and an investor’s guide to ISAs. The ISA Calculator provides investors with information on what could be the future worth of the ISA. With the guides on SIPPS and ISAs, Hargreaves Lansdown aims at empowering its investors with the right knowledge on how to save time, evade tax and plan good savings, thereby contributing positively towards their overall investment goals of having a financially secure tomorrow. This customer advice can be accessed through the available tools (guides) on the website as well as through direct customer support service.
Should you use the Hargreaves Lansdown Trading Platform?
For investors with portfolios worth up to £100,000, the trading platform of Hargreaves Lansdown can be very competitively priced. For portfolios that are larger than that, it is possible to get discounted charges based on individual account status. If you are planning to invest with Hargreaves Lansdown, it is important to go through the charges explicitly provided on the website for better clarity on what to expect. While the trading platform is quite user-friendly and offers great support to investors, there is one negative. Hargreaves Lansdown charges a fee when you want to quit their platform. However, if you are able to liquidate your investment prior to transferring, you can bring down the exit penalty to about £25.
Investors like Hargreaves Lansdown’s customer service, website, app and investment choices provided. Apart from that, you can open your account in minutes using your debit card and start your investments with as little as £25, so your options as an investor get quite varied. The Hargreaves Lansdown trading platform is competitively priced and is particularly attractive for new investors. Be it the company’s easy-to-read guides or the impeccable service to its clients, the company has won hands-down in customer satisfaction. The company doesn’t just offer great service, but a much-diversified range of products to deal in as well, all competitive and highly lucrative. This is the reason the company is widely recognised in the highly volatile shares and commodities markets.
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