Hargreaves Lansdown

HL's pricing has two layers, and the second one is where the money goes.

The annual account charge is the layer that matters most. On funds it is tiered: 0.35% up to GBP 250,000, 0.25% from GBP 250,000 to GBP 1m, 0.10% from GBP 1m to GBP 2m, and nothing above GBP 2m. On shares, ETFs, investment trusts, bonds, gilts and VCTs it is 0.35% capped at GBP 12.50 per month — GBP 150 a year per account. The same schedule now applies across the Fund and Share Account, the ISA and the SIPP, which is a simplification on the old per-wrapper caps.

The dealing layer was cut sharply in the 2025 repricing:

• Online and in-app share deals: GBP 6.95 if you placed 0–19 deals last month, GBP 3.95 from 20 deals
• One-off online fund deals: GBP 1.95
• Monthly regular investing by Direct Debit: free, on both funds and shares
• Phone or postal dealing: GBP 29

Then there is the charge almost nobody prices in. Overseas trades convert at a tiered FX spread: 0.99% on the first GBP 10,000, 0.50% from GBP 10,000 to GBP 25,000, and 0.20% above GBP 25,000, with a further 1% spread applied when foreign dividends are converted back to sterling. A GBP 2,000 purchase of a US share costs GBP 6.95 in commission and roughly GBP 19.80 in FX — the conversion is nearly three times the commission.

What HL does not charge is also worth stating: no inactivity fee, no account opening or closing fee, no charge to transfer out (including in specie), no charge to hold cash, and no charge on Junior ISA dealing or administration. Government levies — 0.5% UK stamp duty, 1% Irish stamp duty, the GBP 1.50 PTM levy over GBP 10,000, and 0.2%–0.4% financial transaction tax in France, Spain and Italy — are passed through unchanged.

Hargreaves Lansdown Asset Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference 115248, registered in England and Wales as company number 01896481, with its registered office at 1 College Square South, Anchor Road, Bristol BS1 5HL. Client money is held in segregated accounts at UK banks and client investments are held in nominee, ring-fenced from HL's own balance sheet.

Eligible clients are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to GBP 85,000 per person per firm. That covers the failure of HL itself or a shortfall in client assets. It does not cover investments losing value, and it does not cover the failure of a fund HL sold you — a distinction the Woodford episode made painfully concrete.

The ownership picture changed materially in 2025. HL floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2007 and spent seventeen years as a FTSE 100 constituent with quarterly public reporting. In August 2024 it agreed a GBP 5.4 billion takeover at GBP 11.40 a share by a consortium of CVC Capital Partners, Nordic Capital and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority; the scheme was sanctioned by the court in March 2025 and the shares were delisted. The business is now private-equity owned. Client assets are unaffected and the regulatory permissions are unchanged, but investors lose the transparency of a listed parent — no more published quarterly numbers, and a capital structure that is harder to inspect from outside.

The Woodford Equity Income Fund is the incident worth knowing. HL promoted WEIF heavily through its best-buy lists, and roughly 130,000 of the fund's approximately 300,000 investors held it through HL. Claims manager RGL filed a High Court group claim in October 2022 and reported more than 9,600 claims after registration closed on 30 April 2025. HL has rejected the claims as lacking a substantive basis. Separately, the FCA's enforcement work on the fund itself concerned the authorised corporate director, Link Fund Solutions, rather than HL.

HL runs one platform in two forms, and the choice HL made was clarity over capability.

The website is the full account: research pages for every fund and share, portfolio valuation and performance analysis, dealing, the Wealth Shortlist, tax reporting, contribution and withdrawal tools, and the wrapper administration for ISAs and pensions. It loads fast, it survives market-open traffic, and a first-time investor can find the buy button without a manual. What it does not have is depth. There are no advanced order types beyond limit orders and stop-losses on shares, no depth of book, no configurable multi-monitor workspace, no charting worth the name, and no API. HL will not satisfy anyone who has used a real trading terminal.

The mobile app is the strongest part of the proposition and the reason HL keeps winning app awards. Biometric login, live streaming prices, dealing across every account type including the SIPP, the full research library, watchlists, and contribution management are all present. Parity with the website is close to complete, which is unusual — most UK platforms ship a cut-down app and leave the tax wrapper administration on desktop.

HL also reports an execution benefit that is easy to overlook: it advertises price improvement averaging around GBP 21 per share trade through its dealing desk, which on a GBP 6.95 commission is a meaningful offset for anyone dealing in size on UK shares.

Active Savings sits alongside the investment accounts and is genuinely differentiated. It is a cash marketplace: one application gives access to fixed-term and easy-access savings products from a panel of banks and building societies, with money moved between them inside the HL login rather than through a new account opening each time. For clients running a cash allocation alongside investments, it removes real friction.

HL is a long-only investment platform, and the boundaries are firm.

What you can hold: UK shares from the LSE main market and AIM, over 3,000 funds including unit trusts and OEICs, exchange-traded funds, investment trusts, corporate bonds and gilts, exchange-traded commodities, Venture Capital Trusts and Long-Term Asset Funds. Overseas access covers US markets (NASDAQ, NYSE and NYSE Arca), Canada (the Toronto Stock Exchange and the TSX Venture Exchange) and 14 European exchanges including Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Paris and the SIX Swiss Exchange — roughly 20 venues in total once the LSE is counted.

What you cannot hold: exchange-traded options, futures, spread bets, CFDs, spot forex, direct cryptocurrency, or fractional shares. There is no demo account either. HL has no answer for anyone who wants to hedge a position with a put, take a leveraged view on an index, or buy GBP 50 of a USD 900 US share.

That list of absences is the honest ceiling on HL's product score. For a UK investor building an ISA out of funds, investment trusts and blue-chip shares it is irrelevant — the coverage is complete for that job. For anyone whose plan involves derivatives, Asian or Australian listings, or sub-GBP 100 positions in expensive US names, HL simply does not reach.

The Wealth Shortlist deserves separate mention as a product in its own right. It is a curated list of funds HL's analysts have researched and selected for long-term potential, refreshed on a published schedule with written rationale. It is genuinely useful for investors who do not want to screen 3,000 funds themselves — and, as Woodford demonstrated, it is a best-buy list carrying a platform's implicit endorsement, which is exactly why it should inform a decision rather than make it.

Opening an HL account is one of the smoothest processes in UK retail investing. The application runs entirely online, typically takes around ten minutes, and needs a National Insurance number, UK address history and UK bank details. Identity is verified electronically in most cases; document uploads are the exception rather than the rule. There is no minimum to open a Fund and Share Account and it can be funded from as little as GBP 1, though the practical entry points for investing are GBP 100 as a lump sum or GBP 25 a month by Direct Debit.

Eligibility is the constraint rather than the process: HL serves UK residents. ISAs and Lifetime ISAs require UK tax residency by law, and US persons are not accepted. Clients who move abroad face restrictions on what they can continue to do.

Funding is by debit card, which credits effectively instantly, or by bank transfer and Direct Debit, which typically clear same day to two business days. Direct Debit is the backbone of HL's free regular investing service, and setting one up is the single cheapest way to use the platform: monthly investing carries no dealing commission at all on either funds or shares.

Withdrawals go back to a nominated UK bank account in the client's own name, are free, and normally arrive within one to three business days. Holding uninvested cash is free and earns interest, and there is no charge to close an account or to transfer out — including in-specie transfers of holdings to a competitor, which some platforms still charge per line.

The only currency you can hold is sterling. Overseas trades are converted at the point of dealing rather than settled in the local currency, which means an investor who buys and sells the same US share twice pays the FX spread four times. Anyone trading US stocks with any regularity should treat that as the deciding cost, not the GBP 6.95.

Research is where HL earns its premium, and it is not close.

The platform employs its own analysts and publishes original material rather than reselling a data feed. Every fund has a factsheet with HL's own commentary; the Wealth Shortlist carries written selection rationale; UK share research includes results previews and post-results notes on FTSE names; and there is a steady stream of market commentary, sector notes and podcast content. The share research and fund research libraries are free to all clients regardless of portfolio size, which is unusual — several competitors gate their better content behind higher tiers.

Portfolio tools are competent without being sophisticated: performance measurement against benchmarks, asset allocation breakdown, income forecasting, and capital gains reporting for the taxable account. It is enough for an investor reviewing their position annually and not enough for anyone who wants factor exposure or currency attribution.

Education is aimed squarely at people starting out, and it is well judged. Guides cover ISAs, pensions, drawdown, tax allowances, investment basics and retirement planning, and they are written in plain English rather than sales language. HL also runs webinars and publishes a regular investment podcast. For a first-time investor working out the difference between an ISA and a SIPP, or how the Lifetime ISA bonus works, this is among the clearest material available from any UK provider.

The fair criticism is that research and best-buy lists on a platform that is paid a percentage of assets are never fully neutral. HL's charges are levied on the value of what you hold, so the incentive runs toward holding more, for longer. The Wealth Shortlist is good work — but it is a list produced by the party collecting a fee on whatever you buy from it, and it should be read that way.

Support is HL's other genuine differentiator, and the one clients most often name when explaining why they tolerate the charges.

The helpdesk is UK-based in Bristol, staffed by HL employees rather than an outsourced contact centre, and reachable by phone, email and secure message from inside the account. It operates on weekdays during UK business hours with weekend cover limited. Waiting times are consistently short by industry standards, and the people answering are able to deal with wrapper mechanics — ISA transfers, pension contributions, drawdown paperwork, bed-and-ISA instructions — rather than reading from a script and escalating.

That competence matters more than it sounds. The complicated part of a UK investment account is rarely the trade; it is the transfer that stalls, the pension contribution that needs a tax-relief correction, or the probate case that needs a human. HL is set up to handle those on the phone.

There is no 24/7 cover, no live chat on all journeys, and no multilingual service — English only, UK clients only. For an execution-only platform serving one market, that is a defensible scope rather than a gap.

The public sentiment picture is broadly positive and unusually stable: HL sits well above the industry average on the main UK review sites, with service quality the dominant theme in positive reviews and cost the dominant theme in negative ones. That split is a fair summary of the whole proposition. Nobody leaves HL because the service was bad; they leave because they added up the annual charge.