Updated: 22nd January 2022
Nutmeg Review
A trailblazer in the ‘do it with me’ space and still very much the market leader in the UK. Owned by US investment giant JPMorgan, with a relatively wide range for these simplified offerings.
What is Nutmeg?
Nutmeg, apart from being a cooking ingredient, Nutmeg is the original Do-It-With-Me (DIWM) investment platform. Known also as a robo-adviser, or digital wealth manager, Nutmeg was at the vanguard of this new way of investing in 2011. Nutmeg is an online investment service, that takes you through a questionnaire to help work out which of their ‘solutions’ works for you.
Also if you tell them about your goals, Nutmeg can tailor their approach to help you achieve them. Then they point you in the direction of one of 30 ready made portfolios based on that assessment, and off you go! They now have over 185,000 active clients and offer a number of investment styles such as ‘socially responsible’, ‘smart alpha’ and ‘fixed allocation’, all of which is explained well on their rather natty website.
Overall Score 4
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Our View
What accounts are available?
Nutmeg holds joint highest score (with Wealthsimple) for this section. They offer a wide choice of accounts covering all the major ones and some of the minor ones too. As well as a stocks and shares ISA for you, there’s also a Junior ISA for the little ones. You can also invest for a pension with a Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP), which allows you accumlate investments; and you can drawdown your pension in retirement with Nutmeg – not all platforms allow this, so that’s a big benefit.
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What kind of investments can I make?
The Nutmeg process is based on questions about your attitude to risk and selection of an investment style, with which they then choose a portfolio for you. That means you can’t just pick for yourself from the list of investments they offer. This is good news if you don’t have time or inclination to do so. There’s also good news if you want to invest in a socially responsible way and only buy companies and bonds that meet certain standards. Nutmeg use a scoring system to determine what makes it into their portfolio and what doesn’t. Also worth noting is that for all portfolios, the investment process is not just a machine in a cupboard somewhere. It involves human decision making too, and Nutmeg make much of this.
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What account features are available?
While Nutmeg doesn’t show you a range of projected returns for potential investments anymore, they have now built up a track record of the actual performance for their portfolios going back to 2012. This is unusual amongst their peer group as many of the others haven’t been around anywhere near as long as Nutmeg. Past performance is not an accurate guide to what may or may not happen in the future, but it does give you a steer on how different market circumstances might impact a portfolio. One other feature not available from many of the other platforms is financial advice – worth noting if you need more help than their online guides and tools provide.
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How can I access my account and get support?
Full marks here for Nutmeg! You can get help online through the chat app which is easy to find and use. If you need to actually speak to someone the phone number is at the bottom of every page of the website, not hidden away in a minor subsection. You can access your account through a standard web browser on PC or Mac, but also through the Nutmeg app which has both iOS and Andriod versions. There’s a well laid out FAQ section online too, and also regular insight articles under the banner ‘Nutmegonomics’.
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How much does it cost?
There are only two bands of scoring here – those with fees over 0.9% and those with them below. Nutmeg falls into the latter for our imaginary £20,000 ISA example. This is for their ‘fully managed’ portfolio which means an investment professional watches over your investments with the ability to make changes on a daily basis.
Score 2.5
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Is Nutmeg a legitimate Company?
Yes – 100%. And what’s more it’s now part of the J.P. Morgan group – who are one of the world’s largest financial companies. They’ve been around since 2011 which also makes them the oldest of these new-fangled DIWM platforms.
As of 2022, Nutmeg is also authorised and regulated by the UK’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Nutmeg is also covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) which means you may able claim compensation if Nutmeg doesn’t deliver on its obligations to you. But note that doesn’t mean you will be bailed out if the value of your investments goes down – that’s the risk you have to accept when you invest.
Is Nutmeg Good For Beginners?
If you’re looking to get started investing in stocks and shares, Nutmeg is as good a place as any to kick off. Why? Well for a start off, they score 4 out 5 in our unbiased, objective review which means the products, services and investments they offer stack up against the competition.
Not only that Nutmeg offer all the basics that beginners will need to get started, for example a stocks and shares ISA, which protects any gains you make, or income you receive from tax. A great place to start because you will making the most of the hard earned cash you invest.
Nutmeg also has lots of help for beginner investors – check out Nutmegonomics which is essentially a blog with articles covering saving, investing and retirement.