Updated: 18th January 2022
IWeb Review
Proudly offering a low cost, no frills service, but backed by the Lloyds name. The Easyjet of the online share dealing world.
The overall score is calculated as the sum of the individual section scores and then rebased to be out of 5.
Overall Score
Our View
What accounts are available?
IWeb keeps things simple – and offers just the three main account types: a general investment account (GIA), an Individual Savings Account (ISA) and a Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP). For most people that’s probably all you need to get started, unless you’re looking to invest on behalf of your children or grandchildren.
We upweighted scores for providers who had the basic accounts available - ISA, SIPP and GIA.
Score
What kind of investments can I make?
Top marks here for IWeb – they offer the full set of investment types, meaning you can buy and sell everything from shares in UK companies to those listed on 7 world markets, through to investment trusts and open-ended investment funds. There’s not much to help you choose though, so be aware of that before signing up – you’ll need to make your own decisions and probably do your research somewhere else. One stop shop – this is not.
We upweighted scores for providers who made funds, investment trusts, exchange traded funds and UK shares available. Bonds and international shares were less important.
Score
What services do they offer?
In line with the simplicity of service with no frills idea, there’s not much that IWeb do offer beyond the basics. There’s no longer an option for regular monthly investing, but on the plus side you can still set up an instruction to have any income you get in the form of divdends automatically reinvested. There’s also a markets and insights section for investment data and news articles.
The most important services were monthly investing, and dividend reinvestment, so we upweighted scores for platforms who provided these services.
Score
How much does it cost?
This is a bit of a funny one as IWeb has a charging system not seen anywhere else. It also means they get a low score, but if you keep your account with them a long time the costs start to look better. But for year 1, if you open an ISA or a GIA you’re going to pay an upfront fee. You don’t pay anything after that though for custody of your investments. Dealing charges are getting on for very cheap. Not quite free, but not far off, irrespective of the type of investments you deal in.