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Overall Score 3.5

Overall Score

Our View

True Potential Investments, to give it its proper name, is one part of a wider business that offers financial advice through a network of small or one man band type advisers. In the Steps review, we’re focused on the digital..

What accounts are available?

Like a fair number of the other players in the DIWM space, True Potential keep it simple when it comes to the accounts they offer. They are the basic three that most people will use – the ISA, SIPP and General Investment Account or GIA. The SIPP allows investors to both invest and withdraw – so you don’t need to find alternative arrangements once you start to draw on your accumulated pension pot. All of which means its a mid-table score in this section.

ISA
Junior ISA
Lifetime ISA
Flexible ISA
SIPP (Accumulation)
SIPP (Drawdown)
Junior SIPP
GIA
Score 3

Score

What kind of investments can I make?

The choice at True Potential when it comes to investment portfolios is fixed at 5. They range from ‘defensive’ at one end, to ‘aggressive’ at the other with three more options in between. So that should mean there’s something for most investors, unless of course you want to take a sustainable approach to your wealth building – as there’s no socially responsible or ESG options available. Whilst True Potential make a big thing about you getting access to 9,000 investment professionals in 200 locations, what they mean is you’re getting access to funds run by some of the biggest investment houses like Goldman Sachs and UBS.

Number of ready made portfolios
5
Ethical/sustainable/
socially responsible
Pick your own individual funds available?
Score 2

Score

What account features are available?

A healthier score here as many of the things first time investors (in fact, any investors) need are offered here. There’s a questionnaire to help you choose from the five levels of risk available in the investment portfolios, for example. And there’s some neat tools to help visualise what potential returns might be like. There’s also a kind of ‘this is what you would have won’ tool based on past performance of their portfolios, and a similar tool for costs. One thing they also offer that might be of interest is cash back on shopping, which can be then used to invest. Quite an innovative idea.

Risk questionnaire to decide portfolio
Round-up investing
Monthly investing
Auto rebalance
Advice
Help to learn investing
Projected returns available
Score 4

Score

How can I access my account and get support?

Full marks for True Potential in this section – you can get in touch and access your account in all the ways we think are important, whether that’s online chat or telephone (accessed from every page in the website). You can also use a conventional desk top to login to your account once, or you can use the apps on your smart phone.

Chat app
Telephone support
Web access
App access
Score 5

Score

How much does it cost?

We’re a bit confused by the costs at True Potential if we’re honest. The platform fee you pay to them is low enough – in fact it’s one of the lowest of the DIWM platforms we have reviewed. But then the costs of the underlying funds in which they invest seem very high, and chatting with their online help people didn’t really help us understand why.

Platform fee
0.40%
Investment costs
0.76%
Subscription Fee
£0
Total
1.16%
Score 2.5

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