Summary

Hargreaves Lansdown is quite an old name in the investment world, having been founded in 1981. From its headquarters in Bristol, UK, it handles over £120 billion from over 1.7 million clients. However, the company is currently a UK company, though it services clients outside the country as well. But it means its only regulation is from the local licensing body, the Financial Conduct Authority, which is still one of the most trusted regulators for investment service providers.

The Hargreaves Lansdown trading platform offers basically three investment types, mostly related to shares and funds. The shares form the main asset class, while there are also corporate bonds, gilts, and ETFs to trade. You can access these through a variety of relatively flexible account types that the platform offers, including the stocks & shares ISAs and SIPPs. These account types are fairly easy to open, and each comes with its own requirements and benefits.

Now, let us get into our more in-depth Hargreaves Lansdown review, where we will expand on all of these. We will begin, first, with a brief overview of the advantages and disadvantages of investing on the Hargreaves Lansdown platform. We will also explain in detail the trading instruments, stock trading features, regulations, fees and commission, and also account types. Then, we will discuss other aspects like the trading platforms, payment methods, safety measures, and customer support before taking some users’ opinions about the broker.

Available Assets

Hargreaves Lansdown is not an all-around broker like most other platforms, as its available assets are share-related. It has a sizable collection of trading instruments of various types, including ETFs, Investment trusts, and funds. You can trade in any of these once you have the relevant account type. This Hargreaves Lansdown review will focus mostly on the Share-dealing aspect of the platform, but in this section, we will overview each of the available investment types.

Shares

Using a Shares ISA account or any other suitable type, you can access a vast market of shares and stocks from an array of industries and corporations worldwide. These include the more high-activity markets like the New York, Tokyo, Paris, Frankfurt, and Berlin exchanges. Share investors on the platform will be able to take advantage of a well-organised system of share-dealing tips, news, insights, and expert analytics. Moreover, the prices are pretty manageable, though the fees, where they exist, may sometimes be a bit high. There is also no leverage, as the shares are the real underlying asset.

ETFs

On the Hargreaves Lansdown platform, you can invest in a range of exchange-traded funds from a variety of markets. Most of the broker’s ETFs track stocks or shares, hence the share-relatedness. However, some also track bond indexes, and there are also ETPs and ETCs (exchange-traded products and commodities/currencies, respectively) that track other assets like crypto, commodities, precious metals, and agricultural produce. The more highly traded funds you will find include the Vanguard and iShare PLC funds.

Corporate Bonds and Gilts

With its portfolio of 700+ corporate bonds, the Hargreaves Lansdown bond dealing service is pretty robust. There are also Gilts, UK Government bonds, that help finance public spending, and Permanent Interest Bearing Shares that work similarly to bonds and are issued by building societies in the UK. Most of the bonds and gilts on the broker can only be dealt via phone and are subject to phone dealing charges that we will discuss in the relevant section of this Hargreaves Lansdown review. However, you can also deal with some of them online at regular online dealing charges. The Funds and shares account is the main account type allowing you to trade these assets.

Investment Trusts

These are funds, but they are set up like companies so that you can buy and sell their stocks and shares. In this type of investment, you invest in a range of shares and trusts managed by an investment manager. There are about 400+ such trusts you can invest in, and they span a wide range of sectors, including real estate and banking.

Funds

Funds are tradable from professionally managed portfolios, just like investment trusts, and they offer access to diverse investments. There are 3,000+ funds and OEICs from leading fund managers on the platform, and they include such names as Invesco Perpetual, Artemis, and Jupiter.

Stock Trading at Hargreaves Lansdown

As we’ve pointed out before now, all of Hargreaves Lansdown’s trading instruments are share-related, though some of them, such as bonds and ETFs, can allow you to deal in some assets that are not shares. However, in this section of the review, we will examine the share dealing/stock trading sector of the platform.

Hargreaves Lansdown’s portfolio contains about 8,000+ shares from various global markets, some of which we will see shortly.  The platform probably has the biggest shares portfolio of any UK broker currently operating. Pricing is generally great, with standard live share prices and relatively fewer costs than most other brokers. And if you invest through an ISA account, any of your dividends will be tax-exempt. Now, let’s look at the available exchanges, charges, and other details for stock trading.

Available Stock Exchanges at Hargreaves Lansdown

Share sourcing on Hargreaves Lansdown covers a wide range of national exchanges, each with its own relatively unique trading conditions and associated risks. The exchanges you can find on the platform include but are not limited to the following.

Stock Trading Fees & Commission at Hargreaves Lansdown

The share-dealing fee system is built to encourage more trading deals on users’ accounts. For starters, the fees are very minimal, as the only charge specifically related to shares is the dealing charge. Then, there is the fact that the amount you pay for online share dealing depends on how many trading deals you made in the preceding month. The cool thing about it is that it does not really matter if you have multiple accounts; you don’t have to meet the requirements for each individual one. Rather, Hargreaves Lansdown counts all the deals made across all your accounts held under the same client number, so the rate you pay in February, for instance, will depend on how many share deals you do in January.

In any case, the share dealing charge is £11.95 for 0 to 9 deals, £8.95 for 10 to 19 deals, and £5.95 for 20 deals or more.

Stock Trading Leverage at Hargreaves Lansdown

The shares on Hargreaves Lansdown are the real, underlying asset and not CFDs or any leveraged format. As such, you can’t trade shares with leverage on the platform. While this reduces risk (since leverage can cause your losses to extend out of proportion), it does mean you have to pay the full price for your shares.

Regulations

Though Hargreaves Lansdown traders can register from almost anywhere in the world, the platform is currently entirely UK-based and does currently have any branch or regional offices outside British territory. As such, its only regulator is the local authority, and traders have to either live in the UK or be UK tax residents.

Hargreaves Lansdown Asset Management Limited: The broker is the trading name of this company and it is located at 1 College Square South, Anchor Road, BS1 5HL. It is authorised and regulated by the FCA, and its client protection is based on requirements that are binding within this jurisdiction.

• Company Number: 01896481

Fees and Commissions

The structure of fees and commissions at Hargreaves Lansdown is just a tad complex. On the one hand, the fees are generally very low, making trading quite affordable and cost-efficient; on the other hand, there appear to be quite a lot of them. This section of the review will examine these fees under the broad categories of trading and non-trading fees.

Trading Fees

Trades and other trading-related activities come with costs known as trading fees. A trading fee will usually be a small fraction of the total cost of an asset, such as some spreads, and it can also be in the form of a commission. There are many types of trading fees overall, and here are the ones you may have to pay on Hargreaves Lansdown.

Spread

The difference between an asset’s buy and sell prices is known as the spread. There are no fixed or general spreads on Hargreaves Lansdown, as every ETP’s spread is unique and subject to several different influences. There is also the indicative spread, which is an estimation of the spread displayed on each ETP’s factsheet and is based on the most current buy and sell prices available.

Dealing Charges

These are essentially trading commissions or charges, and as we have seen before now, how much you get to pay depends on how much dealing activity you already have under your belt. The fee ranges from £11.95 per deal for up to 9 deals to a much lower £5.95 per deal for 20 deals or above, and they apply to both ETFs and Shares. There are no dealing charges for funds and investment trusts, though there is a 1% fee for dealing Bonds and Gilts, which can only be done over the phone. This is essentially a phone dealing charge (different from the online dealing one), and it can range from a minimum of £20 to a maximum of £50.

Fund Charges

Hargreaves Lansdown also charges an annual fee for funds held in ISAs, and these depend on the value of funds in the account. For instance, funds held in Stocks and Shares ISAs are charged 0.45% if they are under £250,000, 0.25% if they are between that figure and  £1m, and 0.1% between that and £2m. Above £2m, there is no Funds charge. For funds held in Lifetime ISAs, the charge is 0.25% if the value is under  £1m, 0.1% if between £1m and £2m, and zero charges for funds beyond that.

 Non-Trading Fees

Non-trading fees, which a platform will usually charge for more passive activity on an account, are the opposite of trading costs. Some of them, such as administrative charges incurred for services that assist trade, may be somewhat relevant to trading activities, but none, however, are based specifically on trading activity. Examples of this type of fee include conversion, deposit, withdrawal, and inactivity fees. Here are the non-trading fees you will be charged on Hargreaves Lansdown.

Annual Holding Fees

These are fees that the platform charges per annum for assets held, including funds and shares. For instance, if you hold shares, bonds, gilts, investment trusts, etc., from overseas in your account, you will be charged a fee of up to 0.45% annually. For holding funds in a SIPP account,  your charge per year will range from 0.45% on the first £250,000 you invest to no holding charge at all for investments above the £2 million mark.

Equity Regular Savings

The equity regular saving feature is available for FTSE 350 shares, as well as some special investment trusts and ETFs, and it carries a charge of £25 per stock per month.

Other Charges

The charges grouped here make up the larger set of charges, as there are several of them. There is a 0.5% UK stamp duty fee, which, for residual shares, is generally rounded up to the nearest £5 (the fee is 1% for Irish shares, 0.3% for French shares, and 0.1% for Italian shares). Then, there is the £1 fee for the panel on takeovers and mergers (per  £10,000 of investment).

Account Types

Charges are not the only thing the broker has in relative abundance, as it also seems to have quite a number of account types that you can choose from. Each of the Hargreaves Lansdown accounts for investment is suited for one or more forms of asset handling, with some carrying unique charges and fees of their own. There are accounts for savings, accounts for both savings and investments and specialized accounts for self-investing. We will overview the various account options in this section of our Hargreaves Lansdown review.

Individual Savings Account

Known as the stocks and shares ISA, this account type is one of two that are great for share trading. It allows you to grow and withdraw your investments in a tax-free setting and is only available for UK residents 18 or above. However, the stocks and shares ISA is very limited in how much investment you can make, as its annual investment limit is £20,000 – this is the type of account you only consider when you don’t intend to make particularly huge investments. The minimum deposit requirement for this account type is £100, which you can pay as a lump sum or piecemeal at £25 per month through Direct Debit.

Funds and Shares Account

This is the ideal account type for high-volume share trading, and it allows you to trade funds. It also allows you to make good use of such benefits as your tax-free dividend, capital gains, and personal savings allowances. The funds and shares account has no investment limit, and the minimum deposit requirement is the same as that of the ISAs. The only demographic requirement for this account type is that you be a UK and EEA resident.

SIPP

The Self-Invested Pension account also allows you to make your own investments tax-free. You can withdraw up to 25% of your earnings under this tax exemption, and the maximum contribution is as much as you can earn, which the account page says is up to £40,000 annually. Moreover, there is an extra tax benefit for senior citizens, with up to 45% tax relief on your contributions if you are under 75 years old. If you are a Scottish investor, you can get up to 47%.

Lifetime ISA

This is a type of independent savings account that enables you to save and invest for a home or financial safety later in life, with up to £1,000 per year in extra government aid. This aid amounts to 25% of the far more confining annual investment limit of £1,000. However, this limit only holds until you are  50, and it counts towards your Shares ISA limit of £4,000.

Active Savings

This account is a full savings account that is taxed as savings interest. Up to £1,000 of your savings will be tax-exempt, and there is no limit to how much you can save. However, it is worth noting that individual savings products may come with their own unique limits.

Junior SIPP

The Junior SIPP is a self-invested personal pension you can set up for your child, ward, or any minor you wish. The account type also enjoys government aid of up to 20% as well as about 25% tax exemption. The total amount of investment that can happen in a Junior SIPP account is £3,600, and you can only open one for your child if he/she is a UK resident.

Junior Stocks and Shares ISA

If you want a stocks and shares ISA that saves for your child or ward, this is the account type for you. Aside from tax-free growth, it also has a higher annual investment cap of £9,000. It also affords your child or ward tax-free withdrawals when they clock 18, and anyone can fund the account. And aside from the UK residency requirement, your child will have to have had their Child Trust Fund transferred to a Junior ISA.

Cash ISA

This account type allows you to save up to £20,000 tax-free. It comes with the same requirements as the Junior stocks and shares ISA, except that its minimum deposit is £1 and the requirement may change depending on your chosen savings products.

Trading Platforms

Here, the broker has the same limitation in trading platform scope that most other UK-only brokers tend to have: it does not seem to have very many platforms. For one, it does not operate any third-party platforms like MT4. This section of the Hargreaves Lansdown review will look at what the platform has to offer.

Desktop Trading Platform

There are no Hargreaves Lansdown trading apps for desktop systems, which is a bit of a letdown. However, the platform currently operates a web trader platform that you can access on a PC. The look and feel of it are enjoyable, and it has some great tools for charting, analysis, and research. However, one significant downside to the web platform is its lack of customizability. It also, quite noticeably, lacks two-factor authentication.

Overview

The webtrader provides comprehensive, both detailed and summary, overviews of any given asset, enabling you to keep up to speed on that asset at a glance.

Charts and Performance

With comprehensive charts and performance indicators, the Hargreaves Lansdown webtrader allows you to track the price trends and other performance metrics of any asset.

News and Updates

You can also enjoy regular news and updates about assets, markets, and other things of relevance to your investing on the Hargreaves Lansdown platform.

Dealing

The platform also offers a reasonably user-friendly interface, although not aesthetically top of the bar, that allows you to place and set your trade parameters seamlessly.

How to Open an Account and Start Trading On Hargreaves Lansdown Webtrader

If you want to trade on the Hargreaves Lansdown Webtrader, you have to open an account that suits the kind of trading. Here’s how you can do that:

1. Visit the platform website and click ‘Choose Your Account’ on the Homepage. You will be taken to a page where you can look at the account options and pick one.
2. When you pick an option, you will be taken to a page that explains all you need to know about it. After reading through, you can click on the ‘Open Your Account’ button at the page bottom to proceed.
3. The next stage of your online application is the Declaration, where you will provide your full name, nationality, telephone, residency, and other details. You will also have to provide your bank account number and sort code and set an amount to pay into your account monthly.
4. Next, there is the part of the process where you select the type of assets you want to invest in. You can complete it now or skip it and do it later.
5. Having passed the previous stage, you must now configure your account settings, including such parameters as share-dealing and live pricing options. Once done, you can click on the account opening button to complete the process.
6. You can now proceed to verify your account by electronic means, providing document screenshots. However, note that your electronic verification may fail for a number of reasons, including having recently changed addresses. If that happens, you will be required to call in and complete the process by telephone.

Mobile Apps

Aside from the web platform, the Hargreaves Lansdown mobile app is the only other platform the broker operates. While the app has a great search function, a nice aesthetic, and general user-friendliness, it lacks alert features. Here are some of the main features you will find on the app.

Security

The Hargreaves Lansdown app comes with secure encryption and security features such as biometric face or fingerprint lock.

Live Share Prices

On the broker’s mobile app, you can seamlessly access live market prices for shares and other investments. All of these will be displayed in the appropriate live updates section.

Fast Trading

The mobile app has a sleek design and its trading features are designed to be easily accessed and used. This allows you to trade and invest conveniently and on the go.

Watchlist

From the Watchlist section, you will be able to keep close tabs on all your favourite investments, so you can respond to any new trends on time.

How to Open an Account and Invest on the Hargreaves Lansdown Mobile Trading App

Having seen the top features on the platform, let’s now see how to open an account and start trading. The process is pretty simple, and you can do it from the app or on a desktop through the website.

1. Open your phone’s mobile app store, then search and download the Hargreaves Lansdown mobile app.
2. From the account options on your screen, choose your preferred account type, or you can find the Stocks and shares ISA from the relevant section.
3. The first opening page that comes up will contain some relevant information you need to know before opening an account. Once you are sure you understand all of it, you can tap on ‘Open Your ISA Now’ or any relevant prompt.
4. The first stage of registration is the declaration stage, where you will provide important personal information, such as your name, title, telephone number, postcode, date of birth, etc. You can also choose an amount to add to your account, which you can change later.
5. Next comes the investment options stage, where you can set the type of investments you want to engage with. Once you have set these, click the button to proceed.
6. You will now have to set your account parameters in the account settings stage, after which you will have completed the registration process.
7. You can now verify your account electronically by providing screenshots of requested documents. With your documents verified, you can now access your account and begin to trade.

Payment Methods

Next in our review of the broker is the payment system. What are the available methods for making deposits and withdrawals at Hargreaves Lansdown, and are they any good?

Unfortunately, as seems to be the case among most UK-only savings and investment brokers, the platform has a very limited set of payment methods. Currently, you can only fund your account using Credit/Debit cards and bank wire transfers. Other methods like crypto, e-wallets, and electronic banking are not available.

Deposit

You can deposit in any of the Hargreaves Lansdown accounts using Debit cards, Credit cards or bank transfer, and there is at least one rule to keep in mind. That rule is that the account you are depositing from must be in your name, and it has to be specified or listed in your account settings as a funding account.

Withdrawals

You can also withdraw funds from your various accounts using credit cards, debit cards and bank wire transfers at a fee of exactly £0. At least, this is on the Hargreaves Lansdown side of the equation, as your network provider or bank may charge you a fee of their own. In any case, Faster Payment, which the platform uses, will typically have your funds in your account in under 2 business days at no withdrawal costs. The broker also has a maximum daily withdrawal amount of  £99,999 per account daily.

Account Base Currency

Your account base currency is the currency in which your financial figures and transactions will be denominated. Currently, the Great British Pound is the only base currency you can use on the platform.

Research and Education

Research and education are comparatively strong points for Hargreaves Lansdown, as it offers a pretty robust library of educational and research content. This section of our review will overview this aspect of the broker.

The research and education program at Hargreaves Lansdown is divided into two main sections, namely the ‘Learn’ and ‘News and Insights’ sections. The News and Insights section contains the Newsroom, which supplies news updates on current market-relevant events; the HL Podcast, where a range of issues are discussed; and the HL Insight, which offers experts’ up-to-date insight into the investment market and how to navigate it profitably. The Learn section contains the HL Glossary, where you can find a comprehensive list of investment-related terminologies and their meanings. However, the section mostly comprised comprehensive guides to various investment practices. You can also find blog posts on various topics all around the website, in addition to an FAQ section.

Aside from these, traders on the mobile app or web platform can access trading ideas and fundamental data to aid their investment handling. And finally, traders can enjoy a range of trading tools and calculators available on the website and web platform, as well as sign up for any of the educational webinars.

Customer Services

When clients and investors run into problems while trading, or they have questions to ask about one thing or the other, fast and responsive customer support is needed. How does Hargreaves Lansdown perform in this regard?

Hargreaves Lansdown engages with its clients mostly by emails or phone calls, which are generally quite fast and responsive for this platform. You will typically get a response to your call in less than a minute, and email responses will reach you within a day. However, the support is mostly available on business days, though they are active for 3 hours every Saturday. There is no live chat feature, which is very inconvenient, and there is no platform for a chatbot to handle queries when the customer support lines are down.

In addition to these two means, however, you can also interact with the platform through its social media accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. All in all, the broker does not have very many customer support channels, but they are diverse and responsive enough to offer a great customer support experience across platforms.

Online Reviews

Here, we will try to gauge the general sentiment towards the broker among users. To do that, we will be taking opinion samples on the platform from two popular opinion sites and two of the most popular review sites. These are Quora, Reddit, TrustPilot, and ForexPeaceArmy.

What Reddit Users Say About Hargreaves Lansdown

Users’ opinions about Hargreaves Lansdown on Reddit are mostly positive, with most recommending it to others. However, most recommendations come with some nuance to the effect that the platform is, to some degree, undermined by one or more factors. For example, a user from two years ago commends their discounts to some extent while pointing out that their share-dealing fees are quite high. His general impression is that they are great for long-term investing but not for trading.

There are also some pretty bad reviews from other users, such as this user from three years ago who has a pretty low opinion of the platform. According to him, he lost lots of money for his private investors by promoting an underperforming fund, potentially as a result of a conflict of interests.

What Quora Users Say About Hargreaves Lansdown

There are currently no real user opinions about Hargreaves Lansdown on Quora, as the only entry on it is a promotion by some guy who is presumably affiliated with the platform.

Trustpilot Users’ Review About Hargreaves Lansdown

The broker gets mostly positive comments from users on Trustpilot, with an average rating of 4.2 stars from 7,941 reviews. Many of these comments concern the customer response. Although, there are also some comments on the general functionality, account operation, and savings products. There is always, however, a side note that the fees are not particularly wallet-friendly.

The negative comments sometimes also concern customer service, as some recount very poor experiences with the customer support team.

Some old-time users also complain about a general deterioration in the quality of service offered by the platform.

ForexPeaceArmy Users’ Review About Hargreaves Lansdown

There are no comments about this broker ForexPeaceArmy.

Other Products and Services

Throughout this Hargreaves Lansdown review, we have seen a number of services that the broker offers. Here, we will look at the ones we have not mentioned yet.

Pensions

Pensions are long-term investments that you and your employer can pay for, and Hargreaves Lansdown offers pretty robust pension services. With the HL SIPP, you can enjoy very flexible investment options from which you can choose by yourself or hire an advisor to choose for you. There are also some cool features like the pension calculator as well as pension combining. The latter will enable you to consolidate your pensions into one account.

Annuities

An annuity is a retirement package that allows you to swap parts or all of your pensions for a guaranteed, lifelong, regular income. With an annuity, your income isn’t subject to increase or reduction based on whatever the stock market might be up to.

Pension Drawdowns

Drawdown, which you can access at Hargreaves Lansdown once you clock 55, is one of the most flexible methods to handle your pension. You can usually make tax-free withdrawals of up to 25% as a lump sum of cash and invest the remaining amount. With this service, you decide how much of your taxable income you want to collect and when you want to remove it.

Financial Advice

If you wish to get expert advice from real investment professionals, you can book a consultation with any of the 80+ financial advisors on the platform. These professionals come from various regions around the globe, and you can choose one that has financial experience relevant enough to the unique investment issues pertaining to that region.

Foreign Currency Exchange

As part of its financial services, Hargreaves Lansdown also runs a Foreign exchange service that allows clients to transfer up to 40+ currencies from any part of the world to about 120+ other countries. Its state-of-the-art platform allows you to perform these transfers online. Alternatively, you can make them through phone calls with your personal currency expert. The service comes with the advantage of no transfer fees for some selected transactions, such as sending money to family and friends or paying an overseas mortgage.

Is Hargreaves Lansdown Safe?

In this section of our comprehensive Hargreaves Lansdown review, we will turn our attention to the issue of safety and trustworthiness. How good are the Hargreaves Lansdown safety features?

Well, for starters, it is very awesome that the app has multifactor security to protect the accounts of clients further. Its verification requirements and high-tier regulation from the highly trusted FCA are also pretty solid. But what about your money in case of any financial crises that may befall the platform?

Well, should things go south and you incur any losses because of it, the platform has you covered. In line with FCA rules on reimbursement, you are entitled to investor protection for up to £85,000. However, in the meantime, the company is financially strong, holding more capital than it is required to as a FTSE 100 company.

Bottom Line

So, what’s the summary of our findings from our Hargreaves Lansdown review thus far?

Well, in our view, generally speaking, the platform performs pretty splendidly in most respects. Its fees can be quite expensive, and there are quite a number of them, but most of them are very affordable. In fact, the gripe with Hargreaves Lansdown fees and commissions is largely with regard to its share dealing. However, even that is structured to reduce the fees the more investment deals you make. The account options are very flexible, with multiple options to choose from, and the customer response across these account types is great (though there is that conspicuous lack of a live chat feature). Then, there is the platform security, which is great on the app, at least, in addition to the client money protection scheme that insures you against any losses from Hargreaves Lansdown’s financial troubles if it does run into any. We must also not forget to mention the pretty robust research and education resource sector of the platform, including its long list of investment experts you can book a consultation with.

However, on the downside, there is the lack of a proprietary desktop trading app and the fact that, even though it has a tier-1 regulator, the broker does not have a banking license. This is because they are not technically a bank but, rather, an investment broker that offers some savings services. Regardless, the platform still performs great overall.