Is my money really safe with AJ Bell Youinvest?

agent69

eskbanker said:

agent69 said:

Alexland said:

AJ Bell is a well run FTSE250 company and one of the few that I would be comfortable exceeding the FSCS limits with. However, as always, just make sure you are dealing with the real company not a clone scam.

But how does the average man in the street know?

For example, I am thinking of opening a Vanguard Lifestrategy account. When I google them I get links to vanguard.co.uk and vanguardinvestor.co.uk. How do I know these are legitimate sites and not scams?

You can't actually open "a Vanguard Lifestrategy account" as such - you can open an investment account (GIA, ISA or SIPP) with Vanguard Investor (the second of those websites), within which you can hold a variety of individual investments, including LifeStrategy, or you can open an account elsewhere and buy VLS units there.

In terms of validating sites, you can check the security certificate issued to secure HTTPS traffic to and from your browser - Google Chrome allows this to be viewed by clicking on the padlock immediately to the left of the URL.

Thanks for the advice. If I click on the padlock on the vanguardinvestot site it says certificate issued to Vanguard in Pennsylvania, which appears to be the head office (so all looks kosher).

BananaRepublic

Albermarle said:

If the platform goes bust, you may lose cash subject to an £85K per bank protection

Alternatively if the bank went bust and you already had separately £85K with that bank , then the cash in the platform that was held by that bank will not be covered AFAIU.

Apologies, I meant per platform protection. The money is held by the platform, not a bank. 

fryderykchopin

BananaRepublic said:

Deleted_User said:

My understanding..
Cash in accounts on the platform £85k per bank protection
Shares and ETFs - no protection (irrespective of platform)
Funds UK domiciled - £85k protection per fund house
Funds IE domiciled - Euro 20k protection (example - Lindsell Train)

If the platform goes bust, you may lose cash subject to an £85K per platform protection, but the platform does not own your shares and funds, they merely act as the adviser/broker. You will not lose your shares and funds, but you will of course have to transfer them to a new platform.

Of course that does not allow for fraud, whereby someone employed by the platform sells your shares/funds and trousers the money. AJ Bell will have systems in place to limit access to trusted individuals, and to catch unexpected activity. I would have thought that this was very very unlikely.

It also does not allow for the case where criminals hack into the web site and sell your funds. The level of security for a web site such as AJ Bell will be very high. For example, when I log on, I have to enter several passwords. I am a little surprised that they have not implemented security checking by means of a code sent to your phone, or the use of an encryption device as used by the Nationwide Building Society for example. However, it is very unlikely that a criminal could hack in unless you gave them your passwords, which sadly does happen when criminals phone people pretending to be employees of the fund manager. The back end systems will be very secure. How secure? That is something for a cyber security expert to comment on.

I just opened my account and they have the option to send a code to your phone when you log in, but it is disabled by default, you need to enable it in the settings of your account. You will also need to install their app, that's how you will get the code (not via sms).

Albermarle

BananaRepublic said:

Albermarle said:

If the platform goes bust, you may lose cash subject to an £85K per bank protection

Alternatively if the bank went bust and you already had separately £85K with that bank , then the cash in the platform that was held by that bank will not be covered AFAIU.

Apologies, I meant per platform protection. The money is held by the platform, not a bank. 

If you are holding cash inside an investment platform, the platform deposits it with a bank . This will not be obvious from looking at your account but if you read the platform info you will find this is the case .
It seems that if the bank goes bust you have to claim the up to £85K compensation and not the platform.
If you happen to have money separately in the same bank then the overall compensation limit is £85K including the cash held by the bank via the platform, as far as I understand it.
It's all a bit of grey area and others may understand the situation differently . Plus each platform seems to use a different form of words. 

Alexland

agent69 said:

Thanks for the advice. If I click on the padlock on the vanguardinvestot site it says certificate issued to Vanguard in Pennsylvania, which appears to be the head office (so all looks kosher).

The certificate might have the correct address but vanguardinvestot is the onsite crèche.

BananaRepublic

Albermarle said:

BananaRepublic said:

Albermarle said:

If the platform goes bust, you may lose cash subject to an £85K per bank protection

Alternatively if the bank went bust and you already had separately £85K with that bank , then the cash in the platform that was held by that bank will not be covered AFAIU.

Apologies, I meant per platform protection. The money is held by the platform, not a bank. 

If you are holding cash inside an investment platform, the platform deposits it with a bank . This will not be obvious from looking at your account but if you read the platform info you will find this is the case .
It seems that if the bank goes bust you have to claim the up to £85K compensation and not the platform.
If you happen to have money separately in the same bank then the overall compensation limit is £85K including the cash held by the bank via the platform, as far as I understand it.
It's all a bit of grey area and others may understand the situation differently . Plus each platform seems to use a different form of words. 

Thanks, I didn't know that. I would have thought that if the platform is covered by the £85K limit, then as far as the investor is concerned the buck stops with them. I went to the YouInvest web site and couldn't find any confirmation or otherwise.

fryderykchopin said:

BananaRepublic said:

Deleted_User said:

My understanding..
Cash in accounts on the platform £85k per bank protection
Shares and ETFs - no protection (irrespective of platform)
Funds UK domiciled - £85k protection per fund house
Funds IE domiciled - Euro 20k protection (example - Lindsell Train)

If the platform goes bust, you may lose cash subject to an £85K per platform protection, but the platform does not own your shares and funds, they merely act as the adviser/broker. You will not lose your shares and funds, but you will of course have to transfer them to a new platform.

Of course that does not allow for fraud, whereby someone employed by the platform sells your shares/funds and trousers the money. AJ Bell will have systems in place to limit access to trusted individuals, and to catch unexpected activity. I would have thought that this was very very unlikely.

It also does not allow for the case where criminals hack into the web site and sell your funds. The level of security for a web site such as AJ Bell will be very high. For example, when I log on, I have to enter several passwords. I am a little surprised that they have not implemented security checking by means of a code sent to your phone, or the use of an encryption device as used by the Nationwide Building Society for example. However, it is very unlikely that a criminal could hack in unless you gave them your passwords, which sadly does happen when criminals phone people pretending to be employees of the fund manager. The back end systems will be very secure. How secure? That is something for a cyber security expert to comment on.

I just opened my account and they have the option to send a code to your phone when you log in, but it is disabled by default, you need to enable it in the settings of your account. You will also need to install their app, that's how you will get the code (not via sms).

Thanks, I have enabled it. I was surprised to see that it is only used when logging in from the web site, and not when using the AJ Bell app on an iPhone or iPad so they must consider the security on those to be sufficient. It doesn't account for someone having stolen your account details, and logging on from their iPhone. I would like it to use a code sent to your iPhone as an SMS message, which my bank sometimes does.

eskbanker

Alexland said:

agent69 said:

Thanks for the advice. If I click on the padlock on the vanguardinvestot site it says certificate issued to Vanguard in Pennsylvania, which appears to be the head office (so all looks kosher).

The certificate might have the correct address but vanguardinvestot is the onsite crèche.

....or a new subdomain for their JISA offering perhaps?

Audaxer

fryderykchopin said:

BananaRepublic said:

Deleted_User said:

My understanding..
Cash in accounts on the platform £85k per bank protection
Shares and ETFs - no protection (irrespective of platform)
Funds UK domiciled - £85k protection per fund house
Funds IE domiciled - Euro 20k protection (example - Lindsell Train)

If the platform goes bust, you may lose cash subject to an £85K per platform protection, but the platform does not own your shares and funds, they merely act as the adviser/broker. You will not lose your shares and funds, but you will of course have to transfer them to a new platform.

Of course that does not allow for fraud, whereby someone employed by the platform sells your shares/funds and trousers the money. AJ Bell will have systems in place to limit access to trusted individuals, and to catch unexpected activity. I would have thought that this was very very unlikely.

It also does not allow for the case where criminals hack into the web site and sell your funds. The level of security for a web site such as AJ Bell will be very high. For example, when I log on, I have to enter several passwords. I am a little surprised that they have not implemented security checking by means of a code sent to your phone, or the use of an encryption device as used by the Nationwide Building Society for example. However, it is very unlikely that a criminal could hack in unless you gave them your passwords, which sadly does happen when criminals phone people pretending to be employees of the fund manager. The back end systems will be very secure. How secure? That is something for a cyber security expert to comment on.

I just opened my account and they have the option to send a code to your phone when you log in, but it is disabled by default, you need to enable it in the settings of your account. You will also need to install their app, that's how you will get the code (not via sms).

If you have to download the AJ Bell App to get a code to log-in, is the App purely for supplying the code, or can you view your account via the App?

Albermarle

Thanks, I didn't know that. I would have thought that if the platform is covered by the £85K limit, then as far as the investor is concerned the buck stops with them. I went to the YouInvest web site and couldn't find any confirmation or otherwise.

This is from the HL website Cash | Hargreaves Lansdown (hl.co.uk)

BananaRepublic

Audaxer said:

fryderykchopin said:

BananaRepublic said:

Deleted_User said:

My understanding..
Cash in accounts on the platform £85k per bank protection
Shares and ETFs - no protection (irrespective of platform)
Funds UK domiciled - £85k protection per fund house
Funds IE domiciled - Euro 20k protection (example - Lindsell Train)

If the platform goes bust, you may lose cash subject to an £85K per platform protection, but the platform does not own your shares and funds, they merely act as the adviser/broker. You will not lose your shares and funds, but you will of course have to transfer them to a new platform.

Of course that does not allow for fraud, whereby someone employed by the platform sells your shares/funds and trousers the money. AJ Bell will have systems in place to limit access to trusted individuals, and to catch unexpected activity. I would have thought that this was very very unlikely.

It also does not allow for the case where criminals hack into the web site and sell your funds. The level of security for a web site such as AJ Bell will be very high. For example, when I log on, I have to enter several passwords. I am a little surprised that they have not implemented security checking by means of a code sent to your phone, or the use of an encryption device as used by the Nationwide Building Society for example. However, it is very unlikely that a criminal could hack in unless you gave them your passwords, which sadly does happen when criminals phone people pretending to be employees of the fund manager. The back end systems will be very secure. How secure? That is something for a cyber security expert to comment on.

I just opened my account and they have the option to send a code to your phone when you log in, but it is disabled by default, you need to enable it in the settings of your account. You will also need to install their app, that's how you will get the code (not via sms).

If you have to download the AJ Bell App to get a code to log-in, is the App purely for supplying the code, or can you view your account via the App?

On the iPhone and iPad the app allows you to view your accounts and buy/sell.