Invest Engine - Sign Up Offer

ChilliBob

Saw something yesterday called, Invest Engine, a few free platform to hold and trade ETFS (at the moment), with a sign up offer of £50 added to your account even you deposit £100 and hold it for a year or more.

Seems pretty decent to me for a sign up offer!

Anyone on here taken them up on this? 

grumiofoundation

We did this, as you say a decent sign up offer. 

You can get £25 for signing up using a referral code (back when there was a referral thread could have used that!).

Between wife and myself we got £175 bonus/referral for £200 investment between us. 

N. B. There was a thread on this a while ago but can’t seem to find it now. 

ChilliBob

Blimey, I thought £50 was decent! I do check the boards from time to time, and I did a quick search but I didn't see it posted. Admittidly a brief search! 

colsten

I think the old thread on this got deleted because people advertised their personal referral codes, which is obviously against Forum rules.

Alexland

Yeah it's Ok. I took out a GIA and found their ID requirements a bit onerous. I think they wanted my driving license, passport and photo of me holding passport open. My wife wouldn't be up for that so I didn't refer her.
The product is nothing special and see no reason to keep the account beyond the minimum offer term. After doing a lot of these offers in recent years they increasingly feel like a distraction to my plan of putting the money into pensions and ISAs.

ChilliBob

Ah, gotcha. So when you sign up and get £50 you can use a code to refer say your partner and brother to get further bonus? Nice

This was linked to my tax thread really, as its unshelterd I didn't want go bother just for the sign up bonus if it caused a load of grief, but it seems at worst it would be somewhere else to collect a small amount of dividend income from that would need to be declared, assuming you weren't realising gains. 

ChilliBob

Alexland said:

Yeah it's Ok. I took out a GIA and found their ID requirements a bit onerous. I think they wanted my driving license, passport and photo of me holding passport open. My wife wouldn't be up for that so I didn't refer her.
The product is nothing special and see no reason to keep the account beyond the minimum offer term. After doing a lot of these offers in recent years they increasingly feel like a distraction to my plan of putting the money into pensions and ISAs.

That does seem a bit OTT! It doesn't especially bother me.

I know what you mean though - these type of things are a bit of a distraction! But hey ho!

DjangoUnchained

sorry for my ignorance, what is a GIA, google didnt help me.

eskbanker

DjangoUnchained said:

sorry for my ignorance, what is a GIA, google didnt help me.

General Investment Account, as opposed to a tax-sheltered one such as ISA or SIPP.

ChilliBob

That's interesting, it didn't look like you qualified for both when I read the website yesterday, obviously great if you do! 

Shankers

I've signed up and got the bonus, but I have a few questions.

After registering, I invested £100. The bonus T&Cs mention I need to maintain a minimum net investment funding of £150. My questions are:
i) Does the £150 refer to money in the portfolio, or invested (i.e., in a fund rather than cash on account)?
ii) Would the £150 include the £50 sign up bonus money?
iii) If the full £150 is invested in a fund, then there would be no cash on account to pay for fees, so I imagine it's necessary to fund with more than £100 if the T&Cs require the full £150 to be invested rather than simply held on account?

The relevant part of InvestEngine's T&Cs is below. How have you understood it? Please could you provide me with your interpretations/readings!

'Upon receiving the bonus, the New Customer must invest at least £100 (not including any bonuses, reward or any other promotional amount offered by InvestEngine) in their designated portfolio within 30 days of completing registration. Following investment, the New Customer must remain invested for a minimum of 12 months from the date they completed registration, maintaining a minimum net investment funding of £150. Other promotional rewards do not count towards this total.

Failure to comply with the above requirements shall result in InvestEngine reclaiming an amount equal to the value of the Welcome Bonus. If the Portfolio is not invested with an additional £100 within the initial 30 day period, the entire value of the New Customer’s Portfolio will be reclaimed by InvestEngine.'