Investing more than £85k through a UK bank

tc69

Apologies if this is a stupid question. I know very little about investments. I am thinking of investing around £100k through one of my bank's investment funds. However I note that the BoE guarantee limit is £85k should the bank go bust. Does this mean I need to diversify the agents/platforms/banks through which I invest so that no individual platform has more than £85k in it?

tc69

Brilliant. Thank you for explaining so clearly and also the nuances.

Section62

tc69 said:

Brilliant. Thank you for explaining so clearly and also the nuances.

To get correct and factual advice you'll need to expand a bit on what you intend to invest in.

E.g. What do you mean exactly by your "bank's investment funds"?

Albermarle

tc69 said:

Apologies if this is a stupid question. I know very little about investments. I am thinking of investing around £100k through one of my bank's investment funds. However I note that the BoE guarantee limit is £85k should the bank go bust. Does this mean I need to diversify the agents/platforms/banks through which I invest so that no individual platform has more than £85k in it?

If you mean £100K in a savings account with a bank , then you are directly covered for £85K in case they go bust . 
Unlikely that a major UK bank would be allowed to go bust /lose customers savings in any case .

If you mean you have bought investments ( in stocks and shares etc ) via the bank ( acting as an investment platform )  then it is a different story . Whoever you have investments with or bought them from , they can lose money if markets take a downturn . You are not covered for this scenario at all . If somehow you lose money on investments due to fraud or severe maladministration then you can get compensation . 
One important point is that the investment platform does not own the investments , you do . So if the platform went bust there would be some inconvenience and probably you would not be able to access the investments for a while , but you should not lose out significantly .
Many posters on this forum have hundreds of thousands of Pounds invested via a single platform .

dunstonh

. I am thinking of investing around £100k through one of my bank's investment funds.

The banks generally have a poor reputation for distribution, quality of product, quality of investments and being expensive.   What is it that is attracting you to the bank?

 However I note that the BoE guarantee limit is £85k should the bank go bust. 

You are not investing in the bank.  The investment provider will be a subsidiary company.  And the investment funds are usually a further investment house.     There is also no BoE limit.  The limit is from the FSCS which is funded by levies on financial service companies.

Does this mean I need to diversify the agents/platforms/banks through which I invest so that no individual platform has more than £85k in it?

By going with a whole of market platform instead, and making sure no more than £85k is invested per fund house, then you avoid the bulk of your problem.  You are still limited to £85k at platform level but in reality that is not an issue if its mainstream.  However, do be aware that FSCS protection doesn't mean the same thing for investments as it does deposits.