Flagstone investment platform - alert

EthicsGradient

A few months ago,Flagstone, via II (so again, without the £50k minimum) were offering the best interest for the fixed length I wanted. So I applied; they said they needed proof of identity and source of funds, certified by a solicitor, doctor or other approved professional type. Not many solicitors are willing to do this these days, if you're not a regular client already, and there's a charge anyway, and while I do have friends with the appropriate professional qualifications, they're not so local that I see them regularly or just pop around for this - and frankly, turning up with documents to be stamped and witnessed seems an imposition on them, for just a few quid extra interest. So I ignored Flagstone.

Lily0837

wiseonesomeofthetime said:

If you recall, when Shawbrook Bank were offering a six month fix at 2.0% with minimum deposit of £1,000, Flagstone were offering the same account, at the same rate, but with a minimum deposit demand of £10,000.

Why would you choose Flagstone over direct for that one?

I too will be giving them a wide berth.

The account I was going for with Flagstone through the MSE deal made it the top interest rate, and not available anywhere else. The reason for posting an alert on here was because you should be able to trust this website and not run into difficulties when using something that they have set up. The other annoyance is that there doesn't seem to be a way of alerting admins that there's a problem - not impressed!

Lily0837

EthicsGradient said:

A few months ago,Flagstone, via II (so again, without the £50k minimum) were offering the best interest for the fixed length I wanted. So I applied; they said they needed proof of identity and source of funds, certified by a solicitor, doctor or other approved professional type. Not many solicitors are willing to do this these days, if you're not a regular client already, and there's a charge anyway, and while I do have friends with the appropriate professional qualifications, they're not so local that I see them regularly or just pop around for this - and frankly, turning up with documents to be stamped and witnessed seems an imposition on them, for just a few quid extra interest. So I ignored Flagstone.

I think that was probably a wise decision - thanks for the info!

refluxer

Lily0837 said:

The account I was going for with Flagstone through the MSE deal made it the top interest rate, and not available anywhere else. 

I wouldn't worry - you won't have lost out. Rates are rising on a weekly (sometimes even daily) basis at the moment so many of the higher rates offered by places like Flagstone or Raisin are matched or beaten fairly quickly.

The cashback they offer is definitely an incentive (probably more so than the rates) but I'm not convinced it's worth the hassle.

Soto2023

We will shortly have the money from the sale of our house to park for probably 4 months. To avoid the hassle of opening and administering 8 joint accounts to have full protection from the FSCS scheme we are considering opening one account with Flagstone. The interest rates net of their charges are good and it seems their platform will simplify creating and managing a cash deposit portfolio across 8 different banks. Does anyone with direct experience or expert knowledge of Flagstone have an opinion on whether our money will be safe and if the platform is reliable and user friendly?

Doctor_Who

Soto2023 said:

We will shortly have the money from the sale of our house to park for probably 4 months. To avoid the hassle of opening and administering 8 joint accounts to have full protection from the FSCS scheme we are considering opening one account with Flagstone. The interest rates net of their charges are good and it seems their platform will simplify creating and managing a cash deposit portfolio across 8 different banks. Does anyone with direct experience or expert knowledge of Flagstone have an opinion on whether our money will be safe and if the platform is reliable and user friendly?

I have Flagstone, Raisin and HL Active Savings accounts. In my opinion they all work well and mean you can spread your money over many banks/accounts whilst using just a single login for each platform. Check that the banks you intend to use on the platforms have FSCS protection (most do). Out of the three I use Raisin the most because the rates offered tend to be better.

bundoran

Soto2023 said:

We will shortly have the money from the sale of our house to park for probably 4 months. To avoid the hassle of opening and administering 8 joint accounts to have full protection from the FSCS scheme we are considering opening one account with Flagstone. The interest rates net of their charges are good and it seems their platform will simplify creating and managing a cash deposit portfolio across 8 different banks. Does anyone with direct experience or expert knowledge of Flagstone have an opinion on whether our money will be safe and if the platform is reliable and user friendly?

Your money from the sale of your house would be covered for six months in a single account:

https://www.fscs.org.uk/making-a-claim/claims-process/temporary-high-balances/

cwep2

I tried signing up to Flagstone around 6 months ago. They wanted too much information about source of funds, including certified copies of bank or pay statements going back years. All my statements are electronic, I can only make print outs, the number of sheets would be >100 and so to get certified that’s a lot of signatures/hassle. Then there’s the question of whether the certifier would be happy to sign that they were ‘true copies of the original’ when they had no way to verify this (you can edit PDFs before printing them in theory). 

I gave up and went elsewhere. At the time even with the 0.25% fee the rate was best I could get, but hassle didn’t justify the difference in the end.