Interactive Investor free monthly contributions: which ETFs?

boring_customer

ii says (I'm new here so I can't post links yet but search for interactive investor regular investing and you'll find the page - it seems to cover all their account types but I'm mostly interested in their SIPP):

You can set up regular investing for a wide range of funds and popular shares (including the FTSE 350).

Great, which funds and ETFs?  The website (same page) says:

What investments can I include?

A wide range of UK funds, shares, investment trusts and ETFs are available for regular investing. 

Investment options include: 

• Shares of companies in the FTSE 350
  
• A range of popular investment trusts and ETFs
• All funds which are listed in sterling (GBP)

Is that a sneaky way to say "you can only do the free monthly contributions with some of our ETFs ('a range of'), not all of them"?  Or maybe it straightforwardly means "montly contribs are free for any of the ETFs on our books, here's the link knock yourself out".  I phoned them to ask, but the CS agent wasn't willing to say ("it would be impossible for us to say", mhm).

Perhaps somebody who has an account is able to say something about the range of ETFs available for monthly contributions?  Or how about these particular ones as an example?

IGLH iShares Global Govt Bond UCITS ETF IE00BDFK3H31

SSAC iShares MSCI ACWI UCITS ETF USD (Acc) (GBP) IE00B6R52259

I don't really want to register and only then discover some peculiar restriction here.  Since I'm mostly in funds not ETFs at the moment I haven't yet settled on which ETFs, though the above are candidates.

Alexland

I just logged onto my II ISA and went into the Free Regular Investing screen and was able to search for and add (and cancel) those two ETFs into the list although obviously didn't go as far as saving or letting them trade.

masonic

It's most of them. But the purpose of the free regular investing is to aggregate orders from at least several customers in order to pass on a saving in the trading fee. Investments that hardly anyone on the platform trades are unlikely to be included. Often you will find one share class of an ETF, but not another, because one (for example GBP as opposed to USD, or Inc rather than Acc, is the more popular). If memory serves, while I was with ii, I was able to regularly invest into VAGS but not VAGP (or it may have been the other way around).

Alexland

masonic said:

while I was with ii, I was able to regularly invest into VAGS but not VAGP (or it may have been the other way around).

They both seem to be addable to the list now. 

poseidon1

masonic said:

It's most of them. But the purpose of the free regular investing is to aggregate orders from at least several customers in order to pass on a saving in the trading fee. Investments that hardly anyone on the platform trades are unlikely to be included. Often you will find one share class of an ETF, but not another, because one (for example GBP as opposed to USD, or Inc rather than Acc, is the more popular). If memory serves, while I was with ii, I was able to regularly invest into VAGS but not VAGP (or it may have been the other way around).

II also ban their cheap dividend reinvestment scheme ( 99p ) for any holding they classify as 'complex'.

 For a period of 18 months after Twenty-four Select Monthly Income Investment Trust share price had fallen steeply I had happily utilised the facility to reinvest the monthly dividends to 'staircase' an ever increasing monthly income from the holding.

However the facility was inexplicably stopped (I thought in error), and on enquiry it was apparent that II had withdrawn the facility for the reason stated above. Fortunately I was still able to utilise their monthly free trade facility to manually  continue the income reinvestment, but clearly this is not as convenient as their cheap automated system which can be particularly beneficial for investments that pay monthly income.