How To Choose The Best UK Stock Broker?
What's in thIS Guide?
1. Introduction
You are reading this introduction.
Over the past year we’ve published 15 reviews of UK brokers. It’s time to pull what we’ve found together for a deep dive into the UK broker landscape. In this first article, we look at the structure of the UK retail investor world – the accounts available, the regulators, the kinds of investors involved, and the kind of products provided by brokers.
Bank brokers benefit from familiarity. The bank brands are visible, psychologically available and reassuring. You may have banked with Lloyds your whole life (I did from thirteen to my mid twenties). The big banks like Barclays, HSBC and the Lloyds Banking Group have tens of millions of customers and thousands of physical branches across the UK. You can’t walk around a town without noticing one. They’re as much a part of the furniture of the UK as Heathrow airport or Manchester United. It’s not a bold step into trusting a new institution to open your banking app and set up an investing account. But, how do fees compare?
The late 1980s through to the mid 2000s were a good time to be an investing adult in the UK. Fees were coming down, choice was going up. You no longer had to buy your shares via a man in a pinstriped suit and a top hat in an office. Economic growth and soaring asset prices meant those building their careers in this era have done well. This generation of investors do care about names. They have some loyalty to brands and prefer long-standing firms, with a good track record in terms of both reputation and profitability. They care about strong customer service as their needs and aims are more complex than slamming some cash into an ETF once a month. Let’s look at the sophistication of those platforms, their safety and fees.
Apple released the first iPhone in 2007. 17 years and 16 iPhone generations later, the generation born around the turn of the century now have jobs and money of their own. They haven’t known a world without handheld, app-based tech products. A new wave of brokers has emerged to meet the needs of this market. Let’s look how they compare.
Good Luck and Keep’em* Rolling!
(* Wheels & Dividends)
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