AJ Bell Review

AJ Bell’s platform began operating in 1995, and it’s one of the best known brokers in the UK in part because of its groundbreaking nature.

AJ Bell offered the first online SIPP back in 2000, and today, it boasts nearly 295,000 customers and manages assets worth over £56.5 billion. It also has one of the more extensive suites of account options, catering to different investors of all levels of experience and ages.

As I show in my AJ Bell review, their platform is simple to use and well-recognised within the industry as a top performer.

In 2021 alone AJ Bell have won numerous awards including ‘Best Platform 2021’ in the Money Marketing Awards and ’Investment Platforms 2021’ Which? Recommended provider and ‘Self-Invested Personal Pensions 2021’ Which? Recommended provider.

One of the standout features is the integration of the desktop platform into the mobile app. Although most platforms offer a mobile app at this stage, the AJ Bell app is more than just functional: it’s also appealing and offers enough features that new investors may find they can manage their investments and take care of all online mobile trading needs. However, functionality does slow if you have several different holdings.

Who is AJ Bell?

AJ Bell is a publicly listed company on the London Stock Exchange that provides one of the UK’s largest investment platforms to retail investors. They currently have £65.2 billion in assets under administration for 346,700 customers making them one of the financially strongest platforms in the UK.

Who owns AJ Bell?

AJ Bell was founded in 1995 by Andy Bell and Nicholas Littlefair. In 1918 the company floated on the London Stock Exchange for £675 million, at which time Fergus Lyons was awarded a significant stake in the company. Since then the company has tripled in value and today Andy Bell owns 22.7 per cent while Lyons retains 3.8 per cent in the company.

AJ Bell Product Range

AJ Bell as an online broker offers six primary products:

• SIPP (Self-invested personal pension)
• Junior SIPP
• Stocks and Shares ISA
• Junior Stocks and Shares ISA
• Lifetime ISA
• Share Dealing account

Note the investment platform offers Junior SIPP accounts and Junior ISAs for parents interested in saving for their children.These options aren’t readily available on all the platforms and are therefore worthy of consideration.

The AJ Bell Dealing Account is a solid option for investors who have maximised their ISA and SIPP allowance for that year.

The star of the show is the SIPP personal pension option, which is both award-winning and AJ Bell’s most popular product. I will go into each of these products in greater detail further down my review.

When you open your account, you can build a portfolio based on the list of funds provided through the investment tools. In addition, AJ Bell provides investment ideas to help you make choices about your investments based on your personal circumstances.

AJ Bell Passive Funds

Choose from eight low-cost AJ Bell passive funds and leave the day-to-day investing decisions to their investment specialists. With the AJ Bell Funds, your first choice will be whether you are investing for growth, income or responsible growth.

AJ Bell Growth Fund

The growth fund at AJ Bell throws up six risk options which include:

• Cautious
• Moderately Cautious
• Balanced
• Moderately Adventurous
• Adventurous
• Global Growth

For the purposes of this review, I have taken a more in-depth look at the Balanced Growth Fund. This fund consists of 61% shares to make up an aggressive asset for growth with 29% bonds which provide lower-risk assets for balance. This mix has a risk rating of 5 out of 10. The highest gain this particular fund has achieved is 23.9% in 2009 following the largest loss of – 17.42% in 2008.

AJ Bell Responsible Growth Fund

This fund has a risk rating of 7/10 with the asset allocation being made up of shares, fixed income assets like bonds, alternatives, and cash with shares making up 89% of the total allocation in order to achieve maximum returns whilst ensuring the fund remains focused on companies with a commitment to the environment and society.

Historically this fund has performed well with its best year being 2009 when it experienced gains of 29.78%. Notably, this fund returned a very respectable 4.22% in 2020, despite the pandemic.

AJ Bell Income Fund

Built to provide you with a consistent income of 4% per year, this fund carries a moderate risk level of 5 out of 10. It contains 61% shares and 33% bonds. Historically this fund has performed well with its highest gain an impressive 20.9% in 2016. Whilst the fund did experience a loss of – 14.9% in 2008, this was true of a lot of funds that year, and in 2020 they managed to sustain a gain of 3.4% despite the upheavals thrown up by the pandemic.

AJ Bell Favourite Funds

This offers investors more of an active approach, without having to spend hours researching individual companies and stocks. AJ Bell claims to carefully select funds for inclusion that are economical, achievable and proven when compared to benchmarks and peers.

To help you make your selections, AJ Bell have provided a handy tool to filter the funds by type, sector, and investment goal.

AJ Bell Ethical Investment Fund

This fund returned 240% in the last ten years prior to 2022 and is available using AJ Bell’s excellent user interface on the investment platform at a fund cost of 0.79%.

AJ Bell Research Services & Tools

You’ll also enjoy several industry-standard tools like:

• Quickrank
• Financial Market Diary
• Dividend Dashboard
• Portfolio Manager
• X-Ray Vision

Account holders also have complete access to in-house content, which includes regular blog posts, videos, and a weekly podcast. AJ Bell customers can also read the free Shares magazine when maintaining a balance of £4,000 across their accounts. The magazine is more than company marketing material. It offers useful information and it’s intelligently written, which is a welcome surprise. Indeed, most of the research compiled internally is helpful and applicable to investors with various backgrounds, so it is worth diving into their blog posts and videos if you are in the process of acquainting yourself with trading for the first time.

If you consider yourself to be a regular or savvy investor, then you may find the tools and charts middling at best. You have 10 technical analysis indicators and the option to add dividends and news events to your charts. However, you can’t set stock alerts nor can you create and save individual charts or templates.

It’s not hard to see why AJ Bell offer its hands-off and pre-packaged portfolios as doing the research to put together a comprehensive package would be cumbersome with the research tools on offer.

Remember, the value of investments can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you originally invested.

AJ Bell Trading Fees & Account Charges

To keep their products low cost, AJ Bell got rid of the vast majority of the fees including:

• Account set up fees
• Inactivity fees (the bane of all buy & hold investors)
• Cash holding fees
• Cash withdrawal fees
• Exit fees
• Additionally, the charge for their regular investment services is £1.50 per deal which is good value for investors

The trading fees cater more to people who only want to make a few deals per month. Expect to pay a steep fee of £5.00 per share deal for the first 0-9 trades each month. If you intend to use the account for regular trading, you may be better suited to an investment platform that bundles the online trades, which lowers the cost of each transaction substantially.

Finally, you’ll pay a hefty £25.00 fee for any deals you do via telephone rather than online. So, if you’re the type who rings customer service regularly, you might find this investment platform doesn’t cater to your needs.

AJ Bell ISA Fees

There is also a funds custody charge that scales as follows:

• 0.25% on the first £250,000
• 0.10% on the next £250,000 to £500,000
• No charge on funds valued over £500,000
• No charge on cash

From 1st July 2022 AJ Bell have introduced payaway rates to be levied on any cash held in accounts. These are as follows:

To buy and sell investments in an AJ Bell Stocks and Shares ISA, per deal you’ll pay:

• £1.50 for funds online
• £9.95 for shares online
• £4.95 for shares when you made 10 or more shares deals the previous month

There is also a dividend reinvestment charge of £1.50 per deal.

AJ Bell FAQs