Subject to our usual eligibility criteria (see our terms and conditions here) the Investments will be available to all Chip customers on the ChipAI and ChipX plans.
You need to have fully connected your bank to Chip using open banking permissions before you can open an investment account and move money into an investment fund.
However, we will initially restrict access to our crowdfund community members and after they have access, there will be a queue to unlock investments for all other Chip savers, you can sign up here.
You can start investing with as little as £1, the only thing you’ll need to hand is your National Insurance number.
You won’t need to enter any other details, as you will have already fully connected your bank to Chip and entered your address and other details we need to pre-approve you for investing before we make Chip investment funds available to you.
If you want to open an investment account, your National Insurance number is required by HMRC for tax purposes to open an ISA, and we also need it to fulfil our regulatory obligations.
It’s up to you which type of investment account you want to open.
Stocks and Shares ISAs are tax efficient, which means you don’t need to pay tax on any interest, dividends or capital gains on money invested into an ISA. However, you can only put £20,000 into an ISA in any given tax year (which runs from April to April).
Just note there are eligibility criteria to open an ISA, and if you’ve already opened and deposited into a Stocks and Shares ISA in this tax year, you can’t open a second one. We explain more about ISAs here.
GIAs do not offer any tax free allowances and you can put as much money as you like into a GIA. They are generally used by individuals who have already maxed out their ISA allowance for the year, or have an existing ISA of the same type with another provider (which they have already contributed to in the current tax year).
The platform fee is what you pay to Chip so we can bring investment funds to you in an accessible and easy to manage account.
Platform fees are a standard charge across the industry, and all retail investment platforms and banks will have them. They take the form of an annual percentage on the value of your investments including any growth, but are charged on a monthly basis.
It’s called a platform fee because it’s what we charge to use our ‘platform’. Provided your balance in any investment fund is above £0.50, we will charge a platform fee.
You will be able to see when a platform fee has been taken in your contract notes, and will have full visibility on the amount paid in your Quarterly Valuation Report.
We charge a different platform fee depending on which plan you subscribe to, see below.
To access the platform you need to be on one of our subscription plans, either ChipAI (£1.50 every 28 days) or ChipX (£3.00 every 28 days), and the platform fee.
These subscriptions offer a lot more benefits than simply access to investment funds, and you can read more about them on the price plans page.
We reserve the right to amend these fees with two months’ notice.
Join our online community and have your say in the future of Chip.
