Independent Moneyfarm review including charges and performance
In this independent Moneyfarm review I look at how Moneyfarm invests money, Moneyfarm's charges and fees as well as Moneyfarm's performance and portfolio returns. As one of the most widely quoted investment experts in the national press I walk you through my review of Moneyfarm in stages. I suggest you read the entire review as it includes key observations and analysis of Moneyfarm's proposition, particularly around charges and performance. If you want to jump to specific parts of this review then you can do so by clicking on the links below.
I also want to make you aware that the quick answer is that I feel Moneyfarm investments may be suitable for some readers (read full review) and I therefore secured an exclusive offer for MoneytotheMasses.com readers that means Moneyfarm will run the first £15k of your money free of charge for the 1st year and the £10k a year thereafter. In the interests of transparency I receive a small fee from Moneyfarm if you utilise the offer. However editorial independence is paramount to MoneytotheMasses.com and in no way is this review or my views ever influenced by 3rd parties. I have included a link to Moneyfarm at the foot of this article which you can use and MoneytotheMasses.com will not receive any payment from your referral.
How do Moneyfarm manage their portfolios?
See a personalised Moneyfarm portfolio
Moneyfarm performance and returns
Moneyfarm vs Nutmeg (including comparison of charges and performance)
Moneyfarm customer reviews
Conclusion
The best DIY Investment ISA
Moneyfarm is an interesting proposition for those trying to find the best DIY investment ISA or pondering where to invest their ISA allowance . After successfully running money for DIY investors in Italy Moneyfarm launched in the UK back in 2011, following the rise in demand for DIY investment ISAs, robo-advice and a cheap stocks and shares ISAs for beginners. That's because historically investing was the preserve of the wealthy but the rise of investment fund platforms changed that. The UK market has since been looking for a cost effective investment platform for beginners (and experienced) investors that can deliver good investment performance with minimal input from the investor. However, most fund platforms and their stocks and shares ISA products tend to have high minimum investments (as much as £500 in the case of Nutmeg, which is the closest comparable alternative to Moneyfarm out there) which makes it less accessible to the ordinary public.
One of the things that makes the Moneyfarm ISA interesting is that it has no minimum investment amount and you can invest with as little as £1 with no prior investing experience.
The best Stocks and Shares ISA for you
The most common question I am asked is 'Where should I invest my ISA allowance?' If you are a beginner or an experienced investor who wants to take a hands-off approach then the best investment stocks and shares ISA should:
help you assess the level of investment risk (and therefore potential loss) you are willing to take
build a diversified portfolio for you (so your eggs are not all in one basket)
keep costs as low as possible (as these eat into your returns) which may mean using passive investment funds and exchange traded funds known as ETFs
maximise your investment returns by strategically investing your money
help you monitor and review your portfolio (or do it for you)
Moneyfarm can do all of this within 10 minutes and can help you invest your ISA allowance (or as little as £1) via a slick online interface or via the Moneyfarm app, This is quite an achievement compared to other investment platforms where the user experience is far clunkier. Having said that rather than take Moneyfarm at their word I actually tested this 10 minute claim and in fairness it does hold true. In fact you can just have a dummy Moneyfarm portfolio created for you, with no compulsion to invest, in about 3 minutes.
How does Moneyfarm investment management work?
Based upon its operation in Italy where the firm originates from Moneyfarm certainly has a good pedigree for successfully investing client money online. In short:
Moneyfarm was founded in March 2011 as a low-cost, stress free wealth management service
It is now one of the largest digital wealth managers in Europe and is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK
They claim to provide a tailored investment strategy with the aim to bring you a simple investment strategy that fits your risk profile and savings goals
When it comes to investing Moneyfarm offer the following two products:
Moneyfarm Stocks & Shares ISA
Investing in a Moneyfarm Stocks & Shares ISA allows you to invest tax-free with the flexibility to withdraw or transfer funds whenever you want.
You can also transfer existing ISAs into it.
To invest your money Moneyfarm states it uses your savings goals, appetite for risk and other factors to build a personalised portfolio
Moneyfarm General Investment Account
The Moneyfarm General Investment Account works in the same as the Moneyfarm Stock & Share ISA but without the tax benefits (so all income and growth is taxable) or annual contribution limits.
How do Moneyfarm manage their portfolios?
Over the course of several months I held a number of meetings with Moneyfarm in order to assess how they invest money before publishing this review. I've also anonymously opened an account with them online. Moneyfarm provides three standard portfolios with different degrees of risk, namely high, medium and low. Moneyfarm then tailor these portfolios to reflect how long you wish to invest for. But in order to help you decide which starting portfolio is right for you Moneyfarm assesses your risk profile using its own in-house risk assessment, as opposed to an external third party offering such as Finametica. The screenshot below is the summary of the questionnaire and my answers that I gave when registering (click to enlarge)
Moneyfarm's portfolio asset allocations are based upon volatility targeting for each level of risk. Volatility is a measure of how quickly markets or an asset move up and down. This is slightly different to risk. To help understand this think of volatility as like the waves in a stormy sea while risk is the event that you drown. They are two different things. Yet clearly as volatility increases the risk rises. There is a lot of debate about whether volatility is a good measure for assessing risk. However I have carried out extensive research as part of my DIY investment service 80-20 Investor which shows that it is a valid tool for managing risk. By contrast most investment platforms assess risk based on generic assumptions i.e that all bond funds are low risk. Yet that view is flawed. Ask anyone who lost a sizeable amount of money when the bond market sold off at the end of 2016 whether bond funds are low risk or not. The point is that risk is relative.
So I view it as a big positive that volatility is part of Moneyfarm's risk management process. For each portfolio Moneyfarm targets volatility which means that if assets become more volatile then their place in the portfolio will be reviewed. So theoretically a low risk portfolio should remain low risk even if investment markets undergo a fundamental shift which alters the asset's risk level (as per the bond example above). On top of this Moneyfarm rebalances its portfolios (i.e. makes changes to make sure the asset allocation has not deviated from the desired mix as a result of market moves) roughly every two months. Again, this is a sensible period of time as it is short enough to ensure unwanted risks don't creep into the portfolios but long enough to avoid excessive costs from over-trading.
One of my biggest criticisms of most managed Stocks and Shares ISA funds is that the managers do not back their convictions. The best performing Stocks and Shares ISAs in the long term are those that do not simply track the market or just replicate their peers. To outperform you need to occasionally invest in unpopular assets or avoid others that are unattractive. Moneyfarm invests using ETFs which track a given index or asset price. What became clear when grilling their investment analysts is that Moneyfarm will make investment decisions based on their research. For example, they have tended to avoid investing in commercial property (due to it being illiquid) which should have fared them well during 2016 when that market devalued in the wake of the Brexit vote. They have also previously avoided investing in commodities and have even used currency ETFs to hedge their currency exposure (as they did ahead of the Brexit vote). This is refreshing and at least gives them the opportunity to outperform the market in the future. For me this is important and I'm not sure why Moneyfarm do not make reference to it externally. Many investment companies simply compete on price (i.e try and tempt consumers with claims of being the cheapest) at the expense of trying to maximise investment returns. That's far from desirable and you'd be better off just buying a simple tracker fund.
As an aside, my advice to anyone investing using ETFs is to try and stick to physical ETFs rather than synthetic or sampled ETFs. Physical ETFs actually buy the assets they track rather than use financial instruments to replicate the moves in the targeted asset's price. Sampled ETFs track the chosen index asset less closely than one that physically holds the asset in question. For example if you only buy shares in a sample of the companies that make up the FTSE 100 then your investment performance will differ from that of the index. Synthetic ETFs also introduce something called counterparty risk which means there is a potential for investment returns to not materialise. In short, if you are looking for a low cost Stocks and Shares ISA that invests in ETFs then go for one that favours physical ETFs. Moneyfarm is one such provider.
See a personalised Moneyfarm portfolio
The good news is that you can build a bespoke portfolio for free using Moneyfarm's portfolio tool without committing to the service. Registering is free and there is no obligation to contribute any money. In fact they don't ask for any card details unless you specifically choose to invest. As the asset allocations for the portfolios change regularly I strongly suggest that you register and let the tool suggest a portfolio because the asset mix is dependent on how long you want to invest for as well as the risk level you choose. The image below shows you what you can expect to see. In this instance I selected the high risk profile and a six year investment term. This level of transparency can only be a good thing.
I've summarised how the three standard Moneyfarm portfolios are currently invested, assuming a five year investment return. But as I mentioned above, you can see a more personalised portfolio in less than five minutes by registering on the Moneyfarm site.
Asset
Moneyfarm Low risk portfolio
Moneyfarm Medium risk portfolio
Moneyfarm High risk portfolio
Cash & short-term Gov. Bonds
32.00%
16.97%
15.53%
Developed Markets Gov. Bonds
5.29%
5.64%
3.48%
Investment Grade Corporate Bonds
4.96%
Inflation Linked Bonds
11.63%
High-Yield & Emerging Markets Bonds
16.60%
21.29%
14.19%
Developed Markets Equity
25.93%
51.84%
63.04%
Cash
3.59%
3.75%
3.77%
The only way to assess how successful a firm has been at investing money is by looking at the past performance. I analyse Moneyfarm's returns later in this article.
What are Moneyfarm's fees?
Moneyfarm do not typically apply any management fees for investment amounts up to £10,000 or over £1000,000. However with the Moneyfarm promo code 'MTTM15' you can get up to £15,000 managed free of charge in the first year. There is no other online Stock and Shares ISA provider that I am aware of that currently matches this.
Investment amount
Management Fee
£0 - £10,000 (This can be increased to £15,000 in year one if you enter the Moneyfarm promo code MTTM15K when you signup'
0%
£10,001 - £100,000
0.60%
£100,001 - £1,000,000
0.40%
over £1,000,000
0%
* In addition you will pay underlying fund costs currently at an average of 0.25% as Moneyfarm use passive investments known as exchange traded funds (ETFs). This is the cheapest way to invest as most funds run by fund managers (known as active funds) sold via major fund platforms have fund charges of between 1.5-2.5% which is on top of the fee charged by the investment platform. Moneyfarm's own research (which I haven't verified) suggests that they are almost 1.2% cheaper than investing via Hargreaves Lansdown, almost 3% cheaper than using a wealth manager and 4.8% cheaper than investing with a financial adviser to invest. Personally I wouldn't overplay these figures but they are indicative. The main takeaway is that Moneyfarm is certainly a cheap way to invest.
Moneyfarm’s portfolio performance
Although Moneyfarm has been investing money across Europe for a number of years they do not yet have a sufficient track record in the UK to be allowed, by the FCA, to publish the data. However if you register with Moneyfarm (which doesn't mean you have to invest as you can just play with it for free) you can gain access to their latest UK performance data going back as far as January 2016 as well as their own projected future returns. The table below summarises Moneyfarm's performance from 1st January 2016 to January 2017 (which is marginally over one year and at the time of writing).
Portfolio
Low risk portfolio
Medium Risk portfolio
High Risk portfolio
Actual 1 year Moneyfarm return (1/1/16 to 17/1/17)
17.44%
18.15%
17.82%
Projected Moneyfarm return after 5 years (not guaranteed)
20.74%
27.94%
28.37%
To give this some context a typical pension or investment fund, available on other investment platforms, with a similar investment mix (also known as an active fund) returned 15.16% over the same period. If you then compare the Moneyfarm performance with other passive investment solutions, such as the popular Vanguard Lifestrategy funds, they have performed incredibly well. If you consider the Moneyfarm performance versus the Vanguard Lifestrategy fund then their medium risk portfolio has almost matched Vanguards's equivalent strategy and has certainly outperformed a typical multi-asset fund available from other investment platforms. I don't mind admitting I was actually pleasantly surprised with Moneyfarm's investment performance.
However there are two caveats to add, firstly the timeframe is a year so isn't exhaustive. Also investment markets at the start of 2016 plummeted yet the first few days of the Moneyfarm's performance shows that they didn't lose any money. This may be purely down to their investment management but it is most probably indicative of them not being fully invested in the market after the portfolio's launch which therefore marginally boosts their performance figures. Having said that there is no denying that the performance is very good and they performed well across the Brexit vote and the stock and bond market wobble following the US election in November.
Moneyfarm vs Nutmeg
Nutmeg is the well known online investment manager which has significant brand awareness among the public. To all intents and purposes it is a direct competitor to Moneyfarm as they both provide low cost managed ETF portfolios with a focus on consumer ease of use. However Moneyfarm have not yet launched a pension product, something which Nutmeg already has. So as an alternative to Moneyfarm I compare the two side by side below:
Charges: Moneyfarm vs Nutmeg
The table below compares the fees charged by Moneyfarm and Nutmeg on their managed portfolios
Investment amount
Moneyfarm managed portfolio fee
Nutmeg managed portfolio fee
£0 - £10,000 (although you can have £15,000
managed free in the 1st year if you use the Moneyfarm promo code MTTM15)
0%
0.75%
£10,001 - £100,000
0.60%
0.75%
£100,001 - £1,000,000
0.40%
0.35%
over £1,000,000
0%
0.35%
Interestingly Nutmeg has only just reduced its fees this week (Jan 2017) to those stated above yet on the whole they remain more expensive than Moneyfarm. However make sure you check Moneyfarm's charges list here.
Performance: Nutmeg vs Moneyfarm
If we look at investment performance Nutmeg are slow at updating their published data and it is currently almost 4 months behind i.e up to the end of September 2016. Also they don't allow you to manipulate the data. However if you look at the chart they publish online you can make a valid estimate of Nutmeg's performance. As stated earlier the Moneyfarm performance data is accessible if you register an account. So we are able to look at a comparable periods of between 1st January 2016 and end of September 2016 to give a steer. This isn't ideal as it is only 9 months but it is all we have. However, it is interesting as it includes the Brexit vote which was a seismic event for investment markets.
Investment
Performance Jan 2016 to Sept 2016
Moneyfarm medium risk profile
10.21%
Nutmeg (portfolio 6)
8-9%
Who should consider Moneyfarm investments?
Having grilled them over how they run money and assessing their online tools and data then Moneyfarm is well suited for:
those looking to get a better potential return on your investments, with minimal input in terms of time or knowledge
Those looking to invest via a managed Stocks and Shares ISA
Those wanting to invest regularly or have a low initial deposit (you can invest with as little as £1)
Those wanting to invest in ETFs without having to overcome the minefield of what to invest in
Those wanting to keep their future options open by avoiding any lock-ins (i.e. Moneyfarm has no exit fees)
What protection is there from Moneyfarm going bust
Moneyfarm is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority
Clients' money is held separately to Moneyfarm's own funds
Your investment is eligible for protection under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £50,000
Moneyfarm customer reviews
Obviously I have gone to great lengths to formulate a thorough and balanced review of Moneyfarm. Yet it is also interesting to consider consumers' own experiences. A number of MoneytotheMasses.com readers have spontaneously sent me positive views on the service. In addition Moneyfarm has an average trustpilot score of 8.8 out of 10 which is obviously very good. Below is a sample of some of the trustpilot reviews:
'Great for new investors, intuitive platform, and fantastic customer service' - James B
'Very clear website and good telephone advice' - Elizabeth D
'Great service and info before investing' - John
'Excellent service and commitment' - Lynn F
'Top class service' - Mark
Conclusion
If you are looking for a simple, no hassle passive method of investing in the stock market, with a portfolio tailored to your risk profile and savings goals, then Moneyfarm is definitely a service to be considered
You can get as much as £15,000 managed without any admin fee in the first year if you use the Moneyfarm promotional code 'MTTM15 or use this link
Moneyfarm's portfolio performance has been very good in the first year, although this is not necessarily indicative of future returns obviously. However if you want a slick, low cost, easy way to invest with a potential for a decent return then Moneyfarm is certainly worth considering.
On the other hand if you want to take a more hands-on investment approach which empowers you to make your own DIY investment and fund decisions then have a look at my 80-20 Investor service.
For the purposes of clarity the £15,000 free management offer was negotiated by MoneytotheMasses.com for the benefit of those who read this article and use MoneytotheMasses.com. We do receive a small benefit from Moneyfarm as partners in their affiliate program which helps us keep MoneytotheMasses.com free to use. But as you can clearly see this has in no way influenced this independent and balanced review of the product. Please use the following link if you would prefer that MoneytotheMasses.com does not receive any payment for your referal - Moneyfarm
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