What to consider when choosing an investment platform

So you’ve decided to start an investment portfolio? Amazing! Now comes all the decisions before you’re even able to get your money into the market, including picking a platform to use. It can be a bit difficult trying to wade through all the options when you’re not looking at these things every day, so I’m going to highlight a couple of things for you to consider.

Type of investment

To start off with, you’re going to need to think about what type of investment you want to invest in. Usually this will be a managed fund, or directly into shares (or ETFs). There are many other types of investments, but we’ll just consider these for now.

There are some platforms that will just do shares, some that will just do managed funds, and some that will do both, so you need to make sure your particular platform allows you to access what you want to invest in.

The same can be said if you have a particular investment manager you want to utilise (for a managed fund). Not all platforms have access to all investment managers, and some platforms will only allow you to access funds run by their investment managers.

Fees

An investment platform will usually charge a fee for utilising their services. Fees for platforms can range greatly, so it’s important to take a moment and consider how much of your investment earnings will be directed towards fees.

Viewing and Interacting with your Investment Platform

Once you’ve started investing, you’re probably going to want to view your investment on the platform and see how it’s going. Now while I prefer a platform with a website, heaps of people are just as happy with an app.

So how would you like to view your investment? Do you want an app? Do you want a website? Maybe you want both?

Another thing to consider is support on the platform.

Do you want to be able to pick up the phone and call someone if you have a question about the platform? Or are you happy to use an online chat or FAQs section?

Ongoing Contributions

The last thing I want to highlight is how you are able to make ongoing contributions (if you are making them).

Some platforms will allow you to set up ongoing weekly, fortnightly or monthly contributions, and some will require you to make contributions manually.

If you’re after specific features like for example a ‘Round Up’ feature, you’ll need to make sure you check that your investment platform has this, as not all do.

Summary

There’s a lot to consider when choosing a platform, and these things are really just the tip of the iceberg when you’re starting to invest.

On top of choosing the platform, you’re also going to need to choose your specific investment, the owner of the investment, your initial contribution amount, and how much you’re going to contribute ongoing.

If you think an investment portfolio would fit into your financial plan and would like to chat with someone about making all of these decisions, feel free to reach out to us at Bounce Financial.