The Spotify of investing? Interactive Investor boosts its offering for those on 'family' subscription plan. Updated: 02:00 EDT, 27 May 2026 Products featured in this article are independently selected by This is Money's specialist journalists. If you open an account using links which have an asterisk, This is Money will earn an affiliate commission. We do not allow this to affect our editorial independence. Interactive Investor has boosted its offering for those on its family subscription plan, which allows customers to 'gift' subscriptions to relatives. Family members with a gifted subscription were previously limited to opening just a general investment account and stocks and shares Isa. Now, Interactive Investor has given them the ability to open the full range of investing accounts. The flat subscription fee makes the investment platform the Spotify of investing, with its family accounts working in a similar way to Spotify's Premium Family subscription. If you're on the investment platform's £14.99 a month Plus plan, you can gift five free accounts to family members. Then they can open a general investment account, stocks and shares Isa, and self-invested personal pension (Sipp) for themselves, and junior Isas for their children. The addition of junior Isas to family accounts makes this a more valuable deal, because they don't count towards one of your five free subscriptions. Camilla Esmund, senior manager at Interactive Investor, said: 'Family members across generations will have different financial pressures and goals. A family-led investment strategy can be a great way to manage these. 'Plus, it helps encourage open conversations about money and engage the whole family on investing.' How does the family subscription compare with other options? If you want to encourage your family to start investing while keeping fees low, you could do worse than Interactive Investor. Holly Mackay, chief executive of personal finance website Boring Money, said: 'Too many people don't start because they don't know how to begin or where to go. Do other members have to be close family? Interactive Investor says that the plan is 'intended' for your family, but the definition of this is down to you. The platform won't check last names or address details and won't ask you to prove your relationship with other members on the plan. 'Having a family member remove this procrastination point for you is a wonderful boost to get.' Bear in mind that Interactive Investor is a full-fat investing platform, so we're comparing it against the likes of AJ Bell*, Hargreaves Lansdown* and Fidelity*, which all charge account fees. Newer providers like InvestEngine* and Trading 212* don't charge account fees. However they often can't match more established players on features like customer service and investment research. Read more in our guide to the best investment platforms. If you made full use of the deal and gifted accounts to five family members, each one would effectively cost £2.50 a month, as a proportion of the £14.99 monthly cost. This reduces further if those family members then open junior Isas for their children. This is Money says: In our view this is a good way to get family members - who might be starting to invest with smaller amounts - into the investing habit. Holly Mackay of Boring Money references research the website conducted that suggests family influence is an 'important trigger' which gets people to start investing. 'This is more pronounced for women. Twelve per cent of women say they started to invest because of help and encouragement from a family member compared to 6 per cent of men. 'The impact of family increases once someone has taken the first step. 62 per cent of all investors say they would trust information on investing from family members.' As with Spotify, each member has their own account and log in details even though the plans are linked to a primary one. As a simple example here's a parent who gifts accounts to their partner and two children in their twenties, both with modest sized portfolios: How does the family plan compare? | Account | Main account | Partner | Child 1 | Child 2 | Total | Difference | | Isa | £30k | £100k | £10k | £20k | / | / | | Gia | - | £5k | - | - | / | / | | Sipp | £70k | - | - | £25k | / | / | | Cost | / | / | / | / | / | / | | Interactive Investor | £180 | £180 | N/a | N/a | £360 | - | | Hargreaves Lansdown | £350 | £342.50 | £35 | £157.50 | £885 | +£525 | | AJ Bell | £250 | £179.50 | £25 | £112.50 | £567 | +£207 | | Fidelity | £265 | £273.75 | £35 (with regular savings plan) | £157.50 | £731.25 | +£371.25 | | Assumptions: holdings - 50/50 shares/funds. Trades - excluded. Sources: This is Money, based on initial data from Interactive Investor and The Lang Cat | If the two children above have their own kids, they can open junior Isas for them with no further account fees to pay. Keep in mind however that some platforms don't charge account fees for junior Isas anyway, including Fidelity*, Hargreaves Lansdown*, IG* and Freetrade*. These platforms also allow you to open a standalone junior Isa, whereas you can only open a junior Isa with Interactive Investor if you're on the Plus plan. What should you watch out for? If a family member's portfolio grows beyond £100,000 they face a steep fee cliff edge, because they move onto the Plus plan at £14.99 a month. You can see this illustrated in the 'partner' column in the table above. At this point it's likely they'll be more experienced, so they may want to check whether they can save money on fees by choosing a different provider. Calculating charges based on their exact mix of assets is important, because platforms usually cap account fees when holding shares. AJ Bell* caps account fees on shares in an Isa and general investment account at £3.50 a month. The partner's portfolio size in the example above would actually work out cheaper with AJ Bell. But if their fund holdings grow, then Interactive Investor would start to work out better again, so it may not be worth switching. A flat £14.99 a month charge is cost effective especially for growing portfolios when compared with rivals such as Hargreaves Lansdown*. But if they don't need all the bells and whistles that these platforms offer, it's worth considering the likes of Freetrade*, Trading 212* and Prosper*, none of which charge account or dealing fees. Another cost your family members should look out for on the family plan is the £3.99 standard trade cost. It's worth considering setting up a free regular investing plan to avoid this fee. How do we rate Interactive Investor as an investment platform? Interactive Investor* is a good all-round investment platform, but its fee structure is what makes it stand out among major rivals such as AJ Bell and Hargreaves Lansdown. £200 cashback when you open a Sipp. Interactive Investor is currently paying £200 cashback when you open a new pension with at least £20,000. Rather than charging account fees as a percentage of your investments, Interactive Investor charges a set monthly fee. The Core plan is £5.99 a month for portfolios of up to £100,000. Above that investors step up to the Plus plan at £14.99 a month. Flat fees are cost effective for investors with growing portfolios because they don't scale with the value of your investments - you just need to be aware of the £100,000 cliff edge.

Hargreaves Lansdown announces four new hires. A mixture of external hires and internal promotions was announced earlier today 13 April 2026 Leading investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) has announced four senior hires to their investment team, according to a recent LinkedIn post. First, with chief investment strategist Emma Wall set to depart on maternity leave, Anna Macdonald will be taking over in the interim. Macdonald has experience in a wide variety of roles, including a tenure as investment manager at Aubrey Capital Management and fund manager at Amati Global Investors. The appointment was described as a "major coup for the business and our clients" by HL's Wall. Nicholas Hyett returns to HL after five years on the equity research team to serve as the newly-created role of lead alternatives analyst. In his new capacity, he will oversee UK smaller companies, alternative and private market funds, while serving as a member of the senior research team. In his previous role, he served as investment manager and analyst at the wealth club. Internally, there have also been a handful of promotions. Clare Stinton, who has been with the HL team for over 12 years in various roles, has been promoted to senior personal finance analyst. Jarod M [sic] has joined the equity analyst team, having previously served as an operations associate. Finally, Wall announced the team has appointed a new head of personal finance, to be disclosed in the near future. MORE ARTICLES ON

Hargreaves Lansdown IT outage halts customer trades and transactions. 20th March By PA News Agency One of the UK's biggest retail investment platforms has apologised to customers over IT issues which have left people unable to access their accounts during a period of heightened volatility in the financial markets. Hargreaves Lansdown said it was experiencing technical issues that were affecting some parts of its website and app. This was leaving clients unable to log in to their accounts and therefore see and make any transactions, or access its services. By late afternoon on Friday, Hargreaves said the problem had been fixed and people could get back into their accounts and make transactions as normal. Hargreaves assured people that there was no evidence of a cyber incident or a data breach and that all customers' assets and data was secure. "We're sorry for the inconvenience we know this will have caused and thank you for your patience," the company told customers. Service monitoring website Downdetector showed a spike in problems being reported on Thursday evening and Friday morning, with thousands of reports over that time. The outage meant some services were unavailable, including placing trades or adding or withdrawing money from accounts. Hargreaves Lansdown is the UK's biggest DIY investment platform, offering services including investment and savings ISAs and pension accounts. It comes less than two weeks before the financial year draws to a close at the end of March. The issues are also occurring in the context of heightened volatility in the world's financial markets, with oil and gas prices rising and falling sharply in response to developments to the conflict in the Middle East. Stocks and shares have also had a rollercoaster week with the UK's FTSE 100 dropping to a more than three-month low on Thursday, before recovering some of the losses on Friday. More Stories