Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, you can set up a Junior Investment Savings Account (JISA) for your child which you can learn more about here.

Yes, of course! You can create, change or cancel any Direct Debits at any time once you are inside your customer portal in the Payments section. We also offer the ability to top-up your account at any time with a one-off payment using open banking.

The Big Exchange is first and foremost an investment platform as such we do not want to encourage our investors to hold large amounts of cash. Therefore, the Big Exchange does not pay interest on cash balances, but this is partially offset by the fact that platform fees are not charged on cash you hold in your account(s).  Our focus is on charging a really competitive fee for customers to use our platform. The fee currently stands at 0.25% which is one of the lowest fees in the market.

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No, we are an execution only platform and therefore do not provide advice. We are happy to answer any questions that you have and provide all the information needed to make an informed decision about investing but we cannot give personal recommendations.

There are two ways for you to add money to your account, by making a payment from your registered bank account via open banking and/or setting up a monthly direct debit.

Traditional investing focuses on making you money without necessarily considering the impact that investee companies have on the world. On The Big Exchange, we only list funds that invest in companies that we believe are making a positive difference to people and the planet. We consider a wide range of relevant data points which are used to produce an overall sustainability rating.

Go to the login area and select ‘Forgotten password’ on the right-hand side. If you have problems resetting your password, please send a secure message via the portal or email enquiries@bigexchange.com". A more detailed user guide can be accessed here.

Yes, you can set up a direct debit to save regularly into any of our accounts.  Go into the account that you wish to set up a DD regular payment into and click on the ‘Details’ button. The first stage is to set up a bank mandate.  

Once the mandate is in place, proceed to the Regular Investment button in the account to set up a direct debit for an amount of your choosing, subject to a minimum of £25, and select the individual funds you would like to invest in.

A more detailed user guide can be accessed here.

Adults over 18 can open an ISA, or General Investment Accounts (GIA). As a Guardian or Parent you can open a JISA for each of your children under 18.

To withdraw cash from your TBE account the money needs to be in available cash. If your money is tied up in investments, you will need to create a sell order for the required amount of investments that you wish to cash in. This sell trade usually takes three to four working days to settle. Once your sell trade has completed you can then request to "Withdraw cash" on your Big Exchange account dashboard. Making this request will transfer the cash to your designated bank account listed in your profile section. This can take up to five working days to arrive in your bank account.  

A more detailed user guide on withdrawals can be accessed here.

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We will collect this money from your account - we recommend that every customer holds at least £5-10 in cash to cover the fees. But, if there is not enough cash in your account and it is all in investments, we will sell down some of the holdings to pay the amount needed to cover the cost of using The Big Exchange.

Having a Cash ISA does not stop you opening a Stocks & Shares ISA. Every UK resident has an ISA allowance of £20,000 per tax year. This £20,000 can be split over different ISA products. Importantly, it can be split over a Cash ISA and a Stocks & Shares ISA. If you're in that position, you have to make sure that you don't contribute any more than £20,000 over all your ISA products in the same tax year.

From the next tax year beginning in April 2027, the cash ISA limit has been reduced to £12,000, for people under 65. The overall ISA limit remains at £20,000.  

Yes. Transfers in can be full or partial transfers in. To make a transfer to the Big Exchange you just need to contact us and complete a Transfer Authority form. Your existing provider will then transfer the cash to the Big Exchange and you can then select how the cash is invested.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS)was set up by the UK government in 2001. It protects customers using financial products. The FSCS protects you up to £85,000 per company you invest with, if they go bust. Therefore, if The Big Exchange or WealthKernel were to go out of business up to £85,000 of your money would be guaranteed. However, this isn't to do with how your investments perform, they can go down in value or up depending on the market - that's part of investing! The FSCS scheme only protects your money if The Big Exchange goes out of business.

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The Big Exchange is not a charity; it is a private limited company. We conduct ourselves as a business but one that is mission focused on creating a more inclusive financial system that works for people and for planet!

The Big Exchange is only available to those with UK residency. You don’t have to be British, but you do have to live in the UK.

We are on The FCA register as an appointed representative of a firm called RiskSave Technologies Limited. They act as our principal firm meaning that, through them, we are able to have the relevant permissions to "arrange deals" for investors. RiskSave Technologies are regulated directly by the FCA and through them we have to follow strict rules. They hold us to account, audit us regularly, and we have to report everything related to our product through them for sign-off. This adds an extra layer of compliance into The Big Exchange. The reason we chose to do this was because it is a robust and quick way to get to market, it is always our intention to get our own permissions and be on the FCA register ourselves in the future.

If your payment has failed, please get in touch by emailing us at enquiries@bigexchange.com. Once you've let us know that you have experienced an issue with your transaction, we will be able to have a look into this matter for you and have this resolved.

Each investment has an OCF, or an ongoing charge figure. This figure aims to tell you the annual costs of a fund as a percentage of its average asset value over a single year. What does this actually mean? Well, it shows you how much of your investment is eaten away each year by the investment manager's costs of running the fund. So if a fund has an OCF of 0.86%, then for every £1,000 you invest, then over the year £8.60 goes towards the cost of running the fund. Some figures like transaction costs are not included in this figure so sometimes, the total annual fee can vary slightly depending on how much the funds trade.

When you invest in a fund, you are purchasing units within that fund. The fund is made up, therefore of lots of units that people buy. The price per unit is therefore the cost of buying one of those units in the fund. You don't have to buy a whole unit to be an investor though, so don't worry. It's a good way to seeing the daily movement in the value of the fund too.

The revenue we generate through the 0.25% fee goes towards growing the business, paying our costs, and building better functionality for our site amongst other things.

If you have forgotten your username and/or password please click the link below the username field to go through some security questions. If you pass those, we will send you your username over email.

You don’t need much - maybe 5 to 10 minutes and a few extra bits: your name, email address, bank card, your bank details, your National Insurance Number and proof of a UK address.

"Active management is the name for the type of investing to which the funds on The Big Exchange belong. It means that the team in charge of running the funds take an "active" approach to investing. This means there is a human decision involved in every investment to aim to "beat the market" rather than just broadly having a computer follow a set of rules related to bucket of companies or an entire market. We believe active investing is a great for a number of reasons but mainly because your investments have the opportunity to perform better than the market (the reverse is also true), and; the investment managers can focus the investments on making a positive impact."

Once you have chosen your investment, the Ongoing charge (or OCF) will be taken down automatically from your investment within that fund. It is taken by the asset managers when they reprice your investment. You can see the fees you have paid to asset managers in full in a document called Ex-post costs and charges which will appear in your documents section.

The Big Issue Group are co-founders and the largest shareholder in The Big Exchange. We are separate companies and have a different board, management and governance. The Big Issue are the holders of our mission share. What this means is that the social and environmental mission of The Big Exchange is protected by The Big Issue. They hold us to account, keep us focused on our social mission and provide us with great support to achieve it!

You can begin investing on The Big Exchange from £25 if you are setting up a regular monthly payment. If you are making a one-off payment the minimum is £100. We hope to make this even more accessible in the future.

We collect The Big Exchange account fee every month directly from your account. The Big Exchange charges a fee of 0.25% for managing the investment platform. This is charged in addition to the OCF by the asset manager. Your total cost of ownership is therefore the platform fee plus the OCF for each fund in which you invest. If you do not wish the cash in your ISA to be used to pay fees, some customers choose to open a General Investment Account (GIA) to use as a place to hold some cash to cover fees.  You can see all your account fees in the Cash Statement section of the Transactions section in your account.

We have partnered with WealthKernel Limited. They are a company that act as our custodian. This means that they make sure your money goes to where you intended. The Big Exchange doesn't handle or have direct access to your cash or investments. WealthKernel keep it all separate from our day-to-day management, and they provide the services in holding, administering and make sure your investments are made in a timely manner.

We ask for your bank details for both one-off and regular payments. These are used as your nominated bank account for things such as withdrawals from your investments into your bank account. Taking this information is also part of our identity verification process to make sure you are who you say you are.