Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, you can set up a direct debit to save regularly into any of Our accounts. You can decide to do this at the point of purchase when you are investing, or you can manage your direct debits in your profile section, and we will sort all the technical stuff.

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

On The Big Exchange you are investing in funds which experienced professionals have put together. Each invests in a collection of companies decided by the fund manager, who closely monitors each in terms of its positive impact and financial performance. So you won’t be picking your own stocks. You can, though, take a look at the top ten companies each fund holds.

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 a debit card from within your account.

Yes, effective as of February 2024 The Big Exchange now pays interest on uninvested cash held in customer accounts. As of 1st September 2024 the interest rate was set at 3.00%, and will move in line with interest rates set by the Bank of England. Interest is paid on the first day of each month, which accrues daily on the cash held in your account the previous month. This will appear as ‘Cash Account Interest’ on your statement.

No, we do not provide any advice. We’re here to make sure you have all of the information to make an informed decision about investing for yourself and for others where applicable, but we cannot give you personal recommendations based on your circumstances.

Traditional investing looks at just making you money without necessarily taking into account the impact that investee companies have on the world. On The Big Exchange, we only list funds that invest in companies making a positive difference to people and the planet, which we assess though a rigorous assessment process. This means we are checking that the investments are actually walking the talk.

You can reset your password either by clicking on the forgotten password link or in the Update Personal Details section of your profile.

Each individual on The Big Exchange can open up to one of our ISAs, or General Investment Accounts (GIA). As a Guardian or Parent you can open up to 5 JISAs, each one has to be for a different child. Find out more about which account is right for you in our Accounts Page . At present, we do not offer joint accounts.

For most accounts there is a minimum age of 18 years old but a Junior Investment Savings Account (JISA) can be opened by a parent/guardian for a child under 18.

Firstly, in order 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 a couple of working days to settle. Initially you will see the amount become 'Available to trade', before it then becomes "Available to withdraw" in your Big Exchange Dashboard once the trade has settled. Once your sell trade has completed or you have the required amount visible in "Available to withdraw" 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 3-5 working days to arrive in your bank account. There is no charge or fee to withdraw from your account.

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 its 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.

Your investments can take 3-4 working days to settle (they don't work weekends, unfortunately!). During this time, it can show as cash on your account, instead of seeing it in the value of your investments straight away. If you go to the Transactions tab on your customer portal, you will be able to see that some of the funds have only been "authorised" or "pooled", and will only move into the investments bucket when they read "completed" yet.

Please email enquiries@bigexchange.com and we will help explain the process.

All funds on The Big Exchange are daily dealing which means that apart from in exceptional circumstances, the fund can sell units on a daily basis. This means your money is not locked in and if you need it out, you can get it out. There are two stages. Step 1 is to sell your investments this will create cash on your dashboard. It may take a couple of days to fully sell down any investments in the market. Step 2 is to get the money into your bank account. To do this you will need to request a withdrawal on your dashboard. All in all, this can take between 3-5 working days and sometimes more depending on bank holidays or other issues. Remember, though: investing is for the long term, which means at least three years, ideally longer. Withdrawing an investment sooner than this is not usually a good idea.

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!

Unfortunately, not for the moment. The Big Exchange will be 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 Resolution Compliance Limited. They act as our principal firm meaning that, through them, we are able to have the relevant permissions to "arrange deals" for investors. Resolution Compliance 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.

At the moment we do accept transfers in from other providers, which you can find out more about here. However, all investments will be transferred in cash and then you will have to choose your funds when the transfer has been completed. This means all your investments will be sold with your current provider and transferred to us in cash. As we only list funds that have a positive impact on people and the planet, you may not be able to hold the same investments with us that you did with a previous provider. Feel free to get in touch with us with any questions.

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, save or bank with in the event that they go bust. We aren't planning on this happening but if The Big Exchange or FNZ Securities Limited were to go bust, 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.

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.

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

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.

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 (if you are making a one-off payment), 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."

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!

All investments on The Big Exchange have to show the intention to make a positive difference to people and/or the planet - or else, they can't get on our site! That means you can be happy knowing the selection on The Big Exchange has already been reviewed! The medal system on The Big Exchange was designed to give customers, at a glance, the top funds contributing to positive solutions. There are a number of different inputs that go into awarding medals and you can read in the full document here, but very simply Gold medal funds usually have a higher percentage of companies in the fund that contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, then Silver, then Bronze. Each fund is unique in its own right and all do different things so it is important to read the fund details, the KIID and the Factsheet for each investment before deciding.

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.

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 call Ex-post costs and charges which will appear in your documents section.

We collect The Big Exchange account fee every month directly from your account. This fee will come from your existing cash balance, or if you don't hold any cash, we will sell down a small amount of your investments to cover it. So, all in all, you don’t have to do a thing. You can see all your account fees in the Cash Statement section of the Transactions section in your account.

We have partnered with FNZ Securities Limited, formerly Rexigon Securities 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. FNZ Securities 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.