Hargreaves Lansdown Fund and Share Account

The HL Fund and Share Account is Hargreaves Lansdown's general investment account: a place to hold investments without a tax wrapper around them. You can put UK and overseas shares, funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), investment trusts and corporate and government bonds in it, and there is no limit on what you pay in¹. Hargreaves Lansdown describes it, alongside its Stocks and Shares ISA, as one of its two most popular investment accounts¹.

It is not an ISA and not a pension. Returns are not sheltered, so dividends and gains use your annual dividend allowance and capital gains tax allowance instead¹. You can open one from £1, or £25 a month¹. Hargreaves Lansdown charges an annual account fee worked out as a percentage of the value of what you hold, capped at a monthly maximum, and the provider's own charges page carries today's figures².

This page covers what the account is for, how it works day to day, how the charges are calculated, who can apply and how, what protection applies, and what to do if something goes wrong.

What it is and who it is for

A Fund and Share Account is what the industry calls a general investment account. Nothing about it is tax-free by design: it is a plain holding account, and the tax position depends on your allowances and your circumstances¹. That makes it the natural home for investments you want to hold outside an ISA or pension, whether because you have used your ISA allowance, because you want a joint account, or because you want to hold something an ISA cannot hold.

Hargreaves Lansdown sets out who it tends to suit: people comfortable building and maintaining their own portfolio, confident making long-term investment decisions, free from significant debt other than a mortgage, and clear on the charges and on how tax will affect them⁵. That is a description of the account's intended user, not a test you have to pass, but it is a fair summary of what the account asks of you. There is no advice bundled in.

The account is also a prerequisite for some other things. Several venture capital trust offers on the Hargreaves Lansdown platform require you to hold a Fund and Share Account to apply, and you can open one during the application process⁶. If you are considering a VCT, that is worth knowing before you start.

It sits alongside the other HL investment accounts rather than replacing them. Index funds, for example, can be held in a Stocks and Shares ISA, a Lifetime ISA, a Self-Invested Personal Pension or a Fund and Share Account⁷. The same fund can usually be held in more than one of them, and the choice between them is largely a question of tax wrapper rather than of what you can buy.

How it works

Once the account is open, you choose investments and deal through the platform. Hargreaves Lansdown lists over 3,000 funds across its investment accounts, alongside UK and overseas shares, corporate and government bonds, ETFs and investment trusts⁸. Most UK ETFs can be bought and held in an HL Fund and Share Account⁹.

Cash inside the account is not held in one pot. It sits in two separate cash management accounts, the Income account and the Capital account³. The same structure appears in the platform's terms: each account contains two separate cash accounts, the income account and the capital account¹⁰. In practice this separates income the investments produce from capital you have paid in or realised, which matters when you come to take money out or reinvest.

Income can be handled in one of three ways: reinvested, held as cash, or paid out to your nominated bank account³. Individual funds set their own distribution arrangements. The HL Select UK Income Shares Fund, for example, pays income monthly, and investors can choose accumulation units, where it is rolled back into the fund, or income units, where it is paid out each month¹¹.

Withdrawals are sent by Faster Payment to a Nominated Bank Account, provided your bank can accept Faster Payments³. Adding or changing that nominated account is not instant: Hargreaves Lansdown posts a validation code to your registered address, which you then enter online to confirm the change³. Withdrawals from an HL account are made to a UK bank account owned and controlled by you as the named accountholder¹².

If you hold shares in certificate form, they can be transferred into an HL Fund and Share Account for free¹³. Shares held in someone else's name follow a different route: they must first be transferred into an HL account in the shareholder's name, then gifted with a signed letter of instruction, and the recipient must have an active HL Fund and Share Account open to receive them³.

How the fees and charges work

There are two layers of cost, and it helps to keep them apart. The first is what Hargreaves Lansdown charges for holding and administering your investments. The second is what the fund manager charges for running a fund, which is set out in the fund's own documents and is nothing to do with the platform.

The platform charge is an annual percentage of the value of your holdings, capped at a monthly maximum². It is charged monthly, calculated on the value of your holdings at the end of each month and collected in the following month³. For funds, the charge is based on the total value of funds such as unit trusts and OEICs, and not investment trusts or ETFs, held in each HL account, applied to each account separately and calculated on the last working day of the month¹⁴. ETFs held in the account carry the same annual percentage charge, capped at the same monthly maximum for each account⁹.

Dealing costs depend on what you are doing. Monthly regular investing by Direct Debit carries no charge per trade¹³. Transfers of certificated shares into the account are free¹³. Moving cash from your Fund and Share Account to other HL accounts carries no charge².

Funds carry their own ongoing charges on top. Hargreaves Lansdown publishes worked examples on individual fund pages showing the initial charge, the ongoing charge and the HL account charge side by side, so you can see the total for a given investment¹⁵. Those examples are illustrative of how the layers add up, not a quote for your own holding.

Who can apply and how to apply

You can open an account online, by phone, by post, or by transferring an existing account to Hargreaves Lansdown⁵. The minimum to open is £1, or £25 a month¹.

Joint accounts work differently. A joint HL Fund and Share Account cannot be opened online or over the telephone: the application form has to be signed by both holders and sent in the post, and the joint holder must be over 18³. If all the money in a joint account belongs to one person, HMRC needs to be told so that it treats all the interest, and any tax bill, as that person's responsibility¹⁷.

If you are moving existing investments across, Hargreaves Lansdown does not charge anything to transfer to it⁴. You can transfer funds, UK and overseas shares, corporate and government bonds, ETFs and investment trusts into a Fund and Share Account³. In most cases transfers take 2 to 6 weeks, though some take longer⁴. Two conditions are worth knowing before you start:

• If you transfer as stock rather than cash, you will typically be unable to sell your holdings during the process⁴.
• Whether you transfer as stock or as cash, any ISA wrappers are maintained⁴.

The fastest route is online, though a transfer form can be sent in the post⁴. If you change your mind, a transfer can be cancelled by written letter or by a secure message sent from your online account¹⁸. An instruction to transfer is not an instruction to sell your investments unless you include a specific sale instruction¹⁸.

How your money is protected

Two different things can go wrong, and they are protected differently. The first is the platform failing. If you invested through Hargreaves Lansdown and it went bust, you would be covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme¹⁹. The second is your investments falling in value, which no compensation scheme covers: all investments fall as well as rise in value, and you could get back less than you invest²⁰.

There is a limit to the platform protection. If you held Hargreaves Lansdown shares as a shareholder and the company went bust, you would not be covered¹⁹. Investing through a platform and owning the platform's own shares are different positions.

Cash in the account is held separately from the firm's own money. For investment accounts other than the ones with their own arrangements, cash is held by Hargreaves Lansdown Asset Management on trust in Client Bank Accounts, kept separate from the firm's own funds¹⁰. That separation is what stops client money being used to pay the firm's creditors if it fails.

Hargreaves Lansdown is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority¹. The advisory arm of the business, Hargreaves Lansdown Advisory Services Limited, appears on the FCA Register as authorised with firm reference number 189627, with the status effective from 1 December 2001, and trades under the names Hargreaves Lansdown Financial Advisers and Hargreaves Lansdown²¹. The company is active on the Companies House register under company number 03509545, incorporated on 13 February 1998²². Checking a firm's reference number on the FCA Register is the standard way to confirm who you are dealing with.

Problems, complaints and getting help

Start with Hargreaves Lansdown. If the problem is not resolved, or eight weeks pass without a final response, the complaint can go to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is free to consumers. The ombudsman handles issues such as account closures, disputed transactions, IT failures and problems with switching services²³. It publishes quarterly complaints data by firm and product, so you can see how many complaints have been brought about a provider and what they concerned²⁴.

Some practical points about the account are worth knowing before a problem arises. Hargreaves Lansdown's security arrangements include a five-digit code sent by text message or automated phone call when you log in through the website, or through the app if you have not set up fingerprint or face login, and an automatic logout after 5 minutes of inactivity¹². If the phone number the code goes to needs changing, that is done by calling the Client Support Helpdesk on 0117 980 9984¹². The security support line runs Monday to Friday 08:00 to 17:00 and Saturday 09:30 to 12:30¹².

If you are moving away rather than complaining, Hargreaves Lansdown charges nothing to transfer your account to another provider¹⁸. Where investments have to be sold to move as cash, they are sold as soon as possible and a dealing charge applies per trade, with standard foreign exchange charges on overseas investments sold and transferred as cash; the provider's own transfer page carries today's figures¹⁸. Settlement usually takes around 2 days after the day of trade for shares and 4 days from the trade date for funds¹⁸. There is no charge to convert funds, and a conversion does not count as a disposal for Capital Gains Tax¹⁸.

If you need help understanding your options more broadly, free and impartial guidance is available from MoneyHelper, and debt advice charities can help where borrowing is part of the picture. For anything involving a regulated firm's conduct, the Financial Ombudsman Service is the route once the firm has had its chance to respond.