Ready-made funds and model portfolios from platforms

A ready-made investment portfolio is a package of funds chosen and run for you by a platform or provider. Instead of picking individual shares, bonds or funds yourself, you answer questions about your goals and attitude to risk, and the service matches you to a portfolio it then manages day to day. Which? describes these "do-it-for-me" platforms as services that ask for your investment aims, assess your attitude to risk through a questionnaire, and then recommend a tailored portfolio of funds, gilts and bonds¹.

The appeal is simple: someone else does the choosing, the monitoring and the rebalancing. Vanguard describes its managed ISA as "ideal if you don't have the time or confidence to manage it yourself", with the process starting at your risk profile, matching you with suitable investments, and the provider handling the rest². The trade-offs are cost (you pay management charges on top of the funds' own costs), less control over what you hold, and the fact that returns still go down as well as up.

Banks have moved into this market in a big way. Halifax, Lloyds and Bank of Scotland all offer Ready-Made Investments, and all three are moving from a flat £3 monthly account fee to a percentage-based fee of 0.3% a year from 10 December 2026³.

What a ready-made portfolio is and what the platform does for you

A ready-made portfolio, sometimes called a model portfolio, is a pre-set mix of investments built by a provider and offered to customers who match a particular risk level. The provider decides which funds go in it, in what proportions, and keeps those proportions on track over time. You decide how much to put in and when to take money out; the provider decides everything in between.

The entry point is usually a questionnaire. Which? explains that most do-it-for-me platforms ask for your investment aims and assess your attitude to risk through a questionnaire, then recommend a tailored portfolio of funds, gilts and bonds¹. Vanguard describes the same sequence for its managed ISA: it starts by helping you understand your risk profile, then matches you with suitable investments, and then handles the rest². The investments are chosen based on your risk profile, and the portfolio is then managed for you¹⁰.

What "managed" covers varies between services, but the core jobs are the same: choosing the funds, monitoring the mix, and rebalancing when it drifts. Some services also change the mix automatically as you approach a target date, which pension schemes call lifestyling. The People's Pension, for example, automatically starts switching from higher-risk investments into lower-risk investments from 15 years before your chosen retirement date¹¹.

Ready-made portfolios sit inside a tax wrapper, most often a stocks and shares ISA, a pension, or a general investment account. ISAs are products that allow tax-free investment into cash, funds and equities¹². Where you hold the portfolio affects how it is taxed and when you can get at the money, which the page on where to hold investments covers in detail.

Risk levels: from very cautious to very adventurous

Every ready-made service sorts its portfolios by risk. Which? notes that investments are often described as "cautious", "balanced" or "adventurous", which reflects how far and how fast their value is likely to move¹³. Providers use their own scales: Vanguard's managed personal pension offers five portfolios, each tailored to a specific risk profile: very cautious, cautious, moderate, adventurous and very adventurous⁶.

The risk level determines what the portfolio holds. A very cautious portfolio leans towards bonds and cash-like assets, which move less but have historically grown more slowly. A very adventurous portfolio holds more shares, which swing more in value. Vanguard notes that its highest-risk portfolio, very adventurous, may hold funds invested solely in shares at an earlier stage in your glidepath⁶. The page on investment risk and your attitude to risk explains how these labels map onto what your money actually does.

Two things are worth checking before picking a level. First, the labels are not standardised: one provider's "balanced" is not another's, so read what each portfolio actually holds. Second, some services change your risk level for you over time. The People's Pension's lifestyling, switching from higher-risk to lower-risk investments from 15 years before retirement¹¹, is an example: your portfolio becomes more cautious whether or not you ask for it, which suits people heading for a steady retirement income but may not suit someone planning to keep their pension invested.

What goes inside: index funds, bonds, shares and ESG options

The building blocks of a ready-made portfolio are investment funds: pooled vehicles that hold many underlying investments, so your money is spread across lots of companies or bonds at once. The Association of Investment Companies explains that funds let you invest small amounts starting from around £50 a month, and that regular saving into investment trusts is possible from as little as £50 a month¹⁴.

Platforms differ in what they offer around the portfolio. Which? notes that investment platforms offer investment funds, shares, investment trusts, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), bonds and other investments, though some only offer investment funds¹. Vanguard's do-it-yourself pension option lets you build from a wide range of funds, including index funds, active funds and ETFs, alongside its ready-made portfolios¹⁶. The pages on investment funds, ETFs and bonds explain each type.

Many ready-made portfolios are built mainly from index funds, which track a market rather than paying a manager to beat it; the page on active vs passive investing compares the two. Others include actively managed funds, gilts (UK government bonds, covered here), or corporate bonds.

ESG and ethical options

Some services offer portfolios that screen investments on environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria or follow ethical rules. What that means in practice varies widely. Which? explains that ESG-labelled funds don't need to have a specific sustainability objective in mind, unlike funds using the FCA's formal sustainable labels¹⁷. The regulator's labelling regime, covered on our page about sustainability labels, sets a higher bar than a fund simply calling itself ESG.

The label is also under strain: 383 funds across Europe and the UK opted to drop their ESG-related terms altogether in the second quarter of 2025¹⁸. If an ESG ready-made portfolio matters to you, read the fund's objectives and policies document to see what is actually excluded or prioritised, rather than relying on the name. Our page on ethical and impact funds goes deeper.

Fees and charges: account, fund and management costs added together

The cost of a ready-made portfolio is not one number but several stacked together. The FCA requires firms to give you costs and charges information covering one-off entry costs, one-off exit costs, ongoing costs, transaction costs, performance fees and carried interest¹⁹. For a typical managed service, the layers are:

• Account or platform fee: charged by the service for holding your money, usually a percentage of your balance
• Management fee: charged for choosing and running the portfolio
• Fund costs: the ongoing charges of the funds inside, which you pay indirectly through the fund's price

Vanguard's Managed ISA shows the stack clearly: an account fee of 0.15% a year, capped at £375 a year, a fund management cost averaging 0.17% a year depending on the portfolio, and a management fee of 0.20% a year⁸. On £10,000 invested, Vanguard's own worked example comes to £52 a year in total: £15 account fee, £17 fund management cost and £20 management fee⁷.

Percentages compound against you over time, and small differences add up. Vanguard published analysis in September 2026 showing that reducing annual pension fees from 1% to 0.5% could add at least £47,000 to a retirement pot²⁰. That figure is the provider's own research, but the direction is not controversial: lower charges leave more of any growth invested.

For comparison, a full financial advice relationship costs far more than a managed portfolio. Which? cites a VouchedFor figure of £6,300 for creating a financial plan involving £100,000 of investments and receiving ongoing advice about it for five years, made up of £2,326 upfront and £3,975 ongoing²¹. A ready-made service is not advice (see the section below), which is a large part of why it costs less.

The pages on platform fees and charges and fund charges and the ongoing charges figure explain how to read these costs across providers.

Bank ready-made investments: the move to a 0.3% yearly account fee

The biggest banks have their own ready-made investment services, and their pricing is changing. Halifax, Lloyds and Bank of Scotland Ready-Made Investments are all moving from a flat £3 monthly service fee to a percentage-based account fee of 0.3% a year, charged monthly, from 10 December 2026, with their terms and conditions and key features documents updating from that date³.

The new fee has two limits worth knowing:

• It is capped at £25 a month
• It is charged only on the first £100,000 of investments⁴

So on a balance below the cap, the account fee works out at 0.3% a year; above £100,000, the charge stops growing, and the cap of £25 a month (equivalent to £300 a year) is the most anyone pays in account fees. The fund costs inside the portfolios are separate and unchanged by this move.

The banks are also lowering the barrier to start. Halifax and Lloyds are dropping the minimum one-off payment from £500 to £1, with monthly payments starting from £20⁴. That makes these services accessible to people saving very small amounts, though the percentage fee means small balances pay proportionally the same as large ones below the cap.

Scottish Widows, part of the same group, is taking a different route for now: its £3 monthly account fee is waived until 12 November 2026, after which it will be charged as usual²².

Elsewhere in the market, Hargreaves Lansdown's Ready-Made Pension Plan comes with an account charge of 0.15% plus a 0.3% fund management charge²³, showing how the same headline idea can be priced quite differently between providers.

Who can open one: age, residency and bank account rules

Eligibility rules are set by each provider, but they follow a pattern. Vanguard's managed accounts, for its ISA and its personal pension, are open to individual applicants who are 18 or older, reside in the UK, and are UK taxpayers, and you must also have a UK bank account⁹. The ISA is available if you're aged 18 or over, pay UK tax and live in the UK⁹.

A UK bank account matters for practical reasons: monthly payments into these services are usually taken by Direct Debit, and withdrawals are paid back to that account. Vanguard's minimum monthly investment is £100 a month by Direct Debit⁷.

Age rules can bite at both ends. Citizens Advice notes that banks and building societies may not let you open some types of account unless you fall into a certain age-group²⁴, and investment services are no different in setting their own age limits. For children, the position is different again: NS&I explains that grandparents are able to open and contribute to a child's Investment Account but will need to nominate someone to look after the account until the child turns 16, and that person must be a parent or guardian²⁵. Our page on investing for children covers Junior ISAs and other options.

One age limit applies across pensions regardless of provider: withdrawals from a personal pension are not typically possible before the minimum pension age, which is 55 and rises to 57 from 2028²⁶. Money in a managed pension is locked away for longer than money in a managed ISA, whatever your risk level.

How to start: minimum deposits and monthly payments

Minimums vary enormously between services, from £1 to £500. The table below shows the figures the providers state.

The application itself is usually short. Vanguard lists what it needs to open its managed ISA: name, address and phone number, date of birth, debit card details if you're making a lump sum payment, bank account details, and your National Insurance number⁷. The whole process is done online.

Two practical points on getting money in. First, you cannot transfer investments you already hold directly into an ISA: Which? explains that you would need to sell them, transfer the money to your ISA, and buy the investments back, which can have capital gains tax consequences²⁷. Second, ISAs are now flexible: the ISA regulations allow a cash, stocks and shares or innovative finance ISA to operate flexibly, letting the investor withdraw and replace funds within the same year without losing the ISA benefit²⁸. Our page on how to add money to an investment account covers the mechanics, and investing a lump sum vs investing monthly compares the two approaches.

Managed or self-managed: how much control you give up

Most platforms offer both a managed route and a self-managed route, and some let you switch between them. Vanguard's stocks and shares ISA comes in both forms: in the self-managed version, you manage your own portfolio, choosing from more than 85 funds, while in the managed version, its experts build your investment plan and manage your portfolio²⁹. The self-managed option also includes ready-made funds that help balance risk, for people who want a middle ground²⁹.

What you give up in a managed service is the ability to pick, hold or avoid particular investments. If you feel strongly about a company, sector or country, a managed portfolio will not reflect that unless the whole portfolio is built around it, as ESG portfolios are. What you gain is not having to monitor anything, and not having to make decisions at moments when markets are falling and judgment is hardest.

The distinction between these levels of service, from execution-only through advice to discretionary management, is explained on our page comparing execution-only, advisory and discretionary services. A managed portfolio is a discretionary-style service: the provider acts within the mandate you gave it through the questionnaire, without consulting you on each trade.

Returns go down as well as up

This is the part no questionnaire can remove. Every ready-made portfolio, at every risk level, can lose money. The Association of Investment Companies frames the basic trade-off as risk versus reward: the potential for higher returns comes with the potential for higher losses¹⁵. A very cautious portfolio is designed to fall less when markets fall, but it is also expected to grow less when they rise.

The risk labels tell you about the shape of the journey, not the destination. Which? notes that descriptions like "cautious", "balanced" or "adventurous" reflect how far and how fast an investment's value is likely to move¹³. Even the most cautious managed portfolio holds assets whose prices change daily, and unlike a savings account, the amount you get back is not fixed.

Time is the main defence. These services are generally aimed at money you can leave invested for years, because falls have historically been recovered over long periods more often than over short ones. If you may need the money soon, the page on when investing makes sense instead of saving sets out the comparison with savings accounts, where your capital is not at risk in the same way.

Two further risks are worth naming. A fund inside your portfolio can be suspended, meaning you cannot sell it for a period; our page on fund suspensions explains when that happens. And if the platform or provider itself fails, the protections are specific: the page on what happens if an investment platform fails covers FSCS protection and its limits, including the fact that FSCS does not cover poor investment performance.

Guidance is not advice: where to get help choosing

A managed portfolio service will help you understand your risk profile and match you to investments, but that is guidance, not regulated financial advice. The House of Commons Library defines the boundary: guidance is a broader term including general information and signposting about pensions which does not include a recommendation³¹. Which? makes the same point about its own guidance service: it is impartial, so it does not give regulated financial advice or recommend particular products or providers³².

The difference matters when things go wrong. If you receive regulated advice and it turns out to be unsuitable, there are complaint and redress routes, covered on our page about mis-sold investments and bad investment advice. If you chose a portfolio yourself after answering a questionnaire, the responsibility for the choice rests with you, even though the provider chose the contents.

Free, impartial help is available:

• MoneyHelper provides impartial, free guidance: general information rather than recommending a specific product³³
• Citizens Advice also provides guidance³³
• Targeted support, a newer form of regulated support, is designed to help groups of customers with similar needs or circumstances to make informed decisions about their pensions and investments³⁴

If you want someone to recommend a specific portfolio for your circumstances, that is regulated advice, and it costs: the VouchedFor figure of £6,300 over five years for a £100,000 plan with ongoing advice²¹ is a realistic marker. Our page on how much a financial adviser costs breaks this down.