Plum Expert Review: A sweet spot for your investments or does its offer crumble under pressure?

Is Plum good for investing?

Plum offers a range of 26 funds that have been curated to match its clients’ risk appetite and to enable portfolio diversification, though Plum itself does not offer financial advice.

Clients can invest a lump sum, make regular contributions to their pot, or use a combination of both.

Plum offers a handy calculator to provide you with an idea of the sort of returns you might be able to achieve, though of course these are just projections based on a series of assumptions and not a guarantee of future performance.

You can also trade and invest in US stocks through Plum and its partner US online brokerage Alpaca. Trading US stocks is commission-free, but you will pay a fee of 0.45% for currency conversions into and out of US dollars.

Note that to invest in funds with Plum, you will need to have one of their subscription accounts, which start at £2.99 per month. And that your investment will be subject to fund manager and admin charges.

Fund manager fees are 0.22% a year for basic funds but can rise in certain instances, subject to fund selection. The admin or management fee is 0.45% per annum on the value of your portfolio.

What can you invest in with Plum?

Stocks and shares listed on the NYSE and Nasdaq exchanges in the US. Tax residents of certain European countries can also trade a range of ETFs domiciled in those countries. However, that list does not include UK investors who must make do with mutual funds (instead of ETFs) which are provided by managers such as Vanguard, BlackRock and Legal and General.

What sort of accounts does Plum offer?

Plum offers a variety of accounts, including both cash and lifetime ISAs, and Easy Access and 95 day savings “pockets“ that are managed by Investec.

Some of which can be augmented by the firm’s Autosavers apps, which help manage your savings by, for example, rounding up purchases you make via a debit card to the nearest pound, by calculating what you can afford to save each week and putting that money aside for you.

There is also a general investment account, and a stocks and shares ISA; however, you will also need to have a Plum Pro or Premium subscription account to take advantage of these which cost £2.99 or £9.99 per month, respectively. Note that the 95-day notice savings pocket is only available to Plum Premium customers.

How does Plum compare to competitors?

Plum is different to many of its peers in that it uses third parties for the products and services it provides, rather than offering them itself.

So in some respects it’s more of an introducer or white label partner, than a broker proper like Hargreaves Lansdown.

Though I note that the Bristol-based D2C platform does something similar with its own savings products.

Plum’s choice of partners limits the investments they can offer, for example, just US equities, and no UK-listed ETFs or indeed ETFs at all for UK clients.

If you want to trade and or invest in UK and European stocks and ETFs, rather than just mutual funds, then Plum isn’t for you. However, if you want to make regular savings and are happy to have the firm’s algos automate that process, then Plum is worth considering.