iWeb (now Scottish Widows Share Dealing)

Fees verified directly against the Scottish Widows charges page on 9 May 2026 and unchanged from the 30 April refresh.

Account fees:

• Stocks & Shares ISA: £0 per year
• Share Dealing Account (GIA): £0 per year
• SIPP: 0.25% of investment value, capped at £16.50/month — £198/year maximum
• Ready-Made Investments: ISA/GIA/Pension wrappers with pre-built portfolios

Dealing:

• UK shares, funds, gilts and bonds: £5 flat, online
• Regular Investment Plan: £0 — genuinely free
• International trades: £0 commission, but a 1.5% FX charge applies on both sides
• Dividend reinvestment: 2% of the dividend, capped at £5
• TradePlans setup (GIA only): £2, refunded against the £5 when the trade fires

Other fees you might hit:

• Paper statements: £12.50
• CHAPS/same-day payment: £25 (£30 on SIPP)
• ISA voiding or repair: £25 per service
• Stamp Duty: 0.5% on UK share purchases (a government tax, not a platform charge — gilts are exempt)

The £0 platform fee is the real thing. It's not capped at a portfolio size, it doesn't require a minimum trade count, and the old £100 ISA opening fee was permanently removed during the Scottish Widows rebrand. Transfers in and out are also free.

The one hidden cost — cash drag. Scottish Widows pays 0% interest on cash inside ISA and Share Dealing Accounts. With the Bank of England base rate at 3.75%, that is roughly what you are paying in foregone interest — the platform earns it, you don't. On a £10,000 cash buffer, that's £375 a year walking away. The arithmetic only works if you stay almost fully invested. Park uninvested cash in a dedicated savings account or cash ISA instead — the 0% interest is how the platform funds the £0 headline fee.

Most reviewers cover iWeb as an ETF platform. The under-discussed angle is gilt access. The query "iweb gilts" pulls a 22.2% click-through on Google because it's a question with a small set of correct answers — and Scottish Widows Share Dealing is one of them.

The yield curve right now

UK gilts moved sharply in late April 2026. The Bank of England's daily 10-year nominal yield closed at 4.89% on 6 May, up from 4.78% on 20 April — a 11bp move in two weeks. That's against a base rate at 3.75%, so the term premium is doing real work here. The 30-year is sitting near 5.05% per the same series; short-dated 2-year gilts trade closer to 4.20%, with the curve modestly upward-sloping after a year of inversion. For an income investor, that means short-dated gilts are paying close to base rate and long-dated gilts are paying a meaningful premium for duration risk.

Why this matters for the platform choice: anyone buying individual gilts at these yields wants to capture the full yield with zero platform drag. A 0.25% custody fee on a £50,000 gilt holding is £125/year — that's nearly 30 days of running yield surrendered to the broker. On Scottish Widows that custody is £0.

Who actually offers individual gilt dealing in 2026

Scottish Widows Share Dealing offers the full UK gilt range — conventional Treasury Gilts at coupons from 0.125% out to 6%, and index-linked gilts maturing as far as 2073, all dealt online at the standard £5 commission. The Scottish Widows bonds and gilts centre lets you filter by issuer, coupon and price. That sounds mundane until you start comparing.

• Scottish Widows SD: yes, £5 per trade, no platform fee on the ISA/GIA holding the gilt
• Hargreaves Lansdown: yes, £6.95 per trade (post-March 2026), 0.35% account charge with £150 cap on shares/bonds in ISA/SIPP
• AJ Bell: yes, £5 per trade, 0.25% custody on the gilt holding capped at £3.50/month (£42/year) per account
• Interactive Investor: yes, included in the Core plan at £5.99/month flat (£71.88/year for the whole portfolio)
• Fidelity Personal Investing: no — does not offer individual bonds or gilts
• Vanguard Investor: no — funds and ETFs only
• Trading 212: no — no individual gilts or bonds
• InvestEngine: no — ETF-only
• Freetrade: limited — gilts only on its Plus subscription

For anyone running a DIY gilt ladder — buying short-dated low-coupon gilts to harvest the capital-gains-free element of UK tax law, or dripping into index-linked gilts for inflation protection — this is the platform that disappears beneath the trade. Holding £50,000 of gilts in a Scottish Widows ISA costs £0 in custody. The same ladder on AJ Bell costs £42/year (capped). On HL it costs the lower of 0.35% (£175) or the £150 cap. On II it folds into the £71.88 Core plan that covers everything else too.

What the buy actually looks like on the platform

The mechanics matter for new gilt buyers, because the gilts centre interface is unlike a share trade. Log into the share dealing account, go to "Bonds & Gilts" from the trading menu, and the screener loads with conventional and index-linked separated into tabs. Filter by maturity (1Y / 5Y / 10Y / 20Y / 30Y) or issuer (UK Government / corporate). Each line shows the clean price, the running yield, and the gross redemption yield. Click through to a quote screen that shows the bid/offer and the current dirty price (clean price plus accrued interest), then enter the nominal amount you want to buy — the order executes at the next reportable price.

The £5 commission is fixed regardless of the trade size. UK gilts settle T+1 — order placed Tuesday settles Wednesday — and the holding appears in the account screen the next morning at the dirty price you paid. Coupons land twice a year, automatically, and show in the cash account ready to be reinvested. There's no separate "bond" wrapper; the gilt sits inside the same ISA or SIPP as your shares and funds. For investors using the DMO Purchase and Sale Service, Scottish Widows is the cheaper alternative for buys above about £1,500 — the DMO charges 0.7% (capped at £45) and forces postal forms, while Scottish Widows is online and £5 flat.

The CGT trick at current yields

Gilts have a quirk that index funds don't: the capital gain is exempt from Capital Gains Tax under Section 115 of the TCGA 1992. With gilt yields near 4.89% on the 10-year, low-coupon short-dated gilts trade at a discount to par. A 0.25% coupon gilt maturing in 2027 trades around 95-96p in the pound; held to maturity, you pocket the 4-5p capital gain entirely tax-free. Most of the total return on these short-dated low-coupon gilts is structured as capital appreciation, not coupon — so the higher-rate taxpayer sees an effective post-tax yield far above the running yield. On £20,000 invested in such a gilt, the CGT exemption can be worth £400-£800 over the holding period vs the same yield received as taxable interest.

This trick only works if the gilt sits in a taxable account (a GIA outside an ISA), but matters most for higher-rate taxpayers who've already maxed their £20,000 ISA allowance and would otherwise pay 20% or 40% on coupon income. The HMRC guidance on gilts and tax confirms the treatment.

The arithmetic shifts at scale. A £100,000 conventional-gilt ladder costs nothing to hold here. The same ladder on Vanguard or Fidelity simply isn't available — those platforms don't deal individual securities at the gilt end of the market. The 22.2% click-through rate that the query "iweb gilts" earns on Google isn't an accident: this is the platform UK gilt buyers were already using before the rebrand, and the maths still works.

One caveat. Cash held against pending gilt purchases earns 0% inside the ISA — the same drag that hits any uninvested ISA cash. If you're laddering monthly, time the buys so cash sits for hours, not weeks.

A worked example sharpens the abstract numbers. Take £50,000 inside a Scottish Widows Share Dealing ISA, target a five-rung ladder maturing one year apart, and pick conventional gilts with low coupons to maximise the CGT-friendly element (which is academic inside an ISA but matters if the same strategy is replicated outside it).

A five-rung £50,000 ladder

Total cost to build: five trades × £5 = £25 in dealing fees. Total annual platform fee: £0. Maturity proceeds re-invested into a fresh 5-year rung at the next year's prevailing yield — that's the rolling part of "ladder". Annual cost over a 10-year hold (assuming one rung re-invested per year): £55 in dealing fees plus £0 platform fee = £55 over a decade on £50,000, which is 0.011% per year. There is genuinely no cheaper way to hold this strategy in the UK.

The same ladder on AJ Bell costs £42/year platform + £25 to build + £5/year roll = £445 over 10 years. On Hargreaves Lansdown post-March 2026, with the new £150 cap on share-and-bond holdings: £150/year + £6.95 × 5 build + £6.95/year roll = £1,584.50 over 10 years. On Interactive Investor Core: £71.88/year platform + £25 to build + £5/year roll = £768.80 over 10 years. The headline £5 trade fee is identical between Scottish Widows and AJ Bell — the £400 gap is the platform-fee tax on holding the bonds.

Adding an index-linked rung

A pure conventional-gilt ladder is exposed to inflation if CPI surprises higher. With UK CPI sitting above 3% for most of 2025 and the latest BoE forecast targeting a 2027 return to 2%, an inflation hedge is worth pricing in. Replace one of the conventional rungs (rung 4 in the table) with TR30 — the 0.125% Treasury Index-Linked 2030 — at a current real yield around 1.4%. £10,000 nominal in this rung delivers a real return locked in regardless of where CPI goes; the principal and coupons both adjust by RPI (transitioning to CPIH from 2030 under the DMO indexation reform). Whether the swap is worth it depends on your view of inflation persistence — a topic we cover in 4.5% Cash ISAs vs Index-Linked Gilts. The platform's bonds-and-gilts centre treats index-linked dealing identically to conventional — same £5 commission, same T+1 settlement, same online flow.

When the ladder strategy doesn't suit this platform

Three warnings on this approach. First, you need to know which gilt to buy. The platform doesn't suggest specific issues, doesn't run a "yield to maturity" calculator inside the order screen, and won't flag issues that have just gone ex-dividend. Cross-reference the DMO gilt list before placing orders and check the GiltEdge gilts hub for current yield comparisons. Second, the platform offers no automatic ladder rebalancing or maturity-roll alerts — you set a calendar reminder for each maturity date, and you re-invest manually. Third, dealing in volume — say a £200,000 ladder spread across 10 rungs — pushes you into territory where small bid-offer spreads matter; the £5 trade fee is fixed, but executing at a screen price you don't fully understand can cost more than the commission. For a £200,000 ladder it's worth phoning the dealing desk on the first build (£15 manual trade) to confirm you're getting a sensible quote on illiquid issues. After that, the online flow is fine. None of these are deal-breakers; they're the price of running a DIY strategy on a platform that doesn't pretend to advise you.

iWeb was Halifax Share Dealing's low-cost sibling for 20 years. In late 2024, Lloyds Banking Group consolidated the brand under Scottish Widows — and closed new iWeb signups. Existing iWeb customers were migrated automatically, and the underlying entity (Halifax Share Dealing Limited, FCA register 183332) is unchanged.

What actually changed:

• The name. iWeb is now Scottish Widows Share Dealing. The iWeb domain still works for legacy customers but new accounts open through the Scottish Widows site.
• The app. A new mobile app shipped with the rebrand. It isn't Trading 212's slick UX, but it works.
• The £100 ISA opening fee. Gone. Permanently.
• The SIPP pricing. For anyone opening a SIPP after 25 October 2024, the standard 0.25% capped at £198/year applies. Legacy iWeb SIPP holders keep their old pricing — new-structure fees are waived until November 2028.
• The fund selection. Scottish Widows launched a Fund Select List of curated picks and an ETF Quicklist built with iShares by BlackRock. Both are useful shortcuts rather than genuine research — but a 3,119-fund menu is genuinely intimidating without one.

What didn't change: the fee structure, the Regular Investment Plan, the FCA regulation, the FSCS protection, the gilt and bond range, and the buy-and-hold investor's case for using this platform.

Which? gave Scottish Widows a 74% overall score and Recommended Provider status in its 2026-27 platform survey, with five-star ratings for ease of use and value for money. Customer satisfaction hit 78% — third-highest of any platform surveyed. The rebrand changed the paint. The engine is the same, and the engine is still fast.

One thing to watch: Scottish Widows has strong Lloyds Banking Group identity. If you're philosophically uncomfortable handing your ISA to a bank-owned platform rather than a specialist broker, this isn't going to feel right. That's a legitimate preference — but it's not an argument about fees or safety.

The Regular Investment Plan is the single most undervalued feature in the UK broker market.

Set up a monthly contribution from £20 into any fund or ETF and pay nothing. Not reduced commission. Not £1.50. Zero. Combined with the zero platform fee on an ISA, a disciplined monthly investor pays only the fund's own ongoing charge — typically 0.06% to 0.23% for a global index tracker.

Here's what that looks like in pound terms. Assume you max a £500/month ISA into a Vanguard FTSE Global All Cap tracker at 0.23% OCF. After 10 years of contributions you've built roughly £60,000 of capital before market growth. Annual platform cost on each major UK broker:

• Scottish Widows Share Dealing: £0 platform + £0 dealing on the Regular Investment Plan = £0/year. You pay only the fund's 0.23%.
• Fidelity Personal Investing: 0.35% on funds, no fund dealing fee, but £45/month minimum if you go without a regular savings plan = roughly £210/year at £60k
• AJ Bell: 0.25% on funds + £1.50 per regular investment (£18/year) = £168/year at £60k
• Interactive Investor Core (post-Feb 2026): £5.99/month flat regardless of pot size, free regular investing inside Core = £71.88/year
• Hargreaves Lansdown (post-March 2026): 0.35% on funds + £0 dealing through Regular Investing = £210/year at £60k

Over a decade, that's well over £1,000 in saved platform fees on an average-sized portfolio. But that's only the direct saving. The uninvested compounding on those fees is worth another £200-£400 at typical equity returns. This is the quiet power of a zero-fee platform: small absolute numbers, large terminal numbers, because every pound you didn't pay in fees kept earning for 30 years.

The mechanic: your money enters on a set date each month and the platform batches orders. You don't pick the exact execution price. For a long-term drip-feeder, this is pure upside — the behavioural discipline of regular investing is worth vastly more than price-timing precision. The academic debate between lump-sum and drip-feeding assumes both paths cost the same. On this platform, drip-feeding is literally free.

II's new £71.88/year flat Core plan is the most genuine challenger to the iWeb proposition for a regular investor. It charges nothing more if your portfolio grows from £60k to £100k. Above that you're forced onto the £14.99/month Plus plan and the comparison shifts.

The SIPP was Scottish Widows' strongest argument in 2025. Then Interactive Investor reset its pricing on 1 February 2026, and the picture got more interesting.

iWeb / Scottish Widows SIPP: 0.25% annually, capped at £16.50/month (£198/year). The cap bites at roughly £79,200, after which every additional pound lowers your effective fee rate.

• £20,000 pot: 0.25% = £50/year
• £50,000 pot: 0.25% = £125/year
• £79,200 pot: £198/year (cap hit)
• £100,000 pot: £198/year, 0.198% effective
• £250,000 pot: £198/year, 0.079% effective
• £500,000 pot: £198/year, 0.040% effective
• £1,000,000 pot: £198/year, 0.020% effective

Interactive Investor under the Feb 2026 plan reset:

• Core: £5.99/month (£71.88/year) — covers ISA + SIPP up to a £100,000 combined portfolio
• Plus: £14.99/month (£179.88/year) — no portfolio limit, fund trades £1.49
• Premium: £39.99/month (£479.88/year) — niche

At £100,000, II Core (£71.88) undercuts iWeb (£198) by £126/year. That's a real change — the historic "iWeb wins on the SIPP" line no longer holds at this pot size. At £250,000+, II's Plus plan at £179.88/year still edges out the iWeb cap of £198.

Where iWeb still wins: pots between roughly £35,000 and £79,200, where 0.25% comes in below II's flat £71.88. And — crucially — for anyone who doesn't want a monthly subscription model, or who wants to consolidate workplace pensions without committing to II's tiered plan structure.

For context against percentage-fee competitors: at £250,000 iWeb's effective 0.079% remains cheaper than Vanguard's 0.15%, a quarter of HL's 0.35% on funds, and well under AJ Bell's 0.25% (which caps at £42/year on shares but not on funds).

SIPP cash behaves differently to ISA cash, which surprises new customers. Cash held in the SIPP above £1 earns 3.00% gross while Scottish Widows retains 0.70%-1.20% of the total interest. With the base rate at 3.75%, you're getting around 80% of the going rate on cash — a reasonable deal. Compare that to 0% on ISA cash: pension savers are treated significantly better.

Every drawdown option is free: flexi-access, capped drawdown, UFPLS lump sums, annuity purchase, conversion from capped to flexi-access, payments on death, pension sharing on divorce. Transfers in and out are free in both directions. This makes it one of the cheapest platforms to run a pension drawdown strategy — something that matters when you're decumulating rather than accumulating.

The zero-fee ISA space has competition now. Trading 212 and InvestEngine both charge £0 platform and £0 dealing — undercutting Scottish Widows' £5 trade fee outright. So why would anyone choose the older platform?

Trading 212 wins if: you're under 35, your portfolio is mostly individual shares and ETFs, and you want a mobile-first experience. It does not offer a broad fund selection — no Vanguard LifeStrategy, no Baillie Gifford funds, no Legal & General trackers. It also doesn't deal individual gilts or bonds. If your strategy is picking US and UK stocks, it's the cheapest platform in Britain. If your strategy involves a global tracker fund or a gilt ladder, it's the wrong tool.

InvestEngine wins if: your entire portfolio is ETFs. It's ETF-only by design, with no individual shares, no SIPP, and no gilts. Perfect for someone running a three-ETF global portfolio who doesn't want account management overhead.

Freetrade wins if: you want a fee-free SIPP for a small to mid-sized pension pot. Freetrade removed its SIPP fee in 2024, which undercuts Scottish Widows' £198 cap for pots under about £80,000. Above that level, Scottish Widows pulls ahead again. Freetrade also keeps gilts behind a Plus subscription.

Scottish Widows wins if: you want all of these things at once — individual shares, a broad fund range including every major index tracker, investment trusts, conventional and index-linked gilts, corporate bonds, a SIPP that caps at £198, Ready-Made Investments for a hands-off sleeve — under one account login, backed by an institution that's been managing money since 1815. The £5 trade fee only matters if you trade actively. A monthly regular investor pays £0 on dealing.

The range numbers are not marketing: 4,526 shares, 3,119 funds, 784 ETFs, 252 investment trusts, plus bonds and gilts. That's verified by Which?'s 2026-27 survey.

The institutional argument matters more than most investors give it credit for. Trading 212 launched in 2016. InvestEngine in 2019. Both are profitable, both are FCA-regulated, both are legitimate. But they're also venture-backed startups competing aggressively on price. When your pension pot is in six figures and you're thinking about decumulation in 2050, platform survival probability starts to matter. Lloyds Banking Group isn't going anywhere. The newer fintechs probably aren't either — but "probably" and "definitely" earn very different weightings at £500k.

For a 28-year-old saving £300/month into ETFs, use Trading 212. For a 45-year-old consolidating pensions and building a £250k ISA portfolio with a slug of gilts inside it, use Scottish Widows. The brutal truth is that most zero-fee platforms are racing to the same pricing on funds and ETFs. What separates them is range and longevity.

Total annual cost (platform fee + dealing) on a Stocks and Shares ISA making 6 share trades per year. Fees verified as of 9 May 2026. The Fidelity row assumes a regular savings plan is active (otherwise Fidelity charges £45/month flat under £25k).

£30,000 ISA:

• Trading 212: £0
• Scottish Widows Share Dealing: £0 + £30 = £30
• Interactive Investor Core: £71.88 + £30 = £101.88
• Vanguard Investor: £48 (under £32k minimum) = £48
• Fidelity: £105 (0.35% on funds) + £0 on funds = £105
• AJ Bell: £75 + £30 = £105
• Hargreaves Lansdown: £105 + £41.70 = £146.70

£50,000 ISA:

• Trading 212: £0
• Scottish Widows Share Dealing: £0 + £30 = £30
• Interactive Investor Core: £71.88 + £30 = £101.88
• Vanguard Investor: £75 + £0 = £75
• AJ Bell: £125 + £30 = £155
• Fidelity: £175 (funds) or £90 cap (shares/ETFs) = £90 - £175
• Hargreaves Lansdown: £175 funds (0.35%) or £150 cap (shares/ETFs/bonds) + £41.70 = £191.70 - £216.70

£100,000 ISA:

• Trading 212: £0
• Scottish Widows Share Dealing: £0 + £30 = £30
• Interactive Investor Core: £71.88 + £30 = £101.88 (at the £100k Core ceiling)
• Vanguard Investor: £150 + £0 = £150
• AJ Bell: £250 + £30 = £280
• Fidelity: £350 + £0 on funds (£90 cap on shares, but funds are uncapped) = £350
• Hargreaves Lansdown: 0.35% on funds = £350 (or £150 cap if 100% in shares/ETFs/bonds)

£250,000 ISA:

• Trading 212: £0
• Scottish Widows Share Dealing: £0 + £30 = £30
• Interactive Investor Plus: £179.88 + £30 = £209.88
• Vanguard Investor: £375 + £0 = £375
• AJ Bell (capped at £42 on shares; 0.25% on funds): £625 + £30 = £655 for funds; £72 for shares
• Hargreaves Lansdown: 0.35% on funds = £875 (or £150 cap on shares)

The gap grows non-linearly. At £30k, Trading 212 undercuts Scottish Widows by just £30 a year — trivial. At £50k it's already £155-£217 of saving versus AJ Bell or HL. At £250k, the gap between Scottish Widows and HL on a fund-heavy portfolio is £845/year. Compounded at 7% over 20 years, those unpaid fees would have become roughly £35,000 of extra ISA value. Fees matter most when you scale.

Hargreaves Lansdown's March 2026 restructure introduced a £150 per-account cap on share holding charges (shares, ETFs, investment trusts, bonds and gilts) and dropped dealing to £6.95. Funds remain uncapped at 0.35% and now carry a £1.95 dealing charge. For a share-and-ETF investor at scale, HL is now competitive — for a fund investor, it isn't. For comparing stocks and shares ISA providers at different portfolio sizes, we've ranked every major platform separately.

With the 2026/27 tax year now live and the £20,000 ISA allowance reset, front-loading into a zero-fee ISA maximises the time your money spends compounding without drag.

What happens at £500k and beyond

For investors approaching the £500k portfolio mark, the gap widens further. Hargreaves Lansdown's funds-only 0.35% charge is uncapped — that's £1,750/year on £500k of funds. AJ Bell's 0.25% on funds keeps climbing too — £1,250/year (the £42 cap only applies to shares, ETFs, investment trusts and bonds). On Vanguard, you hit the £375 fee cap above £250,000 — so Vanguard becomes interesting at £500k+ for a pure fund portfolio. Interactive Investor's Plus plan stays flat at £179.88/year regardless of size. Scottish Widows Share Dealing stays at £0.

A household running a £400k joint ISA pot plus a £150k SIPP illustrates the compounding maths. On Scottish Widows: £0 ISA fee + £198 SIPP cap = £198/year + dealing. The same setup on Hargreaves Lansdown (post-March-2026, capping shares but uncapped on funds): if it's a balanced 60/40 fund-and-share portfolio, roughly 0.35% on the fund portion of the ISA (£840) + £150 cap on the share portion + £200 SIPP cap = £1,190/year. The ten-year saving from running this household entirely on Scottish Widows is just under £10,000 — enough to fund another full year of ISA contributions.

Three groups should walk away from this platform.

The international share trader. The 1.5% FX charge on both sides of an international trade is the highest among major UK platforms. Buy a £5,000 US stock, you pay £75 in FX on the way in. Sell it later, another £75. A frequent US or European trader will pay more in FX than they save on platform fees within a year. Interactive Investor under the new Plus plan now charges 0.75% up to £50k and 0.25% above (a meaningful improvement on the old 1.5% across the board), and specialist brokers go lower still. If you trade US stocks monthly, this is the wrong platform.

The cash-heavy ISA holder. 0% interest on ISA and Share Dealing Account cash means you're paying the opportunity cost of the base rate every day your cash sits uninvested. £50,000 of cash in the ISA costs you £1,875 a year at 3.75% — far more than any other platform's fees. The workaround is straightforward: keep invested cash here, keep dry powder in a cash ISA or savings account earning the full rate. But the workaround only works if you discipline it.

The investor who wants research and guidance. Scottish Widows gave Which? just a two-star rating for investment information. No analyst ratings, no detailed fund comparisons, no watchlist alerts, no educational depth. Hargreaves Lansdown and Fidelity are in a different league for research. If you don't know what you want to buy and need a platform to help you figure it out, this isn't it. The Fund Select List and ETF Quicklist help, but they're shortcuts, not analysis.

Two more groups should think carefully.

The Junior ISA or Lifetime ISA user. Neither product is available here. If you need the LISA's 25% government bonus or want a Junior ISA for a child, you need another provider. That's fine — most families run multiple accounts anyway.

The Lloyds group account holder. FSCS investment protection is £85,000 per person, per authorised firm. But that limit is shared across all Lloyds Banking Group share dealing brands: Scottish Widows, Halifax Share Dealing, Bank of Scotland Share Dealing, and Lloyds Bank Direct Investments. If you already hold a Halifax dealing account, opening a Scottish Widows ISA doesn't double your coverage — it's pooled. Check the FSCS investment protection checker if you're near the limit. (Note: this is different from the £120,000 FSCS deposit protection raised in December 2025, which only applies to cash in banks — investment platforms don't get the higher limit.)

Scottish Widows Share Dealing wins if you:

• Build a passive global equity portfolio and hold it. The zero platform fee plus free regular investing is unbeatable for long-term passive investors. The only cost that matters is the fund's own OCF.
• Buy individual UK gilts or index-linked gilts. Almost no other zero-platform-fee broker offers them, and the £5 trade fee on gilts is the joint-cheapest in the market alongside AJ Bell.
• Run a SIPP between roughly £35k and £79,200, where 0.25% comes in below II's £71.88 Core plan, or above £150k if you don't want a monthly subscription model.
• Consolidate workplace pensions into one account. Free transfers in both directions, no exit fees, and a capped SIPP charge that gets cheaper at scale.
• Max your ISA allowance systematically through monthly contributions. The Regular Investment Plan was built for this.
• Want an execution-only platform backed by a 200-year-old institution rather than a VC-funded fintech.

Look elsewhere if you:

• Trade international shares regularly. The 1.5% FX charge will eat any platform-fee saving — II Plus's 0.25%-above-£50k is now the cheaper option.
• Keep large cash balances in the ISA. The 0% interest rate is a hidden tax on uninvested capital.
• Want research, education, or hand-holding. Hargreaves Lansdown and Fidelity offer vastly more.
• Need a Junior ISA or Lifetime ISA — not offered.
• Want a slick mobile-first experience. The Scottish Widows app is functional, not beautiful.

My take as an optimizer: the cheapest mainstream platform in the UK is the one that gets out of your way. Scottish Widows Share Dealing does exactly that — no annual fee, no regular-investment charge, no exit fees, no minimums, no games. The rebrand changed the brand, not the bargain. The Feb 2026 II reset narrowed the SIPP advantage at sub-£100k pot sizes; the gilt-dealing advantage and the ISA argument are intact.

The trade-offs are real but predictable. The 0% ISA cash interest is the price you pay for the £0 platform fee — once you internalise that and park cash elsewhere, the rest of the maths is clean.

How to transfer in: go to the Scottish Widows transfer page, select your account type, fill in the online transfer form. ISA transfers take 15-30 business days; SIPP transfers take longer depending on your current provider. Both are free in both directions.

Regulatory note: Halifax Share Dealing Limited, trading as Scottish Widows Share Dealing, is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA register 183332). Registered in England and Wales (company 3195646). Eligible investments are protected up to £85,000 by the FSCS — shared across all Lloyds group share dealing brands. For independent platform guidance, see MoneyHelper's investing pages.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. The value of investments can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. You should seek independent financial advice before making any investment decisions.