The LSE Directory / Retail brokers
Barclays Direct Investing is the direct-to-consumer investment platform of Barclays Bank UK, run by Barclays Investment Solutions Limited. It offers a general investment account, a Stocks and Shares ISA and a Self-Invested Personal Pension to UK retail customers, who can deal in several thousand UK and international shares alongside funds, exchange-traded funds, investment trusts, gilts and bonds, or buy Barclays-built ready-made investment portfolios for hands-off exposure. Accounts sit inside the main Barclays banking app, so customers view investments alongside everyday current account and savings balances. The platform's differentiation is banking integration rather than a specialist trading feature set; reviewers note it lacks fractional shares, CFDs, junior ISAs and lifetime ISAs, and covers a narrower instrument range than dedicated brokers. Its pitch to cost-conscious, buy-and-hold investors rests on price: it currently charges no annual platform or custody fee for holding investments, only a flat six pound charge per trade on shares and other non-fund instruments, with fund dealing itself free. The SIPP option is administered separately by AJ Bell under its own quarterly admin fee, while the underlying investments are held on the Barclays platform. The service descends from Barclays Stockbrokers, which was migrated onto new technology and relaunched as Barclays Smart Investor in 2017; that migration moved roughly 14 billion pounds of client assets over a single August bank holiday weekend and drew public criticism at the time for login failures, missing transactions, incorrect valuations and delayed dividend payments. Barclays Investment Solutions Limited, company number 2752982, registered at 1 Churchill Place, London, is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and is a member of the London Stock Exchange and Aquis Exchange. In 2026 Barclays renamed Smart Investor to Direct Investing, a name change intended to signal that the platform is for customers making their own investment decisions rather than a switch of product or provider. Barclays paired the rename with the removal, from 31 May 2026, of its long-standing platform fee, which had been a tiered 0.25 percent per year on balances up to 200,000 pounds and 0.05 percent above that; the change made holding investments free and left only the per-trade dealing charge and fund manager charges in place.
