The LSE Directory / Retail brokers
Interactive Investor, trading as ii, is a UK direct-to-consumer online investment platform. Retail customers use it to buy and hold UK and international shares, funds, investment trusts and ETFs inside a general trading account, a Stocks and Shares ISA, a Junior ISA or a SIPP; the company states it gives access to more than 40,000 investment options. The service is execution-only: ii supplies the dealing infrastructure, portfolio tracking tools and in-house market commentary, but customers make their own investment decisions rather than receiving personalised advice. Its defining feature versus rivals such as Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell is pricing: ii charges a flat monthly subscription fee for holding an account rather than a percentage-of-assets custody charge. The company markets this structure as favouring investors with larger portfolios, since the fee does not scale up with the size of the pot, and describes itself as the UK's largest flat-fee investment platform. Its customer base is self-directed investors managing their own portfolios; by its own and independent trade-press accounts it is the UK's second-largest retail investment platform by customer numbers, behind Hargreaves Lansdown. The business traces to 1995 (established a year earlier, in 1994, by entrepreneur Sherry Coutu as a research and discussion platform, before trading capability was added). It listed on the London Stock Exchange in February 2000 at a first-day valuation of around £550 million, then saw its share price collapse in the dot-com crash; Australian financial group AMP bought the company in 2001 for roughly £50 million, and a 2003 management buyout returned it to private ownership. From 2017 it was majority owned by private equity firm J.C. Flowers & Co, which financed its acquisition of TD Direct Investing that year; ii went on to acquire Alliance Trust Savings (2019), The Share Centre (2020) and Equiniti's EQi business (2021). Aberdeen Group plc, trading as abrdn between 2021 and 2025, agreed to buy ii for around £1.49 billion in December 2021, completing the deal in May 2022 and keeping ii's own brand, technology and Manchester headquarters. Richard Wilson, ii's chief executive since 2017, has continued to run the platform under the new ownership while also taking on Aberdeen Group's group chief operating officer role. ii is authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority, and its own current figures put its customer base at over 500,000 with roughly £85 billion in assets under administration. Under Aberdeen Group's ownership the platform has continued expanding net inflows; company reporting cited record quarterly net inflows above £3.7 billion for the second quarter of 2026, ahead of both the prior quarter and the same period a year earlier, as part of the group's broader push to grow the ii business after the 2022 acquisition.
