Tickr Review – Ethical Investing App

Today we’re reviewing the Tickr app, a simple investing app that let’s you invest easily into ethical funds. With its 3 themes of Disruptive Technology, Climate Change, and Equality, it’s a platform for people who want to make money from stocks while doing some good.
Does it have its drawbacks? Of course. But it fills a space in the market not covered by other investing apps. Should you invest via the Tickr app? Let’s check it out!
Editor’s note: Open an account with Tickr using the link on the Offers page and you will get some cash added to your account, currently £10. And for some clever marketing reason they will also plant 4 trees, when you use the link.
YouTube Video > > >

What Does Tickr Do

Tickr let’s you invest in one of 3 fund themes, or in a combo fund covering some of all 3; Climate Change, Disruptive Technology, and Equality.
It works by investing your money into a handful of ETFs – exchange traded funds – which closely align to the theme description. It also puts some of your money into bonds, both Green and Government.
As a very brief overview, an ETF is usually a collection of shares or bonds that have something in common, be it by sector or geography – a fund, but which is not usually actively managed, and so has low fees.
Let’s dig into one of Tickr’s theme’s – the one I picked to invest in – Disruptive Technology.
Tickr's 3 themes, and Combination option

ETFs In The Disruptive Technology Theme

We’ll use this theme as the example in this review; the other themes have the same basic structure – 2 to 4 subsectors with an ETF for each, supplemented by Green and Government bond ETFs. The Combo theme takes a couple of ETFs from each of the 3 main themes.
Disruptive Technology has 3 sub-themes: Automation & Robotics, which invests in the iShares Automation & Robotics UCITS ETF (RBOT); Digitalisation, which invests in the iShares Digitalisation UCITS ETF (DGTL); and Cyber Security, which invests in the L&G Cyber Security UCITS ETF (ISPY).

What Are The ETF Costs?

There are 2 types of cost on the platform – those charged by the ETF providers, and those charged by Tickr themselves. Let’s first look at the fees on the ETFs, called the Ongoing Charges Figure, or OCF.
When you choose a theme, you must then also choose between 3 risk ratings: Cautious, Balanced, and Adventurous – from least to most risky.
I chose Adventurous for it’s higher potential return, which has a higher average OCF than Balanced, which in turn has a higher average OCF than Cautious – due to the mix of stocks to bonds, with Tickr’s bond ETFs being cheaper than their stocks ETFs.
The range of OCFs on Tickr range between 0.25%-0.49% p.a – low enough that we don’t really care if one theme or risk level is slightly more expensive than another – they’re all pretty small.
The OCF fees you might pay on the app

What Other Costs Do Tickr Charge?

#1 – Monthly Fee

There is a £1 a month flat fee for holding an account, but the first month is free.
We quite like flat fees instead of percentage fees because we invest large amounts, but it’s no good if you’re only investing small amounts of, for example, £50 a month or less. £1 on £50 is effectively a 2% fee, which would act as a brake on your investment gains.

#2 – If Your Account Goes Over £3,000

If your account goes over £3,000 Tickr will add an additional 0.3% fee to the portion of your money that is above £3,000. For instance, if you invested £10,000 in the platform, the 0.3% would be applied to £7,000 of it – which would be £21 a year.

#3 – Round Ups

Tickr offer a service called Round Ups which we’ll cover shortly – there is no additional fee for those who join the platform after 17th March 2020.

No Transaction Charges

This is great – It means you can invest as often as you want without being penalised. There are also no fees for selling, or for withdrawals.

Changing Your Theme

You can change your theme at any point by going into My Account in the app, and clicking on My Fund.
However, to do this the app sells your existing holdings and buys into the new ones in the new theme, which can take up to 7 days.
This means you could make a gain or a loss on transfer as trades do not take place immediately – the market will likely have moved either up or down by the time your trades are executed.
Here the app shows you the geographies and ETF names you are invested in

Features Of The App

#1 – App Interface

As investors who want to own the world, one useful feature that we love is that the app tells you clearly which geographies your investment covers.
There’s a bit of info about the top companies in your themes, the split of your portfolio by sub-sector and how the different parts of your theme have performed, and which stock-ETFs you are investing in.
It doesn’t tell you which bonds you are investing in though, and we looked all over their website and app for info on this. We want to know what we are investing in.
So we contacted them and this is what they said the bonds were: Lyxor Green Bond (DR) UCITS ETF (CLMU) and iShares Global Govt Bond UCITS ETF (IGLH), both with OCFs of 0.25%. UK bonds make up less than 5% of these investments, so do your own research into them to check you’re happy with them.

#2 – Fractional Shares

It effectively has a fractional shares feature built in, as you can invest any amount you like – over £5 – into your theme ETFs.
You can’t do this on many traditional investment platforms. For instance, the L&G Cyber Security UCITS ETF (ISPY) costs around £13 to buy one unit on the open market, but you could invest £5 in Tickr and be invested in this Cyber Security ETF.

#3 – Monthly Investments

You can set this to anything from £5 upwards. Too many investors try and fail to time the market, but dripping equal amounts into the market on a regular basis over the long term has been shown to give better results.

#4 – Round Ups

Round-ups works by securely connecting to your bank, and rounding up the spare change on your transactions to the nearest £1.
Using an example from the app, spend £2.40 on a coffee, and the remaining £0.60 will be invested into your Tickr portfolio.
You can also apply a multiplier, which doubles, triples or quintuples the amount you invest via this method.
However – this Round-Ups service suffers from similar limitations as round-ups offerings on other apps.
It doesn’t happen in real-time. Instead, it keeps track of your round-ups over the week, and takes them all at once on a Monday. This could catch you off-guard with your household budget.
It would be much more expensive for Tickr to offer an instant round-ups service; which is likely why they don’t offer one.
Just click on your pie to deposit funds

Deposits and Withdrawals

Deposits are instant and the app makes it super easy to do – just tap on your portfolio pie and type in an amount to deposit.
Withdrawals are not instant, in fact they can take up to 12 working days – the funds are sold on the next available Wednesday and the cash processed the following Monday, which then takes 3-5 workings days to reach your bank account.

Do I Receive Dividends?

Dividends may be paid by the underlying ETFs in each theme but they will be automatically reinvested.

Is There An ISA?

Yes, and there’s no fee to use it – great if you want to use Tickr as your main investing app, as you will pay no UK taxes on your portfolio.

Better To Invest On A Do-It-Yourself Platform?

Tickr invests in ETFs which, in their words, have “a positive impact on the world”, most of which are not available on other free trading platforms. It’s the cheapest place we’ve found to buy these specific ETFs.
However, investing only in this range of ethical ETFs is not a fully diversified way to invest. Limiting yourself to only ethical investments means you could miss out on some excellent companies.
And there are other platforms available that do not charge any fees, such as Freetrade.
It is possible to build a global portfolio diversified by geography and by market sectors within the Freetrade app by buying just 7 ETFs, which we’ve covered in our World Portfolio series, linked to in the description below.
But we think Tickr is a great app for what it does – and you do feel good using it, seeing your trees getting planted and knowing you’re making a difference.
Are you using the Tickr app? What else do you want answered? Let us know in the comments below.

Recommended Posts

2 Comments

  1. Hi, If you are free I would like to ask you about 212.
    Please send me some way of contact.
    Regards Kristian

    • You can ask away in the comments here, or on the YouTube channel! Ben


Comments are closed for this article!