How you can get top experts to invest FOR you… without breaking the bank. These are all the options

Not everyone who wants to invest has a burning desire to pick the shares or funds themselves.

In fact, many people would rather be a ‘do it for me’ investor than a ‘do it yourself’ one – letting an expert do the hard work while they sit back and reap the benefits.

Most people, however, do not have the large amount of assets that financial advisers and wealth managers look for in a client. Nor do they necessarily want to pay hefty fees.

So one cost-effective option in this case is ‘digital wealth management’. You won’t get the personalised help of a financial adviser, but you can tap into professional investing expertise.

Over the past decade a selection of online platforms and apps has started to offer this halfway house between DIY investing and traditional wealth management or financial advice.

The idea is that by harnessing technology, these platforms can help investors work out their risk profile and the type of portfolio that is right for them.

Investors are typically presented with either a portfolio from a choice of low-cost funds or a selection of ready-made investments.

You can invest in these through a general account, stocks and shares Isa or self-invested personal pension (Sipp), while some also offer lifetime Isas.

The portfolios they build are only personalised to a degree. However, they will contain investments picked by professionals.

So how does it work and which platforms are worth considering?

Traditional financial planning or wealth management involves meeting with a professional adviser who will go through your income, assets, time horizon, appetite for risk and goals to develop a plan for your finances.

Instead, digital wealth managers typically offer a profiling tool in the form of a questionnaire to work out how much risk you are willing to take. From the results, an algorithm then works out a suitable investment portfolio – although customers are often free to adjust this if they want to.

The portfolio tends to consist of passive investments, which are funds that track entire markets, rather than having a human manager who handpicks stocks.

Using the services of a digital wealth manager should keep your investments on the right track.

Some of the biggest players in the market are JP Morgan Personal Investing (previously known as Nutmeg), Moneyfarm, Wealthify, Vanguard Managed Isa, IG Smart Portfolio and Netwealth. They all offer slightly different services and options – some will draw more on technology, such as Vanguard or IG, and others on a team of human experts, such as Netwealth.

The common thread is they enable people to invest easily and get access to professional expertise, while the platform does the work for them for a relatively low cost.

The technology-driven element of these services means they differ from the ready-made portfolio options offered by DIY investing platforms, typically rated by risk.

Charges will usually involve an account or platform fee and the cost of the investment funds themselves. Some will break out transaction or other costs too.

For example, Vanguard’s Managed Isa has an estimated annual cost of 0.52 per cent, made up of a 0.15 per cent account fee, a management fee of 0.2 per cent, and typical fund costs of 0.17 per cent. IG Smart Portfolio has an estimated total annual cost of 0.72 per cent, made up of a 0.5 per cent management fee, 0.13 per cent fund costs and 0.09 per cent transaction costs. JP Morgan Personal Investing has a selection of managed strategies, including fixed allocation, income, growth, fully managed and Smart Alpha. It has costs ranging from 0.63 per cent annually to 1.13 per cent.

All-in fees for the services, including fund management charges, usually range between around 0.5 per cent and 1.25 per cent annually.

This is more expensive than the cheapest possible DIY investment platform options but tends to be cheaper than fully regulated independent financial advice or financial planning.

Some platforms offer one-off financial advice or planning to complement their main service.

It is always worth carefully checking up on costs and what you are getting, as you do not want to end up overpaying for a ready-made portfolio service you could get cheaper on a traditional DIY investing platform.