Plans

A Plan lets you group selected investments into their own mini-portfolio inside your Lightyear account. You can keep holdings organised and, if you like, turn on auto-investing to fund your Plan on a recurring schedule.

You can start a new Plan from the Portfolio screen by tapping ‘Create a Plan’ at the end of your instruments list.

Step 1 - Choose how to start
After tapping to create a Plan, you’ll have two options for adding investments to it:

• Move my investments – transfer some or all of your existing holdings into the new Plan.
• Find investments – search Lightyear’s universe (or use your Watchlist) to add instruments to the Plan.

And remember, you can always add and remove instruments from your Plan after this initial selection.

Step 2 - Name your Plan
Give your Plan a name to align with its purpose; be it a life event, goal or the investment strategy you’re pursuing with this plan.

Step 3 - Turn on auto-invest
If you want to auto-invest into your Plan, toggle Auto-invest, then choose the amount and frequency (Weekly/Fortnightly/Monthly). You can pause auto-investing or edit its frequency at any time. Note: There are certain instruments that can’t be auto-invested into. For example, if you’ve added non-fractional instruments to your Plan, know that these can’t be auto-invested into. You’ll see these investments grouped under ‘Auto investing unavailable’ on your Plan screen. That means by setting up auto-investing you’ll recurrently be buying the fractional part of your Plan, while the non-fractional instruments will only be possible to buy separately.

Step 4 - Set allocations
Assign percentage allocations to each instrument, making sure they add up to 100% exactly.

Step 5 - Review and finish
Now, you’ll see a preview of your Plan - listing all the necessary details, like selected investments, percentage weightings and auto-investing details - before confirming it. And you’re done!

Good to know

• Plans live inside your existing account – you’re not opening a new account.
• You can keep a Plan purely for organisational purposes and buy into all of it, or separate instruments, manually; auto-invest is optional.
• You can create multiple Plans to align with different goals, investment strategies or topics.

• Plans are available for both individual and business customers across all eligible markets.
• In Estonia and Hungary, you can also open Plans in your tax efficient Investeerimiskonto and TBSZ. In the UK, Plans are currently available in GIAs and business accounts, with ISAs coming next.

• Any stocks and ETFs available on Lightyear can be added to your Plan. Just remember, that only fractional instruments can be auto-invested into. If you add any non-fractional instruments to your Plan, these will have to be bought separately.
• We’re constantly fractionalising more instruments as we go, so make sure to keep an eye on the non-fractional instruments in your Plan. Once a non-fractional instrument becomes fractional, you can set an allocation to it, and it will become part of your auto-investments.
• Money Market Funds, cash and subscriptionable (pre-IPO) instruments aren’t currently supported in Plans.

• To remove an instrument from a Plan, open Edit Plan and tap the X next to the instrument. When you save the Plan, the holding is moved to your main account, but it will not be sold. If you want to sell a specific instrument from your Plan, you can do that under ‘Sell’ when opening your Plan. The proceeds will go to your main account outside of the Plan.
• You can’t move one single holding directly from one Plan to another, you’ll need to remove it from a Plan to your main account and then add it to the other Plan. If you want to move all instruments from one Plan, you can delete the Plan and choose to transfer its holdings to your main account or to another Plan.

Open the Plan, tap Edit, then select Delete plan. You’ll be asked what you want to do with the holdings: either move everything to your main account, or transfer the assets to another existing Plan. After you confirm, the Plan is removed and its investments are moved as you choose. If you have orders pending, you will need to cancel these orders before being able to delete the Plan.

Not at the moment. For now, you can easily create DIY Plans by choosing stocks and funds to include, and giving them each a weighting based on your investment goals. When we launch readymade Plans in the future, we’ll let you know!

• You can fund your Plan in two ways: via standing order or from your Lightyear cash balance.
• If you choose to set up a standing order, you’ll need to choose the amount, date and frequency of auto-investments, and then set up the recurring payment through your bank (e.g. via your banking app). Make sure you do this from a bank account registered in your own name. We’ll give you a list of details to add to the recurring payment from your bank – all you have to do is follow these instructions carefully.
• When using standing order, orders are placed as soon as the money sent from your bank reaches Lightyear. We will invest the whole amount deposited by you. This means you can use the payment reference for your standing order to also create additional one-off deposits into your Plan.
• If you’re creating a Plan in your Hungarian TBSZ, you can only fund the Plan from your Lightyear cash balance.

The process of setting up a standing order can vary depending on the bank, so if you’re not sure how to do it you should check with your bank. Most providers will have a dedicated page on their website which explains how to set-up a standing order with them, for example:

• Barclays
• FirstDirect
• HSBC
• Lloyds
• Monzo
• NatWest
• RBS
• Revolut
• Santander
• Starling

When you fund your Plan from cash in your Lightyear account, but don’t have enough money there, your order will be rejected.

• If you auto-invest into a Plan, we group together the buy orders for all individual instruments in your Plan.
• In the unlikely case that any individual order fails, the others will still go through. The money allocated to the failed order will be credited to your main Lightyear account. Your Plan order will go into a ‘Partially completed’ state – if this happens, you’ll see an error message on the sub-order which didn’t go through.
• You can always see which orders went through and which didn't in the Plan's order activity in the Transactions tab.

• When creating a Plan, you’ll have to set allocations for each instrument, amounting up to 100%. These percentage weightings will be used when you buy into the Plan, meaning that the payment amount will be spread across all fractional instruments according to the allocations you set.
• Non-fractional instruments are not eligible for auto-investing, so you can’t add a custom allocation for those. These instruments will have to be bought separately from the fractional portion of your Plan and will not count towards your 100% instrument allocation.

You can edit your Plan any time by opening it and choosing ‘Edit Plan’ from the top right corner of the web or mobile app screen. From there, you can easily add or remove instruments from the Plan, or edit allocations for each instrument. You can also pause auto-investing (remember, if you’ve set-up a standing order you’ll also need to cancel this with your bank) or edit parts of the setup like the amount, frequency and timing of the investments. Under ‘Edit Plan’, you can also delete the whole Plan.

Pricing in Plans is identical to the rest of Lightyear’s product offering, with commission-free ETFs and up to 1€/$/£ for single shares. There’s no custody fee, nor a charge for creating a Lightyear account or new Plans. Check out our full pricing here.

Dividends for all investments in Plans will be credited to your general Lightyear account, not into Plans themselves. One dividend payment will be made if the same instrument is held in a Plan (or multiple Plans) and your regular portfolio. Information about dividend payments will be shown on the Transactions screen in your general Lightyear account.

If an instrument in your Plan with a set allocation for auto-investments becomes unavailable (for example, becomes non-fractional), your next recurring Plan order will go into a ‘Partially completed’ state. Only the order for the instrument which has become unavailable will not go through, all other orders in your plan will be executed as usual. If this happens, you’ll see an error message on the sub-order which didn’t go through.