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.
Creating a plan
How to get started
You can start a new Plan from the Portfolio screen by tapping "Create a Plan" at the end of your instruments list. From there, you can create your own Plan or pick one from the Ready-made Plans.
Step 1 - Choose how to start your own Plan
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. 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.
What account types are Plans available in?
- 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.
What instruments can I add to Plans?
- Any stocks and ETFs available on Lightyear can be added to a Plan you create yourself. Ready-made Plans offer a fixed selection of investments, so these cannot be customised.
- 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.
How can I move instruments between my Plans, or remove them?
- 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.
- Please note that the above does not apply to Ready-made Plans, as these cannot be edited.
How do I delete a 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.
Does Lightyear offer Ready-made Plans?
Yes, if you are not sure where to start, you can also choose from Ready-made Plans:
- We’ve narrowed down thousands of options into three risk-based Plans designed to do the work for you.
- The investments offered in the Ready-made Plans are different ETFs managed by the world’s largest asset managers – BlackRock and Vanguard.
- Ready-made Plans come with no order execution fees for all account types.
- To view what Ready-made Plans we currently offer, navigate to your Portfolio, move to the bottom of your list of investments, and select “Create a Plan”.
Managing your Plans
Funding my Plan
- 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 a 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.
What happens if my Lightyear cash balance is too low?
When you fund your Plan from cash in your Lightyear account, but don’t have enough money there, your order will be rejected.
How does buying in the Plan work?
- 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.
How do the Plan allocations work?
- When creating your own 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.
- Ready-made Plans are pre-selected by Lightyear and cannot be modified. This means that 100% of your investment is automatically allocated to its specific ETF.
How can I edit my Plan?
Ready-made Plans cannot be edited – the allocations and percentage weightings are preset. What you can change is the name of the Ready-made Plan.
Plans that you create yourself can be edited. You can do that 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.
What fees am I paying?
Whether you create your own Plan or choose a Ready-made Plan, there are no custody fees and no charges for opening an account or creating a Plan.
- Create your own Plan: Order execution fee for single shares: up to 1€/$/£ or 0.10% in other currencies. For ETFs: no execution fee. Check out our full pricing here.
- Ready-made Plan: Zero order execution fees across all account types.
If funds are converted to fill your order in a Plan, a currency conversion fee applies to all orders across both plan types.
How do I receive dividends for instruments in a Plan?
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.
What happens if an instrument in my Plan becomes unavailable?
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.