You can hold uninvested money on your multi-currency account which can also earn interest.

Like most brokers, Lightyear earns interest on the cash it holds on your behalf in institutional bank accounts that are designed for financial firms to hold their customers’ money, as well as from holding your money in qualifying money market funds.

Earned daily, paid monthly on the 1st business day.

Account Type	GIA / Business
Money held as	Uninvested Cash*
GBP	3.00%
USD	3.00%
EUR	2.00%

*Lightyear expects to receive interest of between 0.5% below and 0.5% above the prevailing base rates on client uninvested cash in GBP, EUR, USD. Lightyear retains the difference between interest we receive and interest paid to you. The interest retained by Lightyear is to cover the cost to us of managing the cash and the wider operation of your Lightyear account.

Higher (variable) interest rates are available with our Vaults product.

Interest on uninvested cash: how it works

• You’ll start earning interest daily, on the same day as your deposit hits your Lightyear account.
• We calculate the unpaid interest daily on the available uninvested cash balance of your investment account to five decimal places using the latest Lightyear rate. We then sum and round the unpaid interest amounts to two decimal places.
• Interest payments will be credited to your Lightyear account on the first business day of every month, and you can see the interest that you have been paid in the latest version of the Lightyear app and in your statements.
• Money that’s been reserved for orders or other reasons does not accrue interest, and if you close your account before the next interest payment date, it won’t be paid out.

For example, if 1,000 EUR is held for a whole year at the rate of 2%*

• 1,000 * 0.02 per year = 20 EUR per year
• 20 / 12 = 1.6 per month

*the rate may change, which we’ll notify you about. See our pricing page for the current interest rates.

See also our Tools & Calculators.

Taxes

Please note you’ll be responsible for the appropriate tax reporting and payments, in accordance with your local tax laws. You can opt out from earning interest by navigating to “Earn Interest” under the Settings page, which will cause any unpaid interest to be forfeited.

Protection

Earning interest on your uninvested money does not change the way your money is segregated or safeguarded. We always hold our customers’ uninvested money in segregated client money accounts in Natwest bank and highest-rated* qualifying money market funds which you can read more about in our article How are my assets protected?.

*rated AAA/mmf by Moody’s, S&P and Fitch