IG Review 2020

IG has low non-trading fees. There is no fee for withdrawals and an inactivity fee is charged only after 2 years. On the negative side, the forex and stock CFD fees are high.

We ranked IG's fee levels as low, average or high based on how they compare to those of all reviewed brokers.

First, let's go over some basic terms related to broker fees. What you need to keep an eye on are trading fees and non-trading fees.

• Trading fees occur when you trade. These can be commissions, spreads, financing rates and conversion fees.
• Non-trading fees include charges not directly related to trading, like withdrawal fees or inactivity fees.

In the sections below, you will find the most relevant fees of IG for each asset class.

We also compared IG's fees with those of two similar brokers we selected, XTB and eToro. This selection is based on objective factors such as products offered, client profile, fee structure, etc. See a more detailed rundown of IG alternatives.

To have a clear overview of IG, let's start with the trading fees. For our review, we have opened an account at IG's UK entity, so we'll focus on the UK fee structure.

IG trading fees

IG trading fees are average. The fee structure is transparent, you'll easily find all the necessary information on the website. There are different fee structures for different asset classes:

• Trading commission for share CFDs, real shares, and options.
• All-inclusive spreads for forex, stock index CFDs, commodity CFDs, bond CFDs and even crypto CFDs.
• Administration fee and spreads for Smart Portfolios.

We know it's hard to compare trading fees for CFD brokers. So how did we approach the problem of making their fees clear and comparable? We compare brokers by calculating all the fees of a typical trade for selected products.

We have chosen popular instruments within each asset class:

• Stock index CFDs: SPX and EUSTX50
• Stock CFDs: Apple and Vodafone
• Forex: EURUSD, GBPUSD, AUDUSD, EURCHF and EURGBP

A typical trade means buying a leveraged position, holding it for one week and then selling. For the volume, we chose a $2,000 position for the stock index and stock CFDs and $20,000 for the forex transactions. The leverage we used was:

• 20:1 for stock index CFDs
• 5:1 for stock CFDs
• 30:1 for forex

These catch-all benchmark fees include spreads, commissions, and financing costs for all brokers. Let's see the verdict for IG fees.

CFD fees

IG has mostly average CFD trading fees. The fees are average for stock index CFD trading, but high for stock CFDs, mainly because of the high minimum fees ($15/£10). In the UK and Ireland, you can also use spread betting instead of CFDs.

Forex fees

IG has high forex fees in general.

Real stock fees

IG provides real stocks only for some clients, such as residents of the UK or Australia.

In the UK there is a £24 quarterly custody fee, which is charged if you hold share-dealing or ISA investments at the end of the quarter. 

You will be exempt from the charge if you fulfill one of the following criteria:

• Deal three or more times on your share dealing account during the quarter
  OR
• Hold investments worth £15,000 or more across your IG Smart Portfolio accounts only, at the end of the quarter

At IG, commission for the UK and US markets depends on how many trades you made in the preceding months. For example, if you traded UK shares more than three times, your commissions per trade for UK shares will be £3 instead of £8 for the next month.

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Smart Portfolios

Smart Portfolios are available only for UK residents. IG Smart Portfolios are iShares ETF portfolios managed by BlackRock. This is basically a robo-advisory service, that is, automatically managed low-cost portfolios.

If you invest in IG's Smart Portfolios, you will pay a 'Total Cost of Ownership' fee, consisting of several components: the cost of the underlying ETF (0.12%-0.16%), the management fee (capped at £250/year) and the spread costs.

Options

IG's options fees are low, although the contract sizes are also smaller compared to regular exchange-traded options. Both trade barrier and vanilla options are available.

Options trading is available only in the following countries: Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Sweden.

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Non-trading fees

IG charges no account, deposit or withdrawal fees. There is an inactivity fee of $12 per month, but it is only charged after 2 years of inactivity. This fee, however, may be different based on the legal entity: for clients belonging to the Bermuda entity, for example, it is $18 per month after 2 years of inactivity.

IG's account opening is seamless and fully digital. There is no minimum deposit for bank transfers and a low, $/€300 minimum deposit for credit/debit cards and PayPal. On the other hand, account verification takes around 3 business days, which is slower than at some other brokers.

Can you open an account?

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If you are from the US, you can use only IG's forex trading service. CFD trading is not available for US clients. For our review, we have opened an account at IG's UK entity.

Minimum deposit

The required IG minimum deposit is $0 for bank transfers and $300/€300/£250 for credit/debit cards and PayPal.

Account types

The country of your residency determines which account type you can open. In most countries, you can trade only with forex, CFDs and options.

*There are also tax-efficient accounts available, such as ISA and SIPP.

**You will need to open a second account for stock trading.

How to open your account

IG has a straightforward and fully digital account opening process. The online registration takes only 5-10 minutes, but the account verification can take a bit longer. Our account was verified after 3 business days.

The 5 steps of IG account opening:

1. Enter your name, email address, country of residence and select your account type.
2. Provide some personal details, like your date of birth and address.
3. Answer a few questions about your financial and employment status.
4. Provide information about your financial knowledge and fill out a short test.
5. Verify your ID and residency. You can upload a national ID, passport or driver's license for verifying your ID. Utility bills and bank statements are accepted for residency verification.

IG offers free and fast deposits and withdrawals. There are various options for funding your account, including traditional methods such as bank wire transfer and credit card funding, as well as PayPal.

Account base currencies

At IG, you can choose from 6 base currencies. The available base currencies are USD, GBP, AUD, EUR, SGD, HKD. This currency selection is better than at IG competitors.

When you open an account, you cannot select your account base currency. You can change the currency of your account only if you write an email to IG's Customer Service. It would better if you could select your account base currency at the beginning of the account opening process. 

Why does this matter? For two reasons. If you fund your account in the same currency as your bank account or you trade assets in the same currency as your account base currency, you don't have to pay a conversion fee.

A convenient way to save on currency conversion fees is by opening a multi-currency bank account at a digital bank. You can get great currency exchange rates as well as free or cheap international bank transfers. Opening an account only takes a few minutes on your phone.

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Deposit fees and options

IG charges no deposit fees. In addition to bank transfer, you can also deposit money via credit/debit cards and PayPal. 

In case of bank card deposit, IG accepts:

• Debit cards: Maestro, Visa, Electron, MasterCard
• Credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, Discover
• Major prepaid cards

A bank transfer can take several business days, while payment with a credit/debit card is instant.

You can only deposit money from accounts that are in your name.

IG withdrawal fees and options

IG doesn't charge any withdrawal fees.

How long does it take to withdraw money from IG? We tested the debit card withdrawal and it took 2 business days.

You can only withdraw money to accounts in your name.

How do you withdraw money from IG?

1. Log in to your 'My IG' account.
2. Select the account you wish to withdraw the money from.
3. Click on the three dots menu on the right side.
4. Go to 'Withdraw Funds'.
5. Select the withdrawal method you prefer.
6. Enter the withdrawal amount. 
7. Initiate the withdrawal.

Compare to other brokers

IG's web trading platform is great for both beginners and professional traders. It is easy to use, has all the necessary functions and can be customized.

You can use either IG's trading own platform or MetaTrader 4, a third-party trading platform. In this review, we tested IG's own trading platform.

The web trading platform is available only in English.

Look and feel

The IG trading platform is one of the most intuitive and well-designed web trading platforms we have seen. 

You can easily customize the trading platform. The flexible design allows you to move windows around and save layouts. You can create watchlists and there is also a one-click trading feature.

Login and security

You can easily set up two-factor authentication. You have to download the 'IG Authentication' app on your mobile and activate the two-factor authentication.

Search functions

You can search for products in the sidebar on the left. It works as you would expect. You can also browse available investment options by typing manually or browsing through the asset class categories.

Placing orders

You can choose from many order types:

• Market order
• Limit order
• Stop-loss order
• Trailing stop order
• Guaranteed stop order

If you are not familiar with the basic order types, read this overview.

There are also order time limits you can use:

• Good 'till cancelled (GTC)
• Good 'till date (GTD)

Alerts and notifications

Alerts and notifications are both available. They can be set up by going to 'MyIG', then 'Settings', and clicking on 'Communication Preferences'.

You can choose from multiple alert and trade/deal notifications:

• price alert (prices reach an important level)
• indicator alert (technical tools reach an important level)
• economic alert (big economic announcements)
• automated or manual deal opening/closing
• automated or manual position editing

Portfolio and fee reports

IG provides clear portfolio and fee reports. The main performance and status of your account is available on the dashboard of your live account. By opening the menu on the right, you can see the 'History' tab where you can check all the costs and returns on your past trades. 

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74-89% of retail CFD accounts lose money

The IG mobile trading platform is easy to use and has great functionalities.

You can use both IG's own mobile trading platform and the MetaTrader 4 platform. They are available for both iOS and Android devices. 

In this review, we tested IG's own platform on an Android device. 

The mobile platform is available only in English.

Look and feel

The IG mobile platform is very intuitive, similarly to the web trading platform. You can easily find all available features.

The design is OK, nothing great, and not as good as the web trading platform.

Login and security

If your device has a fingerprint sensor, you can also use biometric authentication for convenience. If you would like to, it is possible to use two-step authentication with a separate app called IG Authentication.

Search functions

The search functions are the same as at the web trading platform. When searching, the results are categorized by assets. 

Placing orders

You can use the same order types and order time limits as the ones on the web trading platform. 

Alerts and notifications

The mobile platform's alerts function is not as extensive as the web trading platform's. You can only set price alerts.

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IG's in-house developed trading platform has no desktop version.

If you prefer a desktop-based platform, you can use MetaTrader 4 for CFDs and spread bets for free. In design and functionality, IG's MetaTrader 4 desktop platform is almost the same as the web trading platform.

Another alternative is ProRealTime. It is free to use if you make at least 4 transactions a month. If not, a £30 monthly fee will apply.

For shares and CFDs, L2 Dealer is a free downloadable alternative that offers direct market access (DMA). Watchlists, price alerts and trading from charts are possible. Charts are provided by ProRealTime access. Minimum £1,000 balance required.

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At IG, most clients can only trade with CFDs, forex and options. There are literally thousands of CFDs available to trade. Residents in the UK and some other countries can also trade with real stocks. Other popular assets, however, like mutual funds and bonds, are not available.

IG is primarily a CFD and forex broker. US clients can only trade with forex products.

You can also trade with stocks if you are from one of the few countries where this is provided, like the UK.

To learn more about CFDs, read our CFD trading tips.

Disclaimer: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 74-89% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. CFDs are not provided for US clients. Forex trading involves risk. Losses can exceed deposits.

Whether you wish to trade CFDs of currency pairs, stock indices, stocks, ETFs, commodities, bonds, futures or cryptos, you will find an extraordinarily wide selection of products at IG. This stands out compared to the product range of its main competitors. 

You can't change the default leverage level of the products. This is a drawback, as we believe this is an important factor you should be in control of.

Changing the leverage manually is a very useful feature when you want to lower the risk of your trade. Be careful with forex and CFD trading, since the pre-set leverage levels can be high.

Real stocks and ETFs

You can trade with stocks only if you are from:

• UK
• Ireland
• Malta
• Cyprus
• Australia
• Some smaller countries, like Gibraltar, the British Virgin Islands, etc.

IG gives you access to an average number of real stock markets compared to other primarily CFD brokers.

Options

Options trading is available only in the following countries: Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Sweden.

At IG you can trade with

• equity index
• forex and
• commodity options.

The most popular equity indices, forex pairs and commodities are all available.

You can choose from two option types:

• Vanilla options
• Barrier options

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74-89% of retail CFD accounts lose money

IG Smart Portfolio

IG Smart Portfolio is available only in the UK. IG Smart Portfolios are iShares ETF portfolios managed by BlackRock. This is basically a robo-advisory service, that is, these are automatically managed low-cost portfolios.

IPO

If you prefer to buy shares in IPOs, you can do it with IG. An IPO is an initial public offering, or stock market launch, where a company's shares are sold to the general public for the first time.

There are two ways to participate in IPOs at IG:

• IPO Grey Market – this allows you to open long/short positions before the IPO happens
• After IPO – this allows you to place orders after the IPO happens

Turbo24

IG also offers an innovative product called Turbo24. At the time of writing the review, it was available for clients in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway.

Turbo24s are exchange-traded products that can be traded 24/5. 

When you place an order, you have to set a knock-out level, which is the price where your position will be liquidated. Selecting the knock-out level works like selecting your leverage because you have to fund your position up to the knock-out level. If you choose a lower knock-out level, you'll use higher leverage, while a higher knock-out level means lower leverage.

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74-89% of retail CFD accounts lose money

IG offers user-friendly research tools. Its news flow and charting tools are great. On the other hand, fundamental data is not available.

You'll find IG's research tools on the trading platform. The tools, just like the platform, are available only in English.

Trading ideas

IG provides trading ideas. You can find ideas about which way specific assets are trending if you click on the 'Signals' section in the left-hand menu.

Fundamental data

IG does not offer fundamental data on assets.  

Charting

IG has good charting tools. It is easy to edit and save your charts. We also liked that you can mark the date of major economic events on the charts in a quick and simple way. There are 30 technical indicators available that you can use for charting.

News feed

IG has a pretty good news function that is powered by Thomson Reuters. You can get the news directly from the web platform. There is no separate news function on the mobile platform but you can find related news for specific financial instruments.

In addition to the Thomson Reuters news ticker, you can also read tweets from Twitter.

We liked IGTV, IG's built-in news video service on the web trading platform, which publishes four editions each day. By watching these videos you can stay up to date on major news developments, and get analysis on the charts for key forex pairs, commodities and stock indices.

Other research tools you will enjoy

IG Community is an innovative forum for IG customers. Users can share their trading ideas here, which may help you to make a trading decision.

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IG provides close to 24/7 customer support that gives relevant answers. However, email answers and phone can be slow, while live chat is offline most of the time.

Customer support could be better. You can contact IG via:

• Email
• Live chat
• Phone

Email support is OK. We received mostly quick and relevant answers, but sometimes it took more than 2 days to get a reply.

The live chat is OK – if it is working. In earlier tests, we got relevant and fast answers in most cases, and there were only two occasions when we had to wait more than 3 minutes to be connected to an agent. However, in more recent tests, we found that live chat was offline most of the time. Finding the live chat is not too easy – it is provided through IG's UK website on the 'Contact us' page. Generally, it only pops up after spending around 30 seconds on the site.

IG's phone support could be better. We tried to call IG several times, and sometimes could not connect to anyone even after 5-10 minutes of waiting.

Customer service is almost 24/7, you can contact them at all times, except for between 10 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. Saturday. 

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74-89% of retail CFD accounts lose money

IG offers good educational resources. You can use a demo account, enroll in courses, sign up for webinars and watch educational videos.

IG offers the following education resources:

• Demo account
• Platform tutorial videos
• General educational videos
• Webinars
• Live sessions

At IG, most educational material is broken down into 3 levels: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. There are also live sessions and other tutorials available. We think the best way to learn the ways of investing is via a demo account – which IG also offers.

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IG is regulated by several financial authorities globally, including top-tier regulators like the FCA in the United Kingdom. IG Group, the parent company of IG, is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Is IG regulated?

Yes, it is regulated by several financial authorities globally, including top-tier ones. Here is the full list:

• UK – Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
• Germany – Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin)
• Switzerland – Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA)
• USA – Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and National Futures Association (NFA)
• Australia – Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC)
• New Zealand – Financial Markets Authority (FMA)
• Singapore – Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)
• Japan – Japanese Financial Services Authority (FSA)
• South Africa – Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA)
• UAE – Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA)
• International – Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA)

Is IG safe?

To be certain if a brokerage is safe, we highly advise that you check two facts:

• how you are protected if something goes wrong
• what the background of the broker is

How you are protected

This is important for you because the investor protection amount and the regulator differ based on which entity you belong to. 

*If you choose a spread betting account, you will belong to this legal entity.

IG provides negative balance protection for forex spot and CFD trading, but only for retail clients from the European Union. Professional and non-EU clients are not covered with any negative balance protection.

Background

IG was established in 1974. The longer track record a broker has, the more proof we have that it has successfully survived previous financial crises.

IG Group, the parent company of IG, is listed on the London Stock Exchange, which is a big plus for safety as IG releases financial statements in a regular and transparent manner.

Being listed on a stock exchange, providing financial statements, and being regulated by a top-tier authority are all great signs for IG's safety.

Find your safe broker

IG is one of the biggest and most reliable CFD brokers. It is regulated by several financial authorities around the world. IG Group is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

IG has one of the best web trading platforms BrokerChooser has tested. The deposit and withdrawal conditions are great. You can also expand your knowledge with great educational materials.

On the other hand, there are some drawbacks. The forex and stock CFD fees are high and the product portfolio in most countries is limited to forex, CFDs and options. Customer support could be better.

Feel free to test IG's first-class trading platform, since there is no minimum funding amount for bank transfers and you can also easily open a demo account. 

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74-89% of retail CFD accounts lose money