Even more updates to the Dozens app - New Funds and Direct Debits

Dozens news
#1

Migration to the new Dozens accounts may have been completed, but the development is not slowing down.

Customers will be receiving news of further updates to the Dozens app via email, but I thought I would also share this in the community.

New Investment fund options

Ever since we launched the Invest shelf just over 1 year ago, we’ve been getting requests for some broader funds. While we’ve chosen a range of ETFs to cover different risk levels and with different strategies to suit our customers’ interests, we are always on the lookout for other suitable and varied opportunities.

We are very excited to announce that we have now also added two ranges of Multi-asset funds to the Invest shelf - the Vanguard LifeStrategy and BlackRock Consensus funds. To learn more about these options, you can read this post:

Depending on your personal risk profile, there are now up to 35 different options to consider for your long term investment needs, and I would be very interested to hear which are your favourites. Even if you are not yet an investor, you can browse these in the app.

Let me be Direct

One of the things we’ve been asked about from the time we launched is whether we offered Direct Debits. These are very useful if you are using the account for regular and larger spending. We were not able to offer these until now, but that changed today.

If you go to your app this afternoon you will be prompted to update it again and this will add the Direct Debit capability.

Now you can agree to set up Direct Debits to pay for your subscriptions; be they magazines, wines or maybe charity donations, and track these in your Spend list and also your Track budget.

If you set one up with a business it will usually take 1 business day for the information to be passed back to us and for it to appear in the app, but you can now go to Spend and click on ‘payments’ and see, and cancel if necessary, any Direct Debits on your account.

We trust this will make it easier to manage your spend and therefore make your Dozens account even more useful.

Next week we will have even more news for you on other app developments and on the waitlist.

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#2

Hey Rob, literally just seen the new funds in the invest section and created a post in another category before I saw your post. This is brilliant work from Dozens, I feel it is exactly what was missing from the invest section and I will be signing up. Would I be eligible for the Dozens Black offer if I sign up before 31st December. Thanks for the update and I must say! Nice work! :+1:

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#3

Great news! I’ll definitely be moving mine over as soon as I can.

I’m very much looking forward to getting even more use out of the budgeting features within Track.

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#4

Yes, anyone with any existing investment in Invest at the end of the year will qualify

Great news! Thanks for getting stuck into it so quickly

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#5

Awesome, thanks Rob :+1:

#6

How do you adjust the risk profile?

I ended up with a risk level of 4 after playing around with the tool but I don’t need it. Now I can’t see all the investment options and it’s not obvious to me how to adjust the risk level.

It would be good to have the option of disabling the investment goal tool if you don’t feel you need it.

#7

I’m very happy to see the addition of multi-assent funds, especially the VLS funds. I’m also happy to see the choice of the 0% initial charge D class over the 5% initial charge A class for the BlackRock Consensus funds. But I couldn’t help to noticed the absent of the income class of those newly introduced OEICs. Investing outside a tax wrapper such as an S&S ISA in an accumulation class OEICs can create a lots of unnecessary calculation work if someone needs to do the Self Assessment tax return (e.g. because they are self-employed). Not to mention that for an inexperienced investor this work can be a nightmare - do you know where to find and how to read the dividend/interest distribution history for each fund you invested in? and do you know what is and how to calculate equalisation?

What I would like to see next?

  • Income class OEICs
    For the above mentioned reason. Unfortunately the BlackRock Consensus funds don’t have an Income class, but at least please add this for the Vanguard LifeStrategy funds.
  • Unhedged S&P 500 ETF
    The existing S&P 500 fund is GBP hedged, not an appropriate investment vehicle for a long term investment
  • Intermediate duration gilts
    The existing gilts fund is for short duration gilts.
    BTW, I also don’t really like the name “UK Short Gilts”, it makes me thinking of short selling, not duration.
  • More asset classes
    We have got equities, bonds and one commodity - gold, how about adding other asset classes? For example, real estates (REITs) and other commodities. I should mention that a couple of broad basket commodity funds will do. There’s no need to go into the details and have funds for oil, natural gas, sugar, soybean, etc. individually.
  • Educational materials
    Ideally integrated with every step the user takes, and guides the user through their investment journey. Maybe even adding a bit of hand-holding?
  • Risk appetite AND risk tolerant assessment
    Really, don’t just take the user’s word for it. Do they really understand that risk level 4 means that their invested money can be halved in a week and stay well below their original value for years? How much money can they afford to loss without losing sleep? A percentage such as “40%” often doesn’t really mean much to people, how about losing £2,000 of £5,000 hard earned money they invested?
  • Portfolio rebalancing reminder
    Not everyone will remember to rebalance their portfolio. Make it easy and painless, an annual reminder notification, tap “yes” to auto rebalance it, tap “no” to do it yourself (perhaps you want to make some changes?), or “remind me later”. Of course, this deeply depends on the investor actually have a portfolio, not tons of funds putting together with no clear reason, which highlights the importance of educating the users. Believe me, I’ve seen a person holding all 5 VLS funds - 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 at the same time, and believes their portfolio is more diversified than holding just one VLS fund.
  • Consolidated tax certificate
    I’m not sure if you already have this, but if not, please implement it. And, more importantly, please do it right. I’ve seen some robo investing companies gave inaccurate information in their consolidated tax certificates, such as wrongly categorise dividend as interest.
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#8

Just a tiny idea to tag on.

Could charges be taken from Spend or Grow - or even a direct debit? It would be nice to have the option of stripping out all the charges

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