Is my investment account protected in the UK?

The first layer is segregation. The FCA's Client Assets Sourcebook (CASS) sets the rules. CASS 7, the client money rules, requires a firm to hold client money separately from its own, generally on trust, and to reconcile its records against the banks regularly. Shares and funds are held under the custody rules in CASS 6, usually in the name of a nominee company or a third-party custodian rather than the platform itself.

Because of that separation, a platform going bust does not normally mean your holdings disappear. They belong to you, not to the firm's creditors, and the job of an administrator is to find them and give them back or move them to another provider.

The second layer is compensation. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme steps in when an authorised firm has failed and the client money or assets it holds come up short, for example through fraud or poor record-keeping. It also covers claims for bad advice that caused a loss. For a firm that failed after April 2019, the FSCS pays up to £85,000 per eligible person, per firm.

The two layers work in sequence. Segregation is what protects most of the money in most failures. The FSCS limit only comes into play for the part that segregation did not save.

The FSCS publishes different limits for different products, and an investment account can touch two of them.

The deposit limit rose from £85,000 to £120,000 in December 2025, according to the FSCS deposit protection page. The investment limit did not change and remains £85,000.

The bank limit is shared. If your platform holds your cash at a bank where you also have a current account, the £120,000 covers both together, which Trading 212 spells out on its own protection page.

The most common misunderstanding is that the £85,000 is a guarantee on the value of an account. It is not. The FSCS states plainly that it cannot accept claims for poor investment performance, because the value of investments can go down as well as up.

• Market falls. If a fund drops 30%, the loss is yours whichever platform holds it.
• A company you own going bust. Shares in a failed company are a market loss, not a platform failure.
• Most crypto. The FSCS says most cryptoassets are not regulated in the UK, so it cannot protect them.
• Unauthorised firms. The provider has to be authorised by the FCA or PRA, and the product has to be regulated.

A leveraged product such as a CFD also carries the risk of losing money quickly through the leverage itself, which no compensation scheme addresses.

AJ Bell Securities Limited is authorised and regulated by the FCA under firm reference number 155593, according to AJ Bell's regulatory page. AJ Bell Management Limited holds a separate authorisation, number 211468.

On its investor protection page, AJ Bell describes how it holds what customers own:

• Investments in ISA and Dealing accounts are held in the name of its nominee company, Lawshare Nominees Limited, or by an authorised third-party custodian.
• Cash is held in trust accounts with authorised UK banks, spread across several banks, so a customer can benefit from more than one £120,000 deposit limit.
• SIPP cash and assets are held by a SIPP trustee, a separate non-trading company acting as bare trustee, apart from the administrator.
• FSCS protection of up to £85,000 applies to investments if the firm fails and there is a shortfall.

AJ Bell is also listed on the London Stock Exchange, which brings published accounts and disclosure obligations. A listing helps transparency rather than protection: listed firms can fail too, and it is the segregation that protects customers.

Trading 212 UK Ltd is authorised and regulated by the FCA under firm reference number 609146, according to its funds and assets protection page. It describes its arrangements this way:

• Client money is pooled in a client money bank account kept separate from Trading 212's own funds, under the FCA's CASS rules.
• Investments are safeguarded with custodians, which Trading 212 names as The Bank of New York Mellon and Interactive Brokers.
• FSCS protection is up to £85,000 in total per eligible person, per firm, as a single limit across eligible shares and cash held with Trading 212.
• Cash at partner banks can also fall under the £120,000 deposit limit per banking licence if one of those banks fails, shared with any money you hold at that bank yourself.
• SIPP cash is held with partner banks rather than in qualifying money market funds.

One detail matters more at Trading 212 than at a UK-only platform: the group has entities in other countries, each under its own scheme. The figures above are for clients of Trading 212 UK Ltd. Someone registered with an EU entity has a different scheme and a different limit, so the entity named in your account documents is the one that counts.

The clearest recent example is Beaufort Securities. Its clearing firm, Beaufort Asset Clearing Services, was placed in special administration in March 2018, affecting about 17,000 retail and 500 corporate customers, according to the FSCS case page.

The special administration regime exists for exactly this situation. HM Treasury created it after the Lehman Brothers failure, and the FCA describes it as a mechanism under which client assets can be returned to clients when an investment firm fails (FCA PS17/18).

In Beaufort's case, the first transfer of assets reached over 12,000 customers in September 2018, and by April 2019 the FSCS said assets and cash had been returned to more than 16,000 former clients. The FSCS also met the administrators' costs for eligible clients, so those costs did not come out of client assets.

The realistic cost of a platform failure, then, is usually time rather than money: months during which assets are being located and returned, followed by a transfer to another provider. It matters most if you need the money on a particular date, which is one reason some people keep spending money outside their investment accounts.

How you claim varies by case. In some failures the FSCS has paid eligible clients automatically, without a claim form; in others, the administrators have asked clients to submit forms. The FSCS keeps a page for each failed firm with the current process, and that page, rather than an unsolicited email or call, is the place to check. Failed firms attract fraudsters posing as administrators or recovery services. The FSCS says it is completely free to claim directly with it, while a claims management company will charge a fee.

An ISA or a SIPP is a tax wrapper, not a separate protection. The same platform rules apply inside it: segregation first, then the FSCS limit per firm. A Stocks and Shares ISA and a Dealing account at the same platform share one £85,000 investment limit, because the limit is per person per firm, not per account.

Funds add a second angle. AJ Bell's protection page gives the example of two separate fund managers failing: a claim could be made against each, up to £85,000 per manager, while holdings all with one manager would face a single limit.

For balances well above £85,000, a common approach is to spread across two or more platforms so each sits closer to the limit. Others decide the segregation record is protection enough and keep everything in one place for simplicity. Both positions are reasonable, and the choice depends on how much the extra admin is worth to you against a rare event.

A few checks apply either way:

1. Search the FCA Register for the exact firm name and number on your account documents.
2. Check which legal entity your account is with, especially with groups that operate in several countries.
3. Find where your cash sits. Uninvested cash at a bank falls under the deposit limit; cash swept into a money market fund is an investment, not a deposit.
4. Total what you hold at each firm, across every account and wrapper.

Walnut is an AI investing app, not a platform. It holds no money, holds no shares and moves no money, so none of the protection questions above apply to Walnut itself. Your AJ Bell or Trading 212 account stays at AJ Bell or Trading 212, with the same segregation and FSCS cover, and you sign in through a secure connection that never gives Walnut your password.

What Walnut adds is a single view. Connect your brokers and Walnut reads every holding, splits them by the account each one sits in, and compares how each has done against the S&P 500. The assistant can answer questions about your real holdings, such as how much sits with each firm, how concentrated you are in a few names, or whether your ISA and SIPP hold the same funds. See the AJ Bell and Trading 212 pages for what Walnut reads at each.

AJ Bell is read in full: holdings, a keep, trim or exit read, and the assistant on your real positions, with every order staying at AJ Bell. Trading 212 is one of the brokers where Walnut can also place the buys you approve. Buys you approve go to Public and Robinhood (into a Robinhood Agentic account), and also to Trading 212, E*Trade, tastytrade, Webull (US and Canada), moomoo, Questrade, Wealthsimple and Stake Australia, always at your own broker and under its own protection.

Investment and deposit limits and exclusions: FSCS, investments and FSCS, banks and building societies. Client money rules: FCA Handbook, CASS 7. Special administration: FCA PS17/18 and the FSCS Beaufort Securities case page. AJ Bell: investor protection and regulatory information. Trading 212: Trading 212 UK Ltd funds and assets protection. Figures checked in October 2026. Walnut is not a registered investment adviser, and this guide is general information rather than personal advice.