How to invest in an investment trust

To buy shares in an investment trust, you need an account with an investment platform or trading app.

Don’t have a platform account yet?

Lots of platforms allow you to buy investment trusts. These include well known platforms like Hargreaves Lansdown, interactive investor and AJ Bell, as well as apps like Freetrade, Trading 212 or Revolut.

When you’re choosing a platform, make sure you check that:

• it allows you to buy investment trusts, and any other investments you might want to hold, such as funds, shares or bonds
• it offers the kind of account you want, for example an ISA, self-invested personal pension (SIPP) or Junior ISA
• it gives you the services you need (for example, phone dealing or dealing in foreign shares, if you want to)
• you are happy with the platform’s charges for buying, selling and holding investment trusts

The table below lists some major platforms and some of their main features. You can also compare platform costs at a glance.

Once you have a platform account

Now you’ve got your platform account set up, you can log in and buy your investment trust shares.

Some platforms have a search bar where you can type the name of an investment trust. Make sure you have located the right trust: some trusts have similar names, and some funds have similar names to trusts.

With some platforms, you may have to navigate to the part of the platform where you can buy investment trusts. In some cases this might be the same place where you buy other shares.

Once you have found your trust, most platforms allow you to specify either:

• The number of shares you want to buy (e.g. 200 shares)
• The value of shares you want to buy (e.g. shares to the value of £1,600)

You will normally be shown a price and asked to confirm that you are happy to trade at that price. Once you have completed the trade, the new shares may take a short time to appear in your account.

Another way to buy investment trust shares

An alternative to using a platform to buy investment trust shares is to use a savings scheme run by an investment trust management company. There is currently only one savings scheme available, run by Columbia Threadneedle. The important thing to remember is that you can only use this scheme to buy investment trusts managed by Columbia Threadneedle. You can find out more about the scheme here.

Investment trust availability on platforms

The table below gives an overview of some major investment platforms, the accounts they offer (for example, an ISA or a self-invested personal pension) and whether you can hold investment trusts on the platform.