How Ready-made Investments work

Running your own investments is an important part of making your money work hard.

However, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you need to scour market reports, company results and read the Financial Times from cover to cover every day to become a successful investor.

The good news is that there are experts at your disposal who can help ease the load of looking after your money matters.

If you’d like to do something a little different – that is, not simply continuing to invest in the same funds or shares as you’ve been doing previously – and sifting through new funds isn’t an option, perhaps because of time constraints, there’s another way to put your money to work.

You can top up your portfolio with new opportunities using the Barclays Ready-made Investments (RMI), designed by our experts.

How Ready-made Investments can work for you

It’s simple. There’s a choice of five funds, which all invest in a well-diversified portfolio of shares, bonds and cash. Although they invest in shares, bonds and cash, they do this by buying other funds which focus on very specific types of these assets, and the amount invested in each will determine how much risk the fund will have.

This is the key thing about Ready-made Investments – it’s then up to you to decide which fund you think is most suitable based on how much risk you are willing to take.

You can then leave the rest to us, knowing that it's being managed according to your chosen level of risk and that it’s giving you global diversification – in other words, exposure to companies all over the world.

Ready-made Investment funds can be used as a core holding to get that peace of mind that your investments are well diversified. You can then use other investments as add-ons to get exposure to any particular region or market you favour.

Our data shows that of customers who already hold an RMI fund on Smart Investor, two thirds only hold a Ready-made Investment and a third hold other investments such as shares, other funds, bonds and investment trusts alongside it.

This core-satellite portfolio approach to investing can allow an investor to strike a balance between a long-term approach to investing (using Ready-made Investments), while allowing a satellite portfolio for other sometimes more opportunistic holdings.

If time is tight and you don’t have time to keep on top of geopolitical or economic developments, Ready-made Investments can help because if any portfolio changes need to be made, they’re done by our experts who are constantly monitoring the investments.

Benefits of RMI - a quick reminder

• Each of the five funds use Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and other passively managed funds to keep costs low.
• RMI is flexible. You can invest a lump sum or monthly amounts.
• To get started all you need to do is choose which fund to go for. The beauty of RMI funds is that there’s something for many kinds of investors – from cautious to adventurous, or somewhere in between.
• Once you’ve made your selection you can sit back and leave the rest to the professionals.
• Should you wish to change your risk choice further down the line, it’s possible to switch – or to simply select a different risk level for further investments.
• As an RMI customer you get exclusive access to RMI Quarterly Reports that will give you an insight into how the funds are performing and what’s going on in the wider economy that is impacting markets.

Read the latest report

Ready to invest?

You can invest in Ready-made Investments in the Smart Investor app (if you’re a Barclays Bank current account customer) or online once you’ve logged into your Smart Investor account.

Select either a lump sum investment or set up a regular amount to drip feed money into the markets each month.