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How plan coverage works

Plan coverage is the amount of auto-invest orders and individual buy and sell orders (including one-off buys) that have transaction fees covered each month.

Ruby Gardner avatar
Written by Ruby Gardner
Updated over 2 months ago

Buy and auto-invest orders

When you place a buy or auto-invest order, we’ll calculate the highest amount it could fill at, and look to deduct the equivalent amount from your available coverage. We might deduct less if your order amount is higher than the amount of coverage you have left.

Once your coverage is used up, the 1.9% transaction fee (and per order fee caps) apply to all orders until your plan renews.

Coverage is deducted from the plan that’s active at the time an order was placed. While your order is pending, the deducted coverage amount won’t be used for any other orders.

If you’ve already got an order on-market when you start a plan, it won’t be covered by your plan. Instead, the 1.9% transaction fee (and per order fee caps) will apply.

Orders in USD or NZD

We work out how much to deduct from your coverage by converting your order amount to AUD, and deduct the equivalent AUD amount of coverage. This happens at the time you place your order.

Returning coverage

We might return some (or all) of the deducted coverage amount when your order:

  • fills—if the amount we deducted isn’t fully used when your order fills, we’ll return the leftover amount to your coverage

  • expires—the amount we deducted for the expired part of your order will be returned to your coverage

  • is cancelled—the amount we deducted for the cancelled part of your order will be returned to your coverage.

Any returned coverage amounts will go back to the coverage for the month they originally came from. If that month has passed, you won’t receive that coverage amount back.

If we’re returning coverage from an order in USD or NZD to you, we’ll convert the coverage amount at the time we make the return.

If you have coverage returned to you during the month of your plan, you’ll be able to use it until your plan renews.

If you’ve placed multiple orders, and the orders that used your coverage aren’t filled, you won’t receive a refund on the pay-as-you-go transaction fees you incurred outside of the coverage. Instead, you’ll receive a refund on the coverage for you to use on another order.

Example: Coverage returned from buy order to previous month

You place a $100 buy order, and we deduct $100 from your available coverage. Part of your order fills for $80, while the remaining $20 of your order stays on-market.

After 30 days, your plan has renewed, and the remaining $20 of your order is still unfilled and is cancelled. We return $20 of coverage to the previous month of your plan, but because that month has now passed, it can’t be used.

Sell orders

Sell orders are deducted from any available coverage as they fill (which might happen in parts, and over multiple trades). For sell orders that fill after you’ve used up your coverage, the 1.9% transaction fee (and per order fee caps) will apply until your plan renews.

If your plan renews while you’ve got a sell order on-market, we’ll look to use any available coverage from the plan that was active when you placed your order. For any part that isn’t covered, the 1.9% transaction fee (and per order fee caps) will apply.

If you start a plan while you’ve got a sell order on-market, the 1.9% transaction fee (and per order fee caps) will apply.

Example: Sell order filling over two trades

On the day before your plan renews, you place a sell order that goes on to fill over two $50 trades (for $100 total). The first $50 trade fills that day, and $50 is deducted from your coverage. The remaining part of your order stays on-market.

The following day, your plan renews and the remaining part of your order fills for $50. If you’ve still got coverage available from the previous month of your plan, it’ll be used for the remaining $50 of your order. If you’ve used up all of your coverage from the previous month, the 1.9% transaction fee (and per order fee caps) will apply.

Partial coverage orders

A partial coverage order is when some of your order uses your remaining available coverage, and the rest is charged the 1.9% transaction fee (and per order fee caps). This can happen when your order amount is higher than your remaining coverage.

As coverage is used in the sequence of orders placed (for buy orders) or filled (for sell orders), it matters which order you place first and which uses your coverage, versus those where the pay-as-you-go rate (and fee caps) applies.

Partial order that hits fee cap

If the part of your partial order charged the 1.9% transaction fee reaches a fee cap, we’ll return any coverage that would’ve otherwise been used, and charge the capped fee amount.

Example: Partially covered buy order

You place a $100 buy order, but you only have $50 of available coverage.

We’ll use the $50 of your available coverage first, and charge a transaction fee on the remaining amount to invest (1.9% × $49.07 = $0.93).

That means the total amount to invest will be $99.07, and you’ll be charged a transaction fee of $0.93.

Example: Partial order that hits fee cap

You place a $2,000 buy order for AU shares, but you only have $100 of available coverage left on your monthly plan.

We’ll look to use the $100 of available coverage first, giving a remaining order amount of $1,900.

A 1.9% transaction fee applied to $1,900 would work out to be $35.43 ($1,864.57 x 1.9%). But, because this hits the $6 per order fee cap for AU shares, we’ll return the $100 coverage that would’ve been used, and instead charge a $6 transaction fee and $1,994 is invested. You’ll still keep your $100 coverage to use on another transaction.

Coverage examples are in Australian dollars (AUD).

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