How plan coverage works

Each month, your plan will cover the transaction fees up to a set amount for individual buy and sell orders, as well as a separate, higher amount for auto-invest orders (including one-off buys for auto-invest orders).

To see how transaction fees were covered for an order (and any additional transaction fees paid), go to the Activity feed or the contract note for the order.

Your plan only covers transaction fees on the orders you place within your coverage balance. It doesn’t cover other fees such as currency exchange fees, or card top-up fees.

Coverage renews every month, regardless of whether you’ve chosen to pay for a plan monthly or annually. You can also upgrade your plan to receive more coverage straight away.

After you’ve used up your plan’s coverage, you’ll be charged a transaction fee of 1.9% on all additional orders you place. If a trade surpasses the cap for a region, only the capped fee (e.g., $25 NZD) will be charged, instead of applying the 1.9% transaction fee.

When you create an order, the order amount is temporarily held against your monthly plan balance. This is to help you keep track of your monthly plan balance, especially if you have multiple orders, as it depends on the market when the order will be filled.

Plan coverage is applied automatically to orders within your coverage balance. It is not possible to choose capped fees instead of plan coverage manually.

The actual amount is held (not charged against your monthly plan) until the order is complete. If you are getting to the end of your monthly plan and you can see that an order hasn't been filled, you can cancel it and use the remaining balance to create a new order within that subscription date.

Please note that for an order to be covered by your plan, coverage needs to be available on the plan when the order is placed, not when it later fills. This means when you have an order pending it may be using up some of the coverage on your plan.

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.

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

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

Any returned 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 AUD 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You place a $2,000 buy order for NZ shares, but you only have $100 of available coverage.

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 $25 per order fee cap for NZ shares, we’ll return the $100 coverage that would’ve been used, and instead charge a $25 transaction fee and $1,975 is invested.

Coverage examples are in NZ dollars (NZD).