Interactive Brokers - Fund Loads and Minimums

Some funds have high front loads of up to 5.5% of invested money. Other funds have no loads, but high minimums instead (100k - 5 Mio). I believe at least somebody here has mentioned being able to buy a fund with a high minimum despite investing much less than the minimum.

Anyone got experience trading funds at IBKR without paying the indicated loads, or falling short of investing the required minimum for a fund?

Aren’t the loads marketing loads (up to X% with the broker/bank deciding)? At least my experience so far is that I’ve been charged 5 bucks for the funds that have fees (if you search in fund scanner some funds have 0 fee).

Fund scanner also list the minimum investment for each share class (and when you do your order the default value is also the minimum).

You can also ask IB support for specific questions, that’s their job.

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I see, so IBKR does not necessarily charge you the front load indicated in the fund fee information, but can go below that? How can I find out what fee I will be charged before buying the fund?

But investment minima indicated by IBKR are always fixed?

Does Mutual Funds Outside the US | Interactive Brokers LLC answer your question?

You can ask support to confirm.

The fund list on ibkr side gives the investment minima.

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Thanks, very helpful, will check this out in detail.

I hope there is access to US mutual funds for non-US residents. I’d hate to pay the UCITS fees…

No, US funds are never allowed for non-US residents (afaik even for citizens typically).

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I don’t think there is a way around this at IBKR currently.

1 year ago I tried to buy the “I” share class of Fundsmith which has a 5M GBP minimum and 0.1% lower TER than the “T” class. My previous broker enabled this presumably because their clients had cumulatively more than 5m GBP funds in Fundsmith.

After waiting for over a month for a reply IBKR customer service said this was not possible. In my experience they are not very good at thinking outside the box. You get what you pay for.

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If you check the fund list, there’s quite a few class where the minimum investment doesn’t match the factsheet, I don’t know if it’s a mistake or if it depends on provider, etc.

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Not sure if the following is what you refer to but as far as I can see the minimum investments per share class on “IBKR’s mutual fund marketplace website” appear to match the “Fundsmith factsheet” webpage (GBP1000 for all classes apart from i class which is GBP 5M)

I just tried to buy GBP 1000 of “i” class to see what would happen. I got a refusal due to the amount being <5M GBP

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May I ask, what was your previous broker? Maybe I get lucky there if IBKR won’t give me access.

If you’re curious, I’m specifically looking into AMFAX without 5.5% front load, or (preferably, due to lower TER) ASFYX without 100k minimum.

Interactive investor. It is a UK broker.

Paying higher TER on FS is more than compensated by IBKR’s low interest rates on margin loans. Having my shares and funds in one place gives me a higher borrowing capacity too

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Got it, thanks a lot for the hint, very much appreciated :+1:! So I found the US mutual fund under a totally different name on this huge list of non-US funds, and good news is: It’s as expensive as the US mutual fund, but no load. Feels like Christmas, I’ll never complain about non-US funds again (no guarantee :grin:)