Effectively this is a detailed analysis into what you can afford, your income, disposable cash, what risk you can stomach and whether you should be investing at all. The questionnaire can start to feel like it is going on forever but it’s thorough and should eliminate nasty surprises down the track.

Investors will end up with £ forecasts for poor conditions, intermediate conditions and good conditions based on what you’re paying in. The actual investments will be in the HSBC Global Strategy range – a ‘multi asset’ fund which has a range of global investments.

Charges are 0.5% for the advice (based on the initial lump sum plus 12 x the first monthly amount); an account fee of 0.25% a year and circa 0.19% fund fee a year. For our test scenario of £10,000, the all-in annual fees were £94 for the first year.

This review is for the Digital Advice journey called HSBC My Investment . We think this is the most interesting service – if you’re after a fund or share dealing account where you choose your own, there are better alternatives.