Best performing ready-made solutions of July – September 2025

Ready-made solutions recorded an excellent Q3 as global stock markets continued to hit new heights. AI optimism drove markets, alongside a strong earnings report season and interest rate cuts.

Although concerns of a bubble are growing - with "safe haven" asset gold featuring in headlines frequently thanks to its continued surge (alongside other precious metals) - markets continue to march forward for the time being.

Every ready-made solution we track posted a positive return in what was a textbook quarter; all high risk solutions outperformed their medium risk counterparts, who in turn all outperformed low risk solutions. This is what theory would suggest happens in "normal" quarters, with equity outperforming bonds, and portfolios with higher allocations to shares therefore doing better.

The average return of a high risk portfolio was 8.3%, which is equivalent to £83 profit on a £1,000 investment over the past 3 months. Medium risk portfolios returned an average of 5.7%, whilst low risk portfolios came in with an average of 3.0%. These are very good results, comfortably surpassing Q2's figures (which were also positive).

Q3 was an excellent quarter for markets, fuelled by increasing AI optimism and a strong earnings season. Various large tech companies beat analyst estimates and committed to significant investment. Against a backdrop of positive international trade deals in key sectors, this sent markets soaring.

The S&P 500

The average high risk portfolio returned 8.3%, with returns ranging from 6.9% - 8.9%. Halifax, the lowest performer last quarter, topped the leaderboard in Q3, closely followed by Aviva and Quilter Invest.

Interestingly, Halifax have one of the lowest equity allocations out of the providers covered in the high risk segment, with 89% of assets held in shares, compared to the average of 94%. The Halifax fund also reduced its ongoing charges in Q3 to 0.10%, making it among the cheapest options in the market. There is a £3 per month platform charge when investing in Halifax portfolios, which can adversely affect smaller portfolios. However, this fee structure represents increasingly good value as portfolio size increases. An investor with £10k in Halifax's high risk option would have seen returns of over £900 in the past 3 months.

Q3's strong performance boosted overall 1-year returns, which are double-digit across the board, ranging from 11% - 15.7%. Vanguard, Quilter Invest, and Nutmeg are the top 3 performers over the past 12 months. In fact, these providers occupy the top 3 slots across all the longer timeframes, returning between 47% and 52% over the past 3 years, and are the only providers with growth above 70% in the past 5 years. On the opposite end of the list is Charles Stanley, who has returned the least across all 4 time periods, with its 5-year return of 39.8% lagging nearest competitor Wealthify by over 10%.

Vanguard, Quilter, and Nutmeg's portfolios all have an equity allocation of above 90% in developed markets. Of the three, Quilter has the highest allocation to emerging markets

Vanguard has a similar UK allocation, whilst Nutmeg opts for a lower proportion at roughly 15%. Both Nutmeg and Vanguard opt for circa 5% of assets to be held in Japan, whilst Quilter has the largest allocation to the Middle East, although this only makes up roughly 1% of the overall portfolio.

The average medium risk portfolio returned 5.7% in Q3. Charles Stanley, who was top of the charts last quarter, was the lowest performer this time around - although its 4.3% return was still higher than all the medium risk portfolios in Q2.

The top performer in Q3 was Barclays, with growth of 6.7%. Impressively, Barclays is the best performing in this category across all time periods, returning 12% in the last year and 39.7% across the past 3 years.

Barclays has roughly 2/3 of the portfolio in equities and 1/3 in bonds. Unsurprisingly, assets are predominantly held in the US, with a 63% allocation. The second largest region is Asia, with 19% of the portfolio. Interestingly, there is a 7% allocation to emerging Asian markets, which is over 2x the average of benchmark funds. The Eurozone is the third largest region with roughly 10% of assets, whilst only 3% of assets are held in the UK, which is far below the 17% average seen in the broader benchmark.

Barclays explicitly highlights the active nature of the fund's management in the investment policy and also mentions that the manager will not select assets based on any index or benchmark. Generally, the more actively managed

The 12-month average return across all medium risk portfolios was 9.3%, with individual solutions ranging from 7.8% - 12%. Other than Barclays, Quilter was the only provider to reach double-digit growth with a 10.5% return over the year.

Wealthify and Vanguard join Barclays in the top 3 over the longer 3-year timeframe, although results are much more clustered over this period. Despite all having unique approaches to asset allocation and stock selection, 6 of the 10 providers had returns between 31.5% - 33.5%. Barclays was the only real positive exception to this, with their 39.7% return over 6% higher than Wealthify in 2nd place.

Across a 5-year period, the picture changes, with different frontrunners and wider dispersion. Barclays retains the top spot comfortably with 47% growth, followed by Quilter with 42%, and then HSBC with 38%. It's also interesting to observe the difference between 3-year and 5-year returns, with providers like Nutmeg and Charles Stanley actually performing better over 3 years than 5 years once you factor in fees.

One of the differentiating factors between medium risk portfolios is how they perform in contrasting market conditions, which is down to decisions around equity and bond allocation. The financial environment between Q4 2020 - Q3 2022 was distinctly different to current conditions, with markets reacting to Covid and rising inflation. AJ Bell performed well in that period and was the only provider to return over 10% across those 2 years, boosting them from second-bottom position in the 3-year rankings to 4th spot across the 5-year timeframe.

The average low risk portfolio returned 3.0% in Q3, led by Halifax who grew by 3.7%. Halifax hold roughly 77% of its portfolio in bonds, with 44% held internationally and 33% held in the UK. There is also a small allocation to emerging markets which have performed particularly well since the de-escalation of the global tariff tension in April.

Across the 1-year period, returns spanned from 3.5% - 6.6%, with Aviva and Barclays the only two providers to exceed the 6% mark. Vanguard came at the tail end of this list, the only provider to post less than 4% over the year.

Aviva has a 68% bond allocation, with 32% in equities. Bonds are made up of both sovereign and corporate, with Aviva opting for highly credit rated

Halifax and Aviva are the frontrunners over 3 years, with Halifax's 24.4% return substantially above the average of 18.3%. Charles Stanley's actively managed portfolio also performs well across both 3 and 5 years, coming 3rd and 2nd respectively. The portfolio has the largest equity allocation of all the providers in the list; its chunky 34% is substantially above the average of roughly 25%.

Generally, higher equity allocation is associated with higher returns (and volatility

Instead, it is Hargreaves Lansdown who sit comfortably at the summit over 5-years with 22.2% growth, which is a significant 7% higher than its nearest competitor, and almost double the 11.3% average return in this category. The foundation of this can be attributed to relatively strong performance in the earlier part of the 5-year period.

Interestingly, every single provider except Hargreaves Lansdown and Moneybox had better 3-year than 5-year performance, with Vanguard, Halifax, HSBC and Barclays seeing losses of over 10% between Q4 2020 and Q3 2022. This was during a very challenging environment for bonds, particularly in the UK.