Estate admin · Investment platforms

The limit is the platform's own policy rather than the law's, and among the five platforms that publish one it runs from £35,000 to £75,000, with four more publishing no figure at all.

No statute sets the figure. Aviva Investors says so in its own bereavement guide, in terms: there is no legally prescribed small estates limit, so the value can vary between firms. Each platform is deciding how much money it is prepared to hand over on a declaration or indemnity rather than a grant, and that is a commercial judgement about risk, made separately by every firm and revisable whenever the firm chooses.

The number is only half the policy. Hargreaves Lansdown wants a certified copy of the Will below its £50,000. Fidelity wants a signed and witnessed Small Estates form, and adds two conditions of its own: the whole estate must be under the Inheritance Tax nil-rate band and there must be a Will. Vanguard's declaration is usable only if the executors do not need probate anyway and no other institution is asking for it. Aviva Investors will accept its own declaration below £50,000 but requires a solicitor or commissioner for oaths to witness it once the holding reaches £25,000. Aberdeen wants a Form of Indemnity with the certified Will. Two platforms quoting the same £50,000 can still ask for quite different things.

The threshold is measured per platform, and pensions are treated differently from platform to platform. Hargreaves Lansdown's figure covers assets held with HL excluding pensions; Vanguard counts only general accounts and ISAs and excludes its personal pension; Aberdeen's SIPP investments sit outside its figure. Fidelity and Aviva Investors do not address pensions on their bereavement pages, so for those two the position has to be asked, not assumed.

Four of the nine publish no figure, and the silence takes different shapes. AJ Bell's bereavement FAQ, support hub and ISA-on-death page never mention probate, a grant or an estate value. interactive investor sets out a single route, a court-sealed grant of probate or Scottish Confirmation, with no smaller-balance alternative. J.P. Morgan Personal Investing says that where no grant is being applied for it will discuss options by email. Moneybox asks for a Will or grant if applicable, and its Estate Distribution form adds that with no Will and no grant required it may accept one personal representative's signature, without saying when a grant is not required.

• Value the holding at each platform separately, as at the date of death. Every published threshold is measured on the balance at that one platform, so a £30,000 holding at one firm and a £60,000 holding at another are assessed on their own, not added together.
• Find out first whether any other institution will insist on a grant. Vanguard's declaration is only offered where no other institution is asking for probate, and once one bank, insurer or platform requires a grant you will usually end up producing it everywhere, because obtaining it costs the same however many accounts it is shown to.
• Ask each platform in writing for its current figure and the exact form it wants. These are internal policies that can change without notice, and four of the nine platforms here publish no figure, so a written answer for this estate is the only thing you can rely on.
• Check the whole estate against the Inheritance Tax nil-rate band before using Fidelity's or Vanguard's route. Fidelity requires the total estate to be under the nil-rate band as well as its own £50,000 limit; Vanguard's declaration is for estates where probate is not needed, usually because there is no inheritance tax to pay. Neither can be answered from the platform balance alone.
• Read the signing and witnessing rules on the form itself. Aviva Investors requires a solicitor or commissioner for oaths to witness its declaration at £25,000 and above; Moneybox's Estate Distribution form must be signed by all the personal representatives authorised to act, with a narrower exception where there is no Will and no grant is required. A form witnessed wrongly comes back.
• Keep pensions out of the calculation, and ask where the platform does not say. Hargreaves Lansdown, Vanguard and Aberdeen exclude pensions from their figures; Fidelity and Aviva Investors say nothing about pensions, so ask them directly rather than assuming either way.

Each row is what the platform's own bereavement page or guide says, checked on 6 September 2026. Look first at whether a figure is published at all, then at the conditions attached to it, which differ even where the number is the same.

9 checked · 1 publish nothing at all on this question — that row is kept deliberately, because the silence is the finding. Each row is what that provider’s own page says, on the date beside it.

Investment holdings are one line among many an executor has to settle, and the platform's threshold is one of several deadlines and requirements that arrive at once. The blank executor checklist at /resources/blank-executor-checklist is free and lists the tasks in order, so the platform correspondence has somewhere to sit.

If the death was recent and you are still working out which institutions to contact, the bereavement first steps tool at /tools/bereavement-first-steps sets out the first week without asking for an account.

What usually comes next.

Where this sits among the other thresholds an executor meets.

Informational, not advice. Every figure on this page is a platform's internal policy, revisable without notice and with no statute behind it, so any of the five published thresholds or the conditions attached to them can change the day after they were checked. The providers themselves also move: the abrdn bereavement page checked here now redirects to aberdeenpersonal.com, and Nutmeg's guidance now sits on a J.P. Morgan Personal Investing support site with a J.P. Morgan email address. Before relying on any row, re-read the platform's own bereavement page or guide at the source given, all of which were checked on 6 September 2026, and get the current figure confirmed in writing by that platform's bereavement team. Covers nine UK investment platforms and fund managers checked on 6 September 2026: Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell, interactive investor, Fidelity, Vanguard UK, abrdn (now branded Aberdeen), Aviva Investors, Nutmeg (now J.P. Morgan Personal Investing) and Moneybox. The Aberdeen figures are for its adviser-led Wrap Cash, Personal Portfolio and ISA products and are included because they are public. Figures relate to a grant of probate or letters of administration in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; the Scottish Confirmation is noted where a platform names it. Out of scope: workplace and employer pensions, and bank and building society accounts, which have their own thresholds.