Ally Invest Review
For current Ally customers looking to invest in stocks, Ally's universal-accounts experience and easy-to-use website offer a convenient solution.
- Minimum Deposit: $0.00
- Stock Trade Fee: $0.00
- Options (Per Contract): $0.50
Ally Invest pros & cons
Pros:
- As far as banking and brokerage combinations go, Ally delivers with universal account access, instant money transfers between accounts and $0 trades, winning it a Best in Class spot for banking services in our 2022 Annual Review.
- The broker offers $0 stock and ETF trades alongside a $0 minimum deposit; options trades are $0.50 per contract.
Cons:
- Ally Invest struggles to compete as a stand-alone broker. Ally Invest trails industry leaders TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab in most areas, including trading platforms, tools, investment research, and education.
- Usability and banking synergies aside, if you have no ties to Ally, Ally Invest does not provide enough value to warrant a recommendation.
Overall summary
| Feature | Ally Invest |
|---|---|
| Overall | |
| Commissions & Fees | |
| Platforms & Tools | |
| Research | |
| Mobile Trading Apps | |
| Offering of Investments | |
| Education | |
| Ease of Use |
Ally Invest Trading Platform Screenshots
Website:
Mobile app:
Customer service
To score Customer Service, StockBrokers.com partners with customer experience research firm Confero to conduct phone tests from locations throughout the United States. For our 2022 Broker Review, 159 customer service tests were conducted over six weeks. Here are the results for Ally Invest.
Results
- Average Connection Time: <1 minute
- Average Net Promoter Score: 8.2 / 10
- Average Professionalism Score: 6.9 / 10
- Overall Score: 7.9 / 10
- Ranking: 6th of 13 brokers
Is Ally Invest good for beginners?
For beginners looking to bank and invest from under one roof, Ally Invest could be a good place to get started, especially if you already have ties to Ally. For anything more than casual investing, Ally Invest trails industry leaders.
Is Ally Invest safe?
Given that Ally Invest also offers banking services, Ally Invest is a member of both FINRA and SIPC, offering protection on customer accounts in the event of a broker’s bankruptcy. It’s important to understand that, as with any broker, such insurance does not protect against market losses — investing is a risky endeavor.
How does Ally Invest make its money?
Ally Invest makes money in the same way that other banks and brokers do. On brokerage accounts, Ally makes money from the practice of payment for order flow, or PFOF, as do nearly all other brokers in this age of $0 trades. Read more about PFOF.
About Ally Invest
Ally Invest is the online brokerage arm of Ally Financial (publicly traded, "ALLY"), which also operates Ally Bank. Ally Financial is best-known for its FDIC-insured banking services through Ally Bank, which includes online banking, auto financing, and home loans. Ally Invest services more than 500,000 brokerage accounts and $16.3 billion in assets.
2022 Review Methodology
Our mission at StockBrokers.com is simple: provide thorough and unbiased reviews of online brokers, based on an extraordinary level of hands-on testing and data collection. Our ratings and awards are based on this data and our experts’ deep authority in the field; brokers cannot pay for preferential treatment. Here’s more about trustworthiness at StockBrokers.com.
For the StockBrokers.com 12th Annual Review published in January 2022, a total of 3,075 data points were collected over three months and used to score 15 top brokers. This makes StockBrokers.com home to the largest independent database on the web covering the online broker industry.
As part of our annual review process, all brokers had the opportunity to provide updates and key milestones and complete an in-depth data profile, which we hand-checked for accuracy. Brokers also were offered the opportunity to provide executive time for an annual update meeting.
Our rigorous data validation process yields an error rate of less than .001% each year, providing site visitors quality data they can trust. Learn more about how we test.
About the Author
Blain Reinkensmeyer Blain Reinkensmeyer is a Managing Partner at Reink Media Group. He heads research for all U.S.-based brokerages on StockBrokers.com and is respected by executives as the leading analyst covering the online broker industry. Blain’s insights have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the Chicago Tribune, among other media outlets, and he is noted as a top expert on the U.S. online brokerage industry.
Chris McKhann Chris McKhann has been in the industry for more than 20 years. He has worked for many of the top names in the online trading space, including TD Ameritrade and optionMONSTER, which later became part of E*TRADE. His work has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, the Financial Times, Forbes, CNBC, Nasdaq.com and Nikkei. He has also been an advisor and outside trader for several hedge funds. He was one of the first traders to delve into the VIX tradable products and to write about them (back in 2006). Chris is also an educator who teaches high school statistics, finance and computer science.
