Available on all account types except the Child Trust Fund accounts, the Dividend Reinvestment Service enables you to automatically invest dividends on FTSE100 shares and other eligible investments that you hold in your account.  We'll 'earmark' the dividend credit (so, effectively, it can't be withdrawn) and make the investment on the day after your dividend has been added to your account. To see the list of eligible investments, click here.

When deciding whether or not to take advantage of this facility you'll want to be sure your dividend payment will be sufficient to be worthwhile – remember, so long as your dividend is sufficient to buy at least one share, after taking into account the £1.50 dealing fee and stamp duty, we'll make the purchase.  So, for small dividend payouts, the dealing fee could use up a significant part of your dividend credit.  Check out the dividend track record – although that's no guarantee of similar pay-outs each year, and calculate how much your holding might generate.

Setting up your dividend reinvestment is easy.  Simply log in to your accounts, choose the account into which you want the investments to go, then click on the 'Dividend Reinvestment' tab.

Choose the individual investment whose dividends you want to reinvest, or simply choose the 'All' option to reinvest the dividends received from all the FTSE100 companies in which you hold shares.

On the next business day after adding the dividend to your account, we'll buy more shares in the company from which the dividend was received.  Any cash left over from the dividend credit after buying as many whole shares as possible, our dealing fee and stamp duty, will be retained in your account as part of the cash balance.  Click here for an example >

Do make sure you give us your instructions in time - generally by the close of business on the day before dividends are credited to your account. You can often find out when the next dividend is due to be paid to you by looking at the company factsheet from clicking on the company name in your account, or by looking at the financial dates in the latest Report & Accounts. Annual Reports can often be obtained from our free to use Annual Reports service or from the company's own website.

Changes affecting your investments: if the company you have chosen drops out of the FTSE 100 Index it may be removed from the available investment list and existing instructions cancelled. We'll let you know if this is to be the case so that you can make an alternative selection. However, if a share, Investment Trust or ETF stops being listed on the London Stock Exchange, your instruction will automatically cease and we'll tell you about it via a secure message.

The list of investments will also be reviewed from time to time and any changes affecting your choices will be advised to you by secure message.

Additionally, if you sell a share to which you will still receive the dividend, do remember to cancel your reinvestment instruction else we'll reinvest the dividend when it is paid to you, effectively buying back into that company. You'll know if this is to apply because generally when you sell you won't be entitled to the next dividend; if you are still going to receive the dividend –and this is only during a short 'window' between the shares being declared 'ex div' and you selling them - your contract note for the sale will have stated that your sale was 'ex dividend'.

Terms and Conditions of the service: when you set up a dividend reinvestment instruction you'll be acknowledging your acceptance of the full Terms of the service so please ensure you read and understand the Terms, which are covered in Section 2f, beforehand.