Farra is a death administration assistant for UK families. Get step-by-step guidance for registering a death, applying for probate, notifying banks, and managing bereavement admin. From essential documents to practical checklists, Farra simplifies estate paperwork and funeral-related tasks so you can focus on what matters.
This guide has not been checked against its sources
We re-checked our most-read guides against GOV.UK and the other official sources in September 2026. This one was not among them, so nobody has confirmed its figures, deadlines or process steps since it was written. Treat it as a starting point and confirm anything that matters on GOV.UK before you act on it.
We could not confirm this one, and we are not going to guess. Interactive Investor's help page on what happens when an account holder dies is built entirely in the browser, so its text cannot be read by anything other than a person with the page open. This page used to say ii “always requires probate regardless of value”. That was not sourced to ii, and it is the expensive direction to be wrong in — a grant costs money and takes weeks, and an executor who buys one they did not need cannot get that back.
The reliable route is to read ii.co.uk/help/using-your-account/account-administration/account-holder-has-passed-away in a browser, or to ring ii on 0345 607 6001 and ask what it needs for the accounts actually held.
Interactive Investor (ii) is one of the UK's largest investment platforms, offering stocks and shares ISAs, SIPPs and general investment accounts. Whether it publishes a small-estates figure is exactly what we could not establish: its help centre renders its content in the browser rather than serving it, so the article is invisible to any automated check. That is a limit on what we can tell you, not evidence either way.
What we can say with confidence is structural:
In England and Wales the document is a grant of probate or letters of administration; in Scotland it is a confirmation from the sheriff court; Northern Ireland has its own Probate Office.
For a full comparison of thresholds across UK institutions, see our probate threshold guide for 2026–27.
This is the ordinary starting point for any investment platform, not a list ii has published to us. Confirm it with ii before you send anything or apply for anything.
Our estate administration checklist helps you manage all document submissions across institutions.
Ask on the call what postal address to use and what it wants sent, rather than posting an original document to an address found online. This is one of the key steps in notifying financial institutions after a death.
Interactive Investor does not currently participate in the Death Notification Service (DNS). You must contact ii directly — the DNS cannot be used to notify them. As an investment platform rather than a high-street bank, ii maintains its own separate bereavement process.
We could not confirm whether ii accepts form IHT423, the Direct Payment Scheme form that lets a bank, building society or NS&I pay inheritance tax direct to HMRC before the grant is issued — the same help centre problem applies. Ask, and if the answer is no, the tax has to come from an account somewhere that does. See our guide on probate delays and IHT interest for practical guidance.
We have found no published figure, from ii or from any official source. The “4 to 8 weeks” and “9 to 12 months” that used to sit here were estimates dressed as facts and have been removed. Where investments are being transferred in specie to another platform rather than sold, the receiving platform has to process the transfer too, which is a step outside ii's control.
For a complete timeline, see the complete UK probate guide for 2026.
If the person held a SIPP with Interactive Investor, the rules differ from the investment accounts. SIPP death benefits do not form part of the estate: they are paid at the scheme's discretion, guided by any nomination, without a grant. Most unused pension funds are outside inheritance tax at present, but the government has confirmed they come within the charge from 6 April 2027.
ISAs and general investment accounts do form part of the estate. Whether ii asks for a grant for those is the question this page cannot answer for you — ask ii. For full details on pension death benefits, see our pension death benefit guide. For what each route to administering an estate involves, see our DIY probate versus solicitor cost guide.
Before you assume you need probate
Do you actually need a grant — and what would it cost?
A interactive investor balance is only part of the picture. Whether the estate needs probate at all depends on the whole picture — property, other accounts, and how everything was owned — not a single threshold. It is worth checking before you start filling in forms.
Guide reviewed July 2026. Bank thresholds change and can vary by account type — always confirm the current figure with the provider before relying on it.
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