AJ Bell has set out five ways investors can implement to reduce the cost of investing through an ISA to ensure you keep more of your savings and investments.

The savings can be significant. Charlene Young, senior pensions and savings expert at AJ Bell, highlighted the dramatic impact small changes to ISA costs can have over the long term.

“Reducing charges on an ISA portfolio worth £75,000 that you’re paying £500 per month into from 1% to 0.5% a year could mean £33,738 more in your pot after 20 years. Even a much smaller cost reduction of 0.2% a year could leave you £13,136 better off (based on 6% investment growth rate),” Young said.

“The average contribution into a Stocks and Shares ISA was £7,594 in 2022/23 – the most recent tax year HMRC publishes the in-depth splits for – meaning the cost savings on offer could be even higher for people investing the full £20,000 each year.”

Here are AJ Bell’s ‘Five ways to trim your ISA costs’:

1. Consider passive funds and ETFs

Passive and tracker funds can come with charges of 0.1% per year or less, compared to around 0.75% for a typical actively managed fund. 

Index funds won’t outperform the market, whilst some active managers will do just that over the long term, even after charges. AJ Bell’s Manager versus Machine report recently found that less than a quarter (24%) of actively managed funds have beaten a passive alternative over the past 10 years. If you’re on the other side of the coin, you might be left wondering what you’re paying for.

To cut costs, consider replacing persistent underperformers with tracker funds, or use a combination of the two approaches across different markets or regions. For example, you might still want to use an active fund in a more specialist or niche area of your portfolio, like emerging markets.

You might find a successful investment trust can offer what you need from a particular sector at a lower cost than a traditional equity fund. For example, for UK equity exposure, the City of London Investment Trust has an ongoing charge of 0.36% which is much lower than the typical cost of an actively managed UK equity fund.

2. Use a regular investment service

Lots of platforms offer an auto-investing option at a big discount when compared to dealing charges for ad hoc trades.Making an automatic regular monthly investment takes the emotion out of investing and can help you stay on track towards your long-term goals. 

“Markets can be up one month and down the next but avoiding trying to time the market can help you smooth those ups and downs thanks to something called pound cost averaging.

3. Don’t overtrade

There are often good reasons to change investments but if you’re constantly tinkering with them, you’ll soon rack up extra charges. 

Costs include a difference in the buying and selling price of funds and shares (the spread), ad hoc dealing charges, and potentially UK stamp duty too.

Being disciplined with the number of times you check your investments and sticking to a plan on how often you review your portfolio will help.

4. Consider fund accumulation units if you’re not drawing income

If you’re buying funds, you can choose between ‘income’ or ‘accumulation’ units. Whilst income units will pay out the income as cash, accumulation units will instead reinvest the income into the fund itself, increasing the price of each unit or share.

Accumulation units can save money if you’d otherwise be reinvesting fund income as you won’t need to pay additional dealing charges, and you’ll have less portfolio admin to do.

Platforms like AJ Bell also allow you to set up dividend reinvestment instructions for certain shares, including investment trusts and ETFs.

5. Combine your investment ISAs

Bringing your ISAs under one roof is another way to cut down on admin and time costs, but you could also save money in the long term.

You’ve always been able to have more than one ISA per tax year and changes in 2024 let you pay into multiple ISAs of the same type in a single tax year. But over time this can lead to duplicate fees and dealing charges. For example, if you’re buying the same share in two different investment ISAs, you’ll be paying two dealing charges rather than just one if they were in the same ISA.

Look for platforms that offer capped charges on shares and ETFs, and tiered charges for higher balances in funds.

*ISA pot projections by growth rate and charges.

Africa-focused investment company Tapir Holdings (LON: TAPH) joined AIM on 11 March. Trading in the shares has been limited. Around 15,000 shares have been traded this morning and the share price has risen 15.4% to 37.5p.

Chemotherapy drugs developer CRISM Therapeutics (LON: CRTX) has gained orphan drug designation from the US FDA for irinotecan for the treatment of malignant glioma. This utilises the company’s ChemoSeed technology, which is an implantable, biodegradable technology designed for the localised and sustained delivery of chemotherapy directly into cancer tissue. The orphan drug status will enhance the profile of the commercial development programme. The share price  is 14.6% higher at 13.75p.

Atlantic Lithium (LON: ALL) is raising up to £8.2m from Ghanaian investors. There is an initial subscription of £3.7m at 14.6p/share and warrants that could raise a further £4.5m at 21.9p/share. Warrants will be exercisable if the Ewoyaa project reaches certain milestones. There will also tb £4m raised from Long State Investments. The share price increased 11.4% to 15.825p.

Payment services provider Boku (LON: BOKU) increased 2025 revenues by 30% to $128.8m with the main growth coming from digital wallets and bundling. Active users are 31% higher at 114.4 million. Operating profit trebled to £18.9m. The company’s cash increased to £102.9m. The momentum is continuing. Boku intends to repurchase up to 4 million shares. Former boss Jon Prideaux is stepping down from the board. The share price gained 7.9% to 177.5p.

FALLERS

ImmuPharma (LON: IMM) has launched a subscription and retail offer to raise up to £7.5m at 6p/share. ImmuPharma says that there is significant interest from potential licence partners in its autoimmune disease programme P140. Lanstead Capital Investors approached the company to offer further funding for P140 and Kapiglucagon, a form of glucagon that could be used in dual-hormone artificial pancreas devices. The retail offer could raise up to £1.5m of the total fundraising. The share price slipped 22.3% to 5.4p.

Richmond Hill Resources (LON: RHR) says a drone survey of the Martello gold project has been completed. An assessment has been commissioned. A maiden drill programme should folowThe share price fell 20.5% to 1.55p.

A disappointing trading statement from identity management software provider Intercede Group (LON: IGP) has led Cavendish to downgrade forecasts. The company has been hit by disruption to government buying cycles in the US and uncertainty in the Middle East. Cavendish has cut full year forecast revenues from £18.7m to £17m and the pre-tax profit estimate from £4.9m to £4.1m. The share price declined 18% to 79.5p.

Physiomics (LON: PYC) has launched a revised fundraising the day after it received a general meeting request from Michael Whitlow, who owns 13.7%. A placing raised £490,000 at 0.4p/share and a retail offer could raise up to £110,000 more. The original fundraising was at 0.3p/share. Michael Whitlow wants to appoint Nicholas Tulloch, Ian Bagnall, Martin Gouldstone and himself as directors and remove Dr Jim Millen, Shalabh Kumar, Dr Tim Corn, and Dr Peter Sargent, as long as least two of the new directors are appointed. The share price fell 8.6% to 0.425p.

Litigation Capital Management (LON: LIT) says that an Australian court has found against the party funded by the company. So far, A$1.4m has been invested. The next move is being considered. The share price is down 7.81% to 7.79p.

The resilience of the FTSE 100 was on show again on Tuesday, as London’s leading index carved out minor gains despite persistent concerns over the conflict in the Middle East.

Oil prices remained above $100 on Tuesday, but traders seem to believe the war in Iran won’t last long enough to have a major impact on the global economy. Or that any potential impact has already been priced into stocks.

The FTSE 100 was 0.3% higher at the time of writing.

“The FTSE 100 ticked higher and outperformed some of its counterparts as oil continued to climb,” says Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell.

“The longer the oil price stays above $100 per barrel, the louder the alarm bells for the market over inflation risks. Iran’s continued attacks on regional energy infrastructure are helping to keep crude at elevated levels.

“The FTSE 100 has a large weighting towards oil and gas producers, although it also has plenty of constituents that have big energy or fuel requirements or which might lose out from interest rates staying higher for longer.”

There was an element of risk aversion in Tuesday’s rally, with defensive sectors such as utilities, consumer goods, and pharma among the top risers.

Centrica, United Utilities, and Severn Trent were higher between 2% and 2.5% at the time of writing.

Hikma Pharmaceuticals was the top riser, adding 3%.

As expected, BP and Shell played their role in lifting the index with oil prices remaining above $100. BP added 1.5% while Shell gained 1%.

The attraction of the FTSE 100’s oil majors is likely to persist with the conflict showing little sign of letting up.

“Tehran has launched intense attacks on the American embassy in Iraq and is continuing to strike key infrastructure sites of US allies across the Middle East,” said Susannah Streeter, Chief Investment Strategist, Wealth Club.

“Iran is intent on causing as much disruption and damage to facilities as possible to stop the flow of oil, with energy its key weapon in this conflict.”

Analysis for informational purposes only. Capital at risk.

• The “Lobster” Adoption Wave: Chinese hyperscalers like Tencent and Alibaba are actively promoting OpenClaw‑style autonomous agents, potentially converting users into recurring, high‑volume cloud customers and locking in API/token revenue in the long run.
• Chinese Variants Mitigate Security Risk: Chinese hyperscalers have developed secure, managed OpenClaw variants to mitigate inherent security risks. By banning raw OpenClaw in high-value SOEs and financial sectors, regulators are effectively forcing these lucrative users into domestic ecosystems.
• Inference Shifts Chip Dynamics: Mass agent deployment shifts the AI compute workload away from raw training (GPU-heavy) toward memory-centric inference. This creates potential opportunities for inference-optimized hardware (ASICs, NPUs, and domestic Chinese chips) to capture inference workload growth.

Reassessing China’s AI Story: The Overlooked Application Layer

Markets commonly treat China’s AI story as one of fast followers limited by chip export controls and a relative lack of frontier compute. That view implies slower monetisation and keeps Chinese hyperscaler multiples compressed versus US peers.

What many investors miss is the AI application layer—the user-facing, operational software that runs on top of models and can scale token consumption.

OpenClaw: The Agent That Sparked a Wave

OpenClaw, an open‑source autonomous‑agent framework, has created an adoption wave across China’s digital economy recently, nicknamed “raising a lobster”.

Unlike passive chatbots, OpenClaw executes multi‑step workflows (clearing inboxes, booking logistics, controlling desktop environments) without ongoing user prompts, turning single queries into complex, cross‑application tasks.

The China Deployment Machine

In the West, OpenClaw adoption remains niche: it requires technical effort to install and operate and is mainly used within developer communities. In China, that friction is being removed through coordinated commercial and public‑sector actions:

• Tencent—WeChat Gateway: Tencent has embedded OpenClaw, via WorkBuddy and QClaw, natively inside the WeChat ecosystem and run large offline onboarding events (1,000+ attendees), lowering adoption barriers. Its lightweight cloud product Lighthouse had attracted more than 100,000 customers to deploy OpenClaw in just one week.
• Alibaba—One-Person Company and Mobile Users: Alibaba’s CoPaw sells a cloud‑hosted deployment template for RMB 9.9, explicitly targeting China’s growing “one‑person company” (OPC) segment. Each converted OPC becomes a recurring API consumer, not just a free‑tier user. In addition, it has released its mobile app version of “OpenClaw”, JVS Claw, to allow mobile users to perform various agentic tasks.
• ByteDance – The Browser Play: ByteDance launched ArkClaw, a cloud-based OpenClaw variant that eliminates local installation complexity, targeting non-developer users who lacked the technical threshold to run a local agent.
• Local Government Support: Municipalities such as Shenzhen’s Longgang District and Suzhou are drafting measures to support OPCs and agent deployments, helping keep the required digital infrastructure domestic and scalable.

Why agents matter financially

Autonomous agents are token multipliers: a single complex agent workflow can potentially consume 10–50x the tokens of a conversational query. By subsidising agent access and monetising the resulting API/token usage, Chinese hyperscalers convert frequent users into high‑volume, recurring cloud demand without charging premium model subscriptions up front.

The 5-layer AI framework: Leasing the “Hand” Over the “Brain”

Under the five‑layer framework (energy → chips → infrastructure → models → applications), the US retains advantages at chips (NVIDIA) and models (OpenAI, Google). China’s strengths lie in energy and infrastructure, it’s closing the gap on models (e.g., DeepSeek, Qwen), and it’s pushing to lead at the application layer — notably via agent frameworks like OpenClaw.

Different monetisation strategies

• Western incumbents typically bundle models and applications (e.g., Gemini + NotebookLM) for consumers while selling model‑only APIs to enterprises and developers.
• Chinese players lean the other way: open or low‑cost models to drive adoption (minimal customer acquisition cost), then monetise the application and cloud layers.

Chinese OpenClaw Variants Mitigate Security Risk

Security and regulatory risk remain the main barrier to near-term mass adoption. OpenClaw requires broad system permissions that raise security concerns. Chinese regulators have flagged these risks and banned installation of the raw OpenClaw software on devices used by state‑owned enterprises (SOEs), government agencies, and major financial institutions.

That ban, however, does not equally affect managed, enterprise‑grade deployments.

Compared to raw OpenClaw’s system vulnerabilities, Chinese hyperscalers have built commercial variants that meet enterprise security expectations.

For example, Tencent’s WorkBuddy and Alibaba’s CoPaw are architected to reduce those vulnerabilities: WorkBuddy requires explicit, sandboxed permission grants and limits operations to designated folders. CoPaw, on the other hand, is a cloud‑based deployment with no access to sensitive local data.

As the regulators ban raw OpenClaw from SOEs and financial institutions, they effectively push these valuable users toward proprietary solutions from Tencent and Alibaba.

Inference Reshapes Semiconductor Landscape

Mass deployment of AI agents could materially alter the semiconductor competitive dynamic over the long run.

• Training vs. Inference: Training (building model intelligence) and inference (running models in applications) impose different hardware demands. Training is bursty and GPU‑heavy. Inference is steady and memory‑centric, requiring sustained VRAM, high memory bandwidth, predictable throughput, and low latency.
• The Inference Battleground: NVIDIA dominates training and today’s inference market thanks to its GPU architecture and CUDA ecosystem. But inference is more open to specialized ASICs and inference‑optimised chips, so competition is likely to intensify as workloads shift away from raw GPU and CUDA dependency.
• Agents Accelerate the Shift: Continuous, multi‑step background agents (e.g., OpenClaw deployments) increase sustained inference volume. Deloitte estimates inference would account for about two‑thirds of total AI compute demand, up from one‑third in 2023. Mass agent adoption would push that share higher, favoring chips optimised for memory, bandwidth, and efficient inference.
• China’s Inference Strategy: Inference reduces the absolute advantage of GPU incumbents and opens a path for inference‑optimised chips—an area where Chinese players can potentially compete and accelerate semiconductor localisation. Chinese firms are targeting this opportunity with cost‑effective, large‑scale deployments: Huawei is rolling out Ascend series chips and networking them into massive clusters to offset single‑chip limitations; Alibaba is developing HanGuang inference chips tuned to its models; and domestic vendors such as Cambricon and MooreThreads are shipping affordable, locally produced accelerators purpose‑built for inference workloads.

The Cloud Export: Emerging Markets as Expansion Frontier

Beyond the domestic market, Chinese hyperscalers can package autonomous agents as low‑cost, plug‑and‑play digital workforces for emerging markets.

They’ve expanded actively in these regions, attracted by strong growth and fewer geopolitical or regulatory hurdles than Western markets. Those markets are currently dominated by Western providers (Microsoft Azure, AWS) with few low‑cost alternatives—an opening Chinese hyperscalers can exploit.

• Alibaba has opened data centres in Dubai and announced facilities for Mexico and Brazil while expanding in Southeast Asia.
• Tencent is expanding its cloud footprints across Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

This article is a “periodical publication” for information only and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell securities. This article does not constitute a “personal recommendation” or “investment advice” under UK FCA regulations. Investing in equities involves significant risk. The author holds NO position in the securities mentioned. There is no warranty as to completeness or correctness. Please do your own due diligence or consult a licensed financial adviser. Please read the Full Disclaimer before acting on any information. Images created with the assistance of Gemini AI.

Article provided by Asia Pulse.

IP Group, the London-listed science and technology investor, swung back into profit in 2025 as the value of its stake in Pfizer’s obesity drug pipeline helped drive a 13% rise in net asset value per share to 110.4p.

The results underscore the significant value in IP Group shares, which are trading at about a 50% discount to the NAV, despite robust progress in the portfolio.

The group posted a profit of £66.9m for the year, a sharp reversal from the £207m loss recorded in 2024, with total NAV rising to £975.1m from £952.5m.

A key driver was the recognition of £128.2m in discounted future royalty and milestone income following Pfizer’s acquisition of portfolio company Metsera, giving IP Group ongoing exposure to Pfizer’s obesity franchise, including the Phase 3 candidate PF’3944, which reported positive Phase 2b data during the year.

Cash proceeds from exits totalled £68.1m, down from £183.4m the previous year, with notable realisations including the NYSE listing of digital health company Hinge Health and the sale of Monolith to Nasdaq-listed CoreWeave.

The group reiterated its target of delivering more than £250m in exits between 2025 and the end of 2027.

 “2025 was a notable year for IP Group,” said Greg Smith, Chief Executive of IP Group.

“Pfizer’s acquisition of Metsera highlighted the strength and value of licensing activities in the obesity drug space where we hold valuable rights to several promising programmes. This drove a return to NAV growth. A further highlight was the successful IPO of Hinge Health on the NYSE, an investment from which we have now fully exited following the sale of our remaining holding in early 2026.

“We also delivered strong cash realisations, allowing us to retire almost a tenth of our shares in issue through buybacks, while maintaining a robust liquidity position.

“We are also pleased to be working with Aberdeen to manage a portfolio of early‑stage and growth investments in the UK, further extending our ability to support the next generation of innovation‑led businesses. As one of the world’s most experienced university IP investors, our unique model – combining deep partnerships with leading research institutions and access to long-term committed capital – positions us to support breakthrough science from inception to scale. We remain focused on creating long-term value for our shareholders while driving innovation that addresses some of society’s most pressing challenges.”

IP Group shares were 9% higher at the time of writing.

Travis Perkins, the UK’s largest building materials distributor, reported a drop in full-year profits as tough trading conditions continued to weigh on its core merchanting business, though a much-improved balance sheet and strong progress at Toolstation provided some bright spots.

But investors will ultimately look at the wider economy and weak trading conditions and wonder whether shares at six-month lows have further downside potential.

Adjusted operating profit fell 12.5% to £133m for the year to December 2025, down from £152m, as lower volumes and increased promotional activity squeezed margins in the merchanting division.

On a statutory basis, the group swung to an operating loss of £97m after booking £222m of adjusting items, largely tied to impairments at Toolstation Benelux and restructuring costs.

Toolstation UK was the best-performing area, lifting adjusted operating profit by 29% to £44m as it continued to gain market share and its store estate matured.

The full-year dividend was cut to 12.0p per share from 14.5p, in line with the group’s payout policy of 30-40% of adjusted earnings.

Gavin Slark, the former SIG and Grafton Group chief executive, took the reins as CEO on 1 January 2026 and has already flattened the management structure so that all divisional heads report directly to him.

“It is the strength of our balance sheet that now provides the necessary resilience and flexibility to underpin our competitiveness in what remains a challenging market backdrop for UK construction activity,” Gavin Slark said.

“We will maintain our disciplined and selective approach to capital allocation as we navigate our way back to better market conditions.”

Trading since the start of 2026 has remained ‘subdued’, reflecting weak UK construction activity through the final quarter of last year. The group said it would focus on improving its customer offer and driving further efficiencies while it waits for the market to turn.

Travis Perkins shares were flat at the time of writing.