Bell Direct

I notified Bell Direct in December 2025 that neither my portfolio nor watch lists were displayed when I logged in. After an unacceptable delay I was informed that extensions, vpns, or security software may interfere with the permissions. Thankfully this was an occasional, but catastrophic "hiccup". Since then, I have modified my security… Read more

software but the problem persists. Increasingly, I have been unable to view either my portfolio or my watchlists, so information needed for selling or buying is not available. Every time I notify Bell Direct I am provided with concern and platitudes. I have been unable to access either portfolio or watchlists since Thursday last week. Today, I learn that account holders with an "international account" all seem to have this problem. Draw your own conclusions.

A bunch of incompetent fools, nice enough customer service team, but useless in getting anything sorted. The most difficult, protracted process for opening a trading account. I would not recommend these id*ots.

Knowledgeable, professional, A class customer service particularly from Mr. Teh – A rocky start, with an unknown (to us) account, and new directors. We had trouble getting any helpful information but suddenly in stepped Li Reuy Teh, a supervisor, who is professional, knowledgable, and with customer service at the core of his professional behaviour. He listened to our requirements, discovered and explained tasks we had yet to… Read more ·  1

do, gave us step by step instructions by phone AND by email, sensed our urgency and kept in contact daily over a number of days and often more than once. Li Reuy answered our miriad questions calmly and comprehensively. He never left us wondering. As we were not the original owners of the account (but the new directors) we were new to everything. We are not 'shares' literate, yet we easily managed our portfolio, with clear instructions and options given. This one employee of Bell made sure our needs were managed and our goal obtained. Li Reuy Teh is an outstanding asset to Bell Direct Advantage. Thankyou for making a difficult situation much clearer and easier to manager, and for helping us achieve a successful outcome. J and the Directors.

Bell-Direct could add extra to what is already an excellent trading program – Bell Direct was my first trading platform. I`ve used it to trade equities for about 6 years. I`ve had only one other broker - BELL is better than COMSEC ! e.g. (1)brokerage is less. (2) Available funds are calculated. I recently saw a U Tube review of SELFWEALTH. I`m not surprised that its gaining market share.-Low fees would appeal to many,… Read more ·  1

but what interested me most, being a competitive person, is their focus on portfolio % performances .Over 3,6,or12 months what % am i better or worse of than (1) the index (2) my peers? My portfolio at Bell-Direct totals about $1.5M. thanks to an exceptional 21 F/Y. I think that my portfolio gained about 150%. - Bell could tell me (1) EXACTLY what my % gain was . (2) How that compared with others. Would my portfolio F/Y 21 gain be say top 10% of all of Bell`s $1M+ portfolios? How many share trading accounts in total does Bell manage ? Did mine rank no.10 ? no.50 ?

Horrible customer service and still unable to process return of funds – I tried to set up a Bell Direct account for trading purposes and had submitted all the required paper work. This was a relatively easy experience. 2 days later, I received an email from Bell Direct noting that my cash account was ready to receive funds. I transferred $7,000 to the cash account that afternoon, hoping to start trading. … Read more

Unfortunately, there was an issue with the HIN transfer, where the address details were different in my current trading account and my application for Bell Direct. I understand the address need to be identical for the HIN transfer to occur. I quickly rectified this issue and updated all my address details in my current trading account and notified Bell Direct.

7 business days later and I have not heard anything regarding the HIN transfer, nor can I see the $7,000 in my cash account. After sending a few emails to Bell Direct with no response, I decided to give them to a call regarding progress. It turns out that they have not tried to transfer the HIN again and that I will not see the $7,000 in my account until the HIN is transferred. The operator assured me of a follow up on the day or the latest the next day.

As expected, I heard no correspondence from Bell Direct. Another week go by and I finally get back on the phone to Bell Direct to just get my $7,000 back. They noted that I would have to write on a piece of paper my intentions and nominated bank account for their processing team to transfer the money (which is a bit bizarre in a digital world). I still have yet to receive my money back. I hope to get my money back one day and never have to deal with this mob again.

Jimmy

Following the migration of my share portfolios from Macquarie where I had portfolios that were originally with a Financial Advisor, they came across in Desktop Trading and some in Bell Direct. Trying to move the portfolios out of Desktop to Bell direct, I eventually lost patience with the process requiring me to open new accounts in Bell Trading… Read more ·  1

and provide all the same ID and Company info that had been provided to Macquarie along time ago. Finally I gave up and let Bell know my thoughts and reasons. Miraculously after some months the contact I had been working with (Shannan) was able to convince the machine to migrate the portfolios in Trading to Bell Direct, and it finally happened this week. Many thanks to Shannan and the team that made this seamless transfer possible, I'm sure there was a lot of hard negotiating for this to occur given all the rules required to open a new account. Well done Bell and Thank you Shannan.

Happy with their service – I have had an overall positive experience with Bell Direct, their system is thorough and the representative that has been helping me from the beginning (Natalia) is an absolute gem. Show reply

Excellent personalised support for account setup – Fast setup of account and great help from support team. Approached with queries Monday, requested Tuesday, first account opened Wed. Very positive start!

This has to be the worst share trading platform. Do yourself a favor and go somewhere/anywhere else. I never chose them and was simply transferred into them when the Macquarie share trading was handed over to Bell Direct. Trying to complete an off-market share transfer is almost impossible. They don't respond if anything is wrong with the form and… Read more

simply don't action the request. Then when you eventually follow-up they say 'signature' doesn't match closely enough or middle name missing or something else, but only when you follow up to find out what is happening. It really is bad.

If you can avoid Bell Direct please do! - RUN. I have no idea how BellDirect is still in business. As a business shouldn't you want to help customer who want to move their share portfolio over? Their customer experience is so terrible that I created an account just to add a review( I have never done this before) Every business should have… Read more

reasonable ETAs and communication on next steps for long running requests. If you've got an app shouldnt you allow people to login? Absolute joke.

Absolutely the worst experience I have ever had with a company that claims to be award winning. The app store has a rating of One Star with majority of complaints being that people (myself included) cannot log in. The chat feature is terrible, with average wait times of 5 hours. I've been trying to move my shares from existing broker and its been… Read more

3 weeks of me following up with no updates. The Website is terrible with no clear messaging. Absolutely terrible customer experience via the support emails and contact centre who do not seem to be able to help. As a new customer this is very disappointing customer experience - with no clear communication, awful digital experience and app is still stuck in the dark ages, doesnt cut it in 2025.

Slow on boarding. Working to activate account for 3 weeks now. I get random emails asking for same information i already provided on call. First call they said expediting my application. Still expediting. And their ai agent is still connecting me to a real agent.

margin lending approval process is really pathetic i have send them all documents by email for over a week chased the relevant person to get the approval expediated but they have no reply either than its with lending manager. its day 7 today still no approval or rejection.

Another one who was transitioned from Macquarie to Bell. What a mess. Unfortunately my current address was not given to Bell. Bell has requested that I send my ID documents via email; then that I upload them during a chat; and also to get Macquarie to endorse my address which they wont do. I'm not about to send Id documents via a non-secure… Read more

method. Apparently, they dont have a secure platform for comms. For a firm that is responsible for hosting clients' share portfolios, I'd be most concerned about their security measures. Oh and their customer service is dreadful!

Transition from Macquarie not great. No response from chat. Had to call them and wait on the line. Went to Macquarie to have everything with one bank. Now I have to go into 3 platforms! as Bell Direct don't offer international shares for SMSFs

Missleading advertizing, Rip off again loosing big again, my advise is dont deal with them – BellDirect drowned me with their advertising of immediate treading after money is transferred to their trust account and converted to US dollars, after a week, I don't have my money and can't do any international treading as well. I think this is illegal advertising and ACCC should be aware of it. Now, I am trying to get my money out and forget… Read more

about this shonky brokerage company. There are many other honest companies that don't try to rip you off at every transaction.

Terrible customer service – randomly locking account – Terrible customer service. Very slow – they locked my trading status despite the fact that I had Correct login details and trading pin. It took me five or six emails and several phone calls for them finally to fix it. – I incurred significant losses as a result. Show details

Help with navigating the banking section of the website to find my statements – Shah helpful online chat; no waiting; quick response and my request dealt with so easily. Overall Bell great to deal with online and OTP. Show reply

This process is sooooo drawn out. I just want to sell my shares – As above. It has been 4 days already and I'm still unable to trade. I don't know anything about the stock market. Had these shares for a long time and I understand BD hold them, I just want to sell them and get out of here The staff have been helpful but there needs to be a timeline diagram of what to do when, and how long it should take.

Stanley P. is a superstar! – I have been trying for several months to obtain some form of documentation proving I own particular shares. I have had several email exchanges and phone calls with Bell Direct staff, who were courteous, but directed me to other entities only to be directed back to BD. Stanley today persevered, and after several investigations while I held on the… Read more ·  1

phone, he was able to provide me with suitable paperwork to provide to Centrelink to apply for a pension. Great work and much appreciated Stanley!

Please heed this advice – If you are executor of a will of a Bell Direct customer do not inform Bell Direct of your loved ones death, even if you have probate. Our honesty has resulted in a huge number of emails, tens of phone calls with Malaysia (all promising to escalate this with “their team”) countless wasted hours and the loss of significant share value because we… Read more

are absolutely unable to access our fathers money. Every single hoop we jump through results in a change of the goal posts. This has now been going on for months. My father would be turning in his grave.

In today's environment where everyone offers cheap service, Bell Direct takes your money and does not provide anything – I have been trading with BellDirect for a while, never experienced acceptable service and always something was going wrong. On my sell order, I can put any expiry day, but BellDirect will decide when the order will expire. Just today I placed an order with a 20-day expiry, and expired tonight, When I complained to the support I was told that I was… Read more

not educated and they could do anything they wanted with the order. BTW there were no announcements from the company that stock would go ex-dividend. Traiding with them cost me big money. If you consider trading with them don't do it, it will cost you more than you would expect. I am changing to someone who appreciates customers.

good customer service – I have 2 share trading accounts - one with Bell Direct and the other with CMC Markets. Bell Direct offers consistently fast and satisfactory customer service, especially via their online chat. CMC is slower to respond to my queries. Show reply

Good luck getting your money out – Honestly, if you ever have urgent liquidity requirements, don’t trade with these guys. They screw up transactions and make it incredibly difficult to access your own cash when you need it. The extra few days they get collecting interest in your funds while you get virtually none probably plays apart in the inefficiency. Can’t describe how… Read more

frustrating it’s been dealing with them for over a week while I’ve had a desperate need to access my own funds.

Makes my life easy – We are very happy with Bell Direct and have been a client for many years. Everything just works and you get what is on the label. I especially love the live chat feature, mainly to educate myself but also to fine tune our portfolios. Show reply

Worst security policy ever – I'd be conscious of my data with this company. They have been sending me someone's personal financial mail for over 5 years. I have returned to sender and contacted this company for an extended period of time and they are unable to remove my address due to 'security reasons' and continue to send some poor sod's financial information.