Angel Broking Review 2024: Should you open an account?

Are you in India, looking to expand your trading horizon beyond crypto brokers? If the answer is in the affirmative, give Angel Broking a try. A market leader in the Indian stockbroking space, Angel Broking has services spanning Demat offerings, Wealth Management, Currency Trading, Financial Advisory, and much more.

Ranked first in the country in regard to the number of authorized accounts — 20K+ and counting, Angel Broking has already seen over 10 million app downloads. The platform has 25+ years of trust driving this well-oiled stockbroking machinery. And yes, there is a 15+ million user base to keep up the credibility quotient.

Angel Broking was rebranded as Angel One in 2021, driving a paradigm shift from traditional stock broking to an all-inclusive fintech exposure.

Regardless of the numbers, Angel Broking or Angel One is an easy-to-use stock broker. Plus, the support to trade forex derivatives furthers its utility as a full-service broker. I recommend restraint if you plan to open your free demat account after reading the first bit.

Over the next few sections, I shall review Angel One across segments like features and offerings, fee structure, variety of trading accounts, security, usability, and more. By the end of the piece, you should be able to evaluate this stock and forex broker better.

Angel Broking: Pros and Cons

Before you read along, here is a quick list of Angel One’s strengths and weaknesses. It should quickly help you assess the platform’s capabilities or lack thereof:

Pros

• Diverse offerings, including access to insurance products and digital lending
• AI-driven trading recommendations via the app
• Robust learning base
• Competitive fee structure
• Pan-India exposure
• Supports investments in corporate bonds
• Offers 4x intraday margin on equities
• Zero margin interest for 30 days

Cons

• Lacks the 3-in-1 account functionality
• Key trading features like Good Till Triggered (GTT) and Good Till Cancelled (GTC) are absent.
• The UI hinges excessively on cross-selling products and services.

A good thing about Angel One is that you can access daily technical reports free of charge. This helps you track and fine-tune your trading performances.

The Background and Growth Curve of Angel One

Angle Broking came into existence in 1987. Founded by Dinesh Thakkar, the firm initially forayed into sub-broker setups before expanding services and operations to a larger scale from 1996 onwards. Over time, this stock and forex broker has grown, better known for its top-notch advisory and research capabilities.

As a sub-broker, Angel Broking acted as an intermediary, connecting the clients and the primary stockbroker before SEBI replaced the concept with Authorized Persons (AP) in 2018.

A major milestone in Angel One’s growth curve has to be its Initial Public Offering (IPO), which came to be in 2020. The company was still known as Angel Broking, and going public was a way to expand its business, raise funds, and help certain shareholders exit.

Angel Broking: Offerings

Angel Broking or Angel One isn’t your regular stock and forex broker. Instead, its presence is heavily skewed towards impactful offerings, including trading tools, AI-powered resources, granular advisory and insights, and more. Let us delve right into the specifics:

Trading Tools

Angel One boasts extensive trading tools with functionality beyond basic trades and order placements. There are four options to work with:

1. The Speed Pro

Angle One’s Speed Pro helps with instant order executions. As for the tool’s nature, the Speed Pro is a trading software you can download and install on your PC.

Once done, you can use it to track multiple market segments, check live prices, monitor portfolios, download live data, and even watch and track news updates related to specific stocks. Other functionalities include setting up price alerts and circling back to demos if confusion arises.

2. The Angel One App

This is a standard mobile app that supports portfolio management on the go. Within the app, you can easily create a wide range of watchlists and view technical charts. Plus, you can access market news, price alerts, diverse financial analysis tools, and reports corresponding to your ledger, mutual funds, and more.

3. Angel One Trade

If you aren’t interested in installing an app, Angle One has you covered. The Angel One Trade is a web-specific tool that supports direct logins and helps with portfolio management. You can even set notifications related to price alerts, create watchlists, and work with charts and stock screeners.

4. Angel ARQ

As mentioned previously, Angel One brings forth an AI-powered recommendation engine. Termed ARQ, this feature is integrated within the Angel One app and works as an investment advisory feature.

This hyper-intelligent tool helps time market trades and recommends up to 15 stock options. And guess what? There is no minimum investment requirement to start using this intuitive tool.

Angel One also pushes its ARQ Prime basket, which is known to have outperformed benchmarks rather significantly. Here is what the sector-wise distribution looks like:

Apart from the trading tools, Angel One also offers the following:

• Margin trading support
• Access to mutual fund investments
• Access to IPOs
• Access to Debt and Bond markets
• Insurances
• ETFs
• Access to commodities
• Futures and Options
• Access to US Stocks
• Access to currency derivatives as a forex broker
• TradingView chart support
• Smart API access to kickstart trading platforms
• Up to 4X Futures and Options margin on Currency trades

Angel One’s ARQ — the robo-advisory feature — uses a mix of quantitative and fundamental analysis to accurately predict stock performances.

Features and offerings like this make Angel One a full-service stock and forex broker.

Trading Accounts on Offer: How Angle One Keeps Things Minimal?

A trading platform review would be incomplete without discussing the types of accounts it supports. Let us see how Angel One keeps things minimal yet useful for investors and traders alike:

1. Demat account

This account type corresponds to holding stocks in an electronic form. Angel One ensures that your free demat account is accessible round the clock — 24 x 7.

2. Trading account

Your trading account connects to the demat account, helps with buying and selling shares, and is accessible to both beginners and experienced traders. The account is accessible via the app or web interface and supports currency pairs (derivatives only), U.S. stocks, and F&O trades.

3. Commodity account

If you wish to trade commodities like oil, silver, gold, etc., Angel One lets you create a commodity account. Out here, your commodity account connects directly to both the MCX and NCDEX markets.

While the former focuses on the metal, energy, and bullion space, followed by a handful of agricultural units, NCDEX deals specifically in agricultural offerings like sugar, oil seeds, pulses, and more.

Angel One’s commodity account connects to NCDEX and MCX markets, where NCDEX stands for National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Limited, and MCX opens up as the Multi Commodity Exchange.

4. Mutual Funds account

Angel One also brings mutual funds into the mix as a holistic Fintech platform. From setting up SIPs to getting recommendations and analysis of your mutual fund portfolio, a mutual funds account is meant for your wealth creation needs. And guess what? You can start your first SIP for as low as 100 INR.

Angel Broking and the Fee Structure

Now that accounts are all set, let us take a gander at Angel One’s fee structure:

If you are dealing in equity — accessible via the trading account — you must pay zero brokerage on delivery orders. These include orders that are bought and carried on to the next day. You must pay 20 INR or 0.25% of the total trade value for intraday trades — whichever is lower. Even the Futures and Options trades for equity follow the same fee structure.

If you plan on using Angel Broking as a forex broker, dealing in currency-based Futures and Options, the brokerage charges are the same as equity intraday — 20 INR or 0.25% of the total trade value. Even for commodities, the same brokerage fee bracket holds.

However, each security type levies statutory and regulatory charges, which include the following:

1. Transaction charges
2. DP charges
3. Securities Transaction Tax or STT
4. GST
5. Stamp Duty
6. SEBI charges
7. Clearing Charges

Here are the tables showing how these values are calculated for different asset classes:

Equity

Commodity

Currency

Apart from that, Angel One brings other charges into the scheme of things, including

• Account Maintenance Charges (AMC) at 240 INR per year,
• Call & Trade charges at 20 INR per order,
• Squaring off charges at 20 INR per order,
• Cheque bounce charges for failed SIP transactions
• Delay charges at 1.5% of the pending payment

Clients with Basic Services Demat Accounts need not pay any AMC if their asset holding value is under 50,000.

Angel Broking: Customer Service Quality

If you scour the internet for Angel Broking reviews, you will see people complaining about the slowness of customer support. On paper, this stock and forex broker supports the following:

1. 24 x7 user helpline
2. Live chat support
3. Prompt email support
4. A wide network of branch offices
5. An integrated feedback setup
6. Active social media handles.

However, the experience was a tad underwhelming. I couldn’t find an option to raise tickets, and even the email-based responses weren’t as prompt as claimed by the firm.

Angel One boasts an AI assistant Angie, which is prompt and allows you to initiate trades automatically. You can access Angie directly from the website

Security Standards: How Safe is Angel One for the Users?

The security of user funds is of paramount importance. Angel One seems to have that covered courtesy of 2FA support and SSL encryption. Additionally, the platform undergoes regular security audits from third-party auditors and even has an advanced firewall setup in place for filtering out malicious entities.

Angel One boasts Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encrypted servers that ensure that personal trading data like passwords, trade details, and other insights are secured from hackers.

Angel Broking and the User Experience

Nothing beats easy. And Angel Broking or Angel One doesn’t disappoint in that regard. The app and the account are easy to set up, with a relatively straightforward KYC process. Deposits and withdrawals are almost instantaneous, provided you have your account linked.

Still, some users have experienced issues while opening the account, as some physical document checks are involved in getting you started.

Let us now go through some of the platform-related elements that can make or break the user experience:

The KYC Flow

Angel One promises paperless KYC and adheres to the same. As for the flow, you need to get the app, register with your email ID, verify the number, and complete the KYC journey by entering the PAN details and allowing DigiLocker access for Aadhar.

Once done, you must fill in the bank details, capture a selfie to validate your identity, feed in the digital signature or an image, and eventually choose the type of features you need on your account.

Once set up, you can choose the account type, pair additional bank accounts, and even activate the commodity, Futures and Options, and even the Currency section with ease.

Here is the handheld process to get started with Angel One.

Angel One has a dedicated mutual fund wing termed the Angel BEE. It is easy to navigate, but the need for direct, commission-saving plans might be a dealbreaker for long-term wealth creators.

Deposits, Withdrawals, and Order or Lot Size

Unlike a crypto broker that specifically has limits imposed on withdrawals and deposits, a stock and forex broker like Angel One has what we call transfer limits.

The minimum amount you can transfer from your account to Angel One’s account is 50 INR. The maximum transfer limit per transaction is 2,00,000 INR. And you can make multiple transactions throughout the day.

As for the transfer methods, you can choose between UPI and Net Banking, depending on your preferences.

In case you are specifically interested in fund withdrawals or payouts, there is a same-day payout cycle that Angel One follows. Do note that same-day payouts are valid for intraday trades, whereas for delivery sell and F&O trades, Angel One follows the T+2 and T+1 payout cycles.

Standard stock and commodity-based trades aren’t restricted by lot size. However, for F&O trades in NSE and currency derivatives, SEBI has a fixed lot size worth 7,50,000. This is the highest amount that each trading lot can support. Lot size can also be defined by the number of shares.

For instance, Nifty50 has a lot share of 50 trades. SEBI is contemplating a lot size enhancement of up to 10,00,000.

Just to reiterate, this stock and forex broker allows you to trade in stocks, derivatives (F&O), currency derivatives, and commodities. Every entity listed on the NSE, BSE, MCX, and NCDEX markets is available for trading.

However, the website’s dedicated “Learn” section amplifies the user experience. There is a blog with all the relevant resources to get started, followed by a “Knowledge Center” that gives you very granular stock and trading-specific knowledge.

If you want to delve deeper into the depths of personal finance and markets, a chapter and module-wise learning resource is available under the Smart Money section.

Angle One and the State of Forex Trading

In India, forex brokers can only offer currency derivatives for trading. Regarding Angel One’s forex broking spread, USD/INR, JPY/INR, GBP/INR, and EUR/INR pairs are supported. And you can access them directly from the trading account.

Cross-currency trading is also supported, where you work with the derivatives of the EUR/USD, USD-JPY, and GBP/USD pairs. However, trading Futures and Options can be risky and should be considered only in the presence of a robust risk management strategy.

And that sums up my section-wise review of Angel Broking (Angel One).

Is Angel One Your “One” True Choice?

Angel One is a SEBI-registered stock, commodity, and forex broker that is listed on both the trading bourses — NSE and BSE. And despite some issues related to customer support, the platform has an intuitive set of offerings to cater to every type of trader.

Even though it is still way behind the likes of Zerodha in trading volume, its current offering, i.e., zero AMC for the first year — seems like an efficient strategy to bring in more trading folks.

Discover top binary options brokers tailored to your region. Browse our curated lists by country:

All Brokers | Top Brokers | USA | Canada | UK | Australia | Nigeria | India | New Zealand | Germany | Turkey | Spain | France | Ukraine | China | Indonesia | Pakistan | Bangladesh | Russia | Mexico | Japan | Brazil | Philippines | Vietnam | Iran | South Africa | Italy | South Korea | Argentina