Account data inside the Hargreaves Lansdown app

Hargreaves Lansdown Savings Limited appears on the UK Open Banking register as a regulated provider, per the Open Banking directory — which makes the Active Savings cash side the cleanest, regulator-backed way into part of this app. The rest of what the app shows you — holdings, contract notes, ISA and SIPP records — sits behind the authenticated HL portal and is reached differently. That split is the whole shape of an HL integration, and it is worth getting right before any code is written.

Account records the app exposes

The mapping below tracks what a consenting HL user can see in the app, where each surface originates, and what an integrator typically does with it. Field names follow HL's own labels where the app and help pages use them.

Routes in

1 — Regulated AIS for the cash side

Because HL Savings Limited is a registered Open Banking provider, the Active Savings cash data can be read through a consented AIS connection — balances, the products held, rates and maturities. This path is durable: it rides versioned APIs and a published consent model, and HL reports its Open Banking service performance on a quarterly cadence. We arrange the connection through a registered AISP during onboarding, so the regulated leg is handled as part of the work rather than left to you.

2 — Authorized interface integration of the portal

The investment data — holdings, contract notes, ISA and SIPP records — is reached by integrating against the HL web and app interface using a consenting login. This covers everything the portal renders, including the entitled live-price fields. It is more sensitive to front-end change than the AIS leg, so we build it with that in mind. An unofficial community client for HL has existed publicly, which is a useful signal that the portal flow is well understood; our build is done under the account holder's authorization and documented end to end.

3 — Native export as a backstop

HL lets users download transaction history as CSV and pull statements and tax certificates as reports. Where a job only needs periodic snapshots rather than a live sync, scripted use of these exports is the lightest option and the least exposed to interface drift.

For most HL briefs the sensible build reads Active Savings cash through the regulated AIS connection because it is stable and supervised, and reads the investment portfolio — holdings, contract notes, SIPP and ISA records — through authorized interface integration against a consenting login, since that data does not sit behind the Open Banking endpoints. Native export is kept as the snapshot fallback when a live portal sync is more than the job needs.

Sample pull

Illustrative only — field and path names are confirmed during the build against a consenting account, not copied from a published specification.

# HL portal session flow (illustrative, observed during a build)
import requests

s = requests.Session()

# 1. Prime login to collect the anti-forgery token (hl_vt) and cookies
boot = s.get("https://online.hl.co.uk/my-accounts/login-step-one")
vt   = parse_hidden(boot.text, "hl_vt")

# 2. Two-step credentials + secure-number challenge (account holder consents)
s.post(".../login-step-one", data={"username": USER, "date-of-birth": DOB, "hl_vt": vt})
s.post(".../login-step-two", data={"online-password": pw_chars, "secure-number": sn_chars, "hl_vt": vt})

# 3. Enumerate wrappers: Fund & Share, ISA, LISA, SIPP, Active Savings
accounts = read_overview(s.get(".../my-accounts/account-overview"))

# 4. Per-account transaction history -> normalize to one schema
for acc in accounts:
    csv = s.get(f".../my-accounts/transaction-history/account/{acc.id}?format=csv")
    rows = to_records(csv)   # trade_date, type, qty, price, value, balance
    upsert(acc.wrapper, rows)

# Errors we handle: expired hl_vt -> re-prime; session timeout -> re-auth;
# price field absent -> account lacks the live-quote entitlement
      

Deliverables

What lands in your repository is tied to the HL surfaces above, not a generic kit:

• An OpenAPI/Swagger specification covering the account list, per-wrapper holdings, transaction history and the Active Savings cash endpoints.
• A protocol and auth-flow report: the hl_vt token chain, the two-step login and secure-number challenge, cookie lifetime, and the separate AIS consent flow.
• Runnable source for the key endpoints in Python or Node.js — login/refresh, wrapper enumeration, transaction pull, CSV-to-JSON normalization.
• Automated tests against recorded fixtures so a portal change shows up as a failing test, not a silent gap.
• Interface documentation plus data-retention and consent-record guidance for running it in production.

Consent & regime

This is a UK build, so the framework is UK Open Banking under the FCA. For the Active Savings cash data, access runs through an FCA-registered AIS connection with the account holder's explicit consent, a defined scope, and an expiry the user can revoke — the standard AIS consent lifecycle. For the investment portal, the dependable basis is the account holder's own authorization to act on their data; we keep consent records, log access, minimize what is pulled to the fields a job actually needs, and work under an NDA where the engagement calls for one. HL is FCA-authorised — its app listing cites FCA Register number 115248 — which sets the supervised context the cash connection plugs into.

Engineering notes

Two things we account for specifically on HL:

• We model each wrapper as a distinct account type, because a Stocks & Shares ISA, a Lifetime ISA, a Junior ISA, a SIPP and the Fund & Share account carry different limits, tax handling and fields. The normalized schema keeps the wrapper explicit so reconciliation never blends a pension with an ISA.
• We design the sync around HL's session model — the two-step login, the secure-number challenge and the hl_vt token lifetime — so the pull re-authenticates cleanly instead of dying on an expired token mid-run.
• We keep the regulated AIS cash feed and the screen-derived investment data on separate code paths, so a portal front-end change triggers a re-validation pass on the portal leg only and leaves the supervised cash connection untouched.
• Live UK prices are an HL-client entitlement, not a public feed; the integration reads them from the authorized session and degrades gracefully when an account lacks that entitlement.

Access — a consenting account or a registered AIS connection — is arranged with you during onboarding. The build runs against that, and nothing here asks you to clear a checklist before we begin.

Freshness

The two legs age differently. The AIS cash connection is the stable one — versioned, supervised, with HL publishing service-performance figures quarterly. The portal leg moves with HL's front end, so we treat its selectors and routes as things that will eventually shift and wire the test suite to catch it early. When we run maintenance, the portal path is what gets re-checked first.

Pricing

Source for the HL endpoints starts at $300, billed only after we deliver and you have confirmed the pull works against your account. If you would rather not host anything, the same integration is available as a pay-per-call hosted API with no upfront fee — you call our endpoints and pay for the calls you make. Either way a typical HL build runs one to two weeks end to end. Tell us the app and what you need from its data, and the access and compliance pieces get sorted out with you: start a brief here.

Screens

Store screenshots we worked from while mapping the surfaces above. Select to enlarge.

Similar platforms

These UK platforms hold comparable account records, and a unified integration usually has to speak to more than one of them. Listed for ecosystem context, not ranked.

• Interactive Investor (ii) — flat-fee platform with ISA, SIPP and dealing accounts; holds the same wrapper-level holdings and trade history.
• AJ Bell — ISAs, LISAs, SIPPs and dealing accounts; a frequent direct comparison to HL with similar portfolio data.
• Freetrade — commission-free app holding holdings, orders and ISA/SIPP records for a younger client base.
• IG — long-established broker with shares, ETFs and a large derivatives book; richer instrument-level data.
• Saxo — wide multi-asset platform with extensive instrument and position data across markets.
• Trading 212 — app-first investing and ISA accounts with holdings and order history.
• Vanguard Investor UK — fund-focused platform holding ISA and pension positions in Vanguard products.
• Nutmeg — managed-portfolio service holding ISA and pension valuations rather than self-directed trades.

Questions

Does the Active Savings cash side go through Open Banking while the investments do not?

Roughly, yes. Hargreaves Lansdown Savings Limited is listed on the UK Open Banking register as a regulated provider, so the Active Savings cash platform can be reached through a regulated AIS connection. The investment wrappers — Fund & Share, ISA, Lifetime ISA, Junior ISA and the SIPP — are not payment accounts under that regime, so we read those through authorized interface integration against a consenting login.

Can you separate ISA, Lifetime ISA, SIPP and Fund & Share records cleanly?

Yes. We map each wrapper as its own account object during the build, because contribution limits, tax treatment and the available fields differ between a Stocks & Shares ISA, a Lifetime ISA, a Junior ISA, a SIPP and the Fund & Share account. The normalized schema we deliver keeps the wrapper type explicit so downstream reconciliation does not mix them.

The live UK share prices are HL-clients-only — can the integration still read them?

It reads them from an authorized session that holds the client entitlement, the same context the app uses. We treat the price fields as entitled data rather than a public feed, so the pull only surfaces quotes the consenting account is actually allowed to see.

What format do contract notes, statements and tax certificates come out in?

Transaction history and contract notes export as CSV from the portfolio history view; statements, valuations and pension illustrations and tax certificates are downloadable reports. We normalize the CSV records into JSON with consistent fields — trade date, type, quantity, price, value and running balance — and keep the original documents as attachments.

How this brief was put together

Checked in June 2026 against HL's own help pages, the UK Open Banking provider directory and its ASPSP implementation guide, plus a third-party portfolio-tracker integration that imports HL trades. Sources opened: HL Savings on the Open Banking register, the HL ASPSP implementation guide, HL's investment-reports help page, and Sharesight's HL trade-import notes.

Mapped by the OpenBanking Studio integration desk · June 2026.