AMA: Ask our CEO Adam your questions about our upcoming crowdfunding round 🗣

[adam]

@Alex-r89

I’m not sure if I should post a question here, nor is my question directly related to the crowdfunding, but I was wondering if there are plans to create a web version of the application? Is this crowdfunding likely to contribute towards something like this?

I’d like to be able to open Freetrade as a tab in Chrome, too, but it’s not on the open roadmap yet. For now, we have lots of work to make the app even better, but stay tuned.

[adam]

@mjk97

How do you plan to make any money off the users who only use basic orders and do not pay for an ISA or for Alpha?

We would still earn some revenue from these customers if they decide to invest in foreign securities (FX) or hold cash with us (interest).

[adam]

@jackbailley

Where do you see free trade going in the next year, 3 years & 5 years?

To the moon

You’ll have to wait for the crowdfunding campaign for a longer discussion, or come talk to us on Tuesday.

[adam]

@Andrewpclark

I used to see VC firms as pure evil but I listen to the 20 minute VC a lot and see the value they can add in many situations. At the moment Freetrade has first mover advantage in the U.K. and there is an argument that large amounts of capital deployed at this stage could allow the team to take full advantage.

I get the attraction of bootstrapping a unicorn without VC involvement but, given the crowdfund ask is only 1 million ( and I appreciate they’ll get way more), is the hiring and scaling going to be fast enough to avoid Robinhood or Revolut stealing your breakfast? There is an alternate path here where a large amount of capital is brought to bear and things scale faster. I’m really interested to see how this round develops

I think it’s important to raise the right amount of capital for the stage the business is at. For us, we are lucky that we can still accomplish that through crowdfunding from our community. If/when that is not the case we’d look to consider institutional investment, as you rightly point out, we would not want to sacrifice growth potential for lack of capital to take advantage of it.

[adam]

@Rat_au_van

There’s a lot of people of the opinion that Freetrade should offer a roboadviser type service so people can just add money every month to a preselected bundle of etf, stocks etc. Are there any plans to offer something like this for those who just aren’t interested in researching and picking the investments themselves?

We have no plans to provide advice to our customers, so wouldn’t be building a roboadviser.

What we do have planned are automation tools and the ability to invest in fixed allocation portfolios (and potentially portfolios from other providers). We’re calling it Autopilot internally, what do you think of the name?

[adam]

@saf

I know the 1.5% fee for exercising pre-emption rights isn’t levied by Freetrade… But is there any way to circumnavigate this?

We are big fans of Crowdcube and think 1.5% is a fair fee for their service.

[Justin (Big Boss)]

Autopilot is a dope ass name!

[adam]

@Chris

Are you hoping to break your previous record on speed of funding? Seeing that total rocket up was something else.

Yep! Help us out by being ready to push the button on Thursday, I hope Monzo’s 96 second record is threatened

[ubiquitous]

@adam

What we do have planned are automation tools and the ability to invest in fixed allocation portfolios (and potentially portfolios from other providers). We’re calling it Autopilot internally, what do you think of the name?

Can see this being very popular. I like the name too.

[saf]

Thank you Adam. As I said not against the fee itself, just the clumsy way it’s being applied on people avoiding dilution. I said the same to Luke last year. It feels like something old school financial companies would do. There’s also been a few campaigns where the fee didn’t apply, hence being possible

[Wulfy]

Love the idea of “autopilot”, great name too.

[adam]

Sorry everyone, that’s all the time I have right now, my wife is screaming at me to take the kids to the beach. I’ll try and get to the rest of the questions tonight.

Adam

[mjk97 (Matt)]

Do you have any plans to integrate ‘autopilot’ with other apps? For example, there could be an auto-investing pot on Monzo, powered by Freetrade?

Also, will you be charging any fees for autopilot?

And, will it be part of the current app, or a new, standalone app?

[kenny (Kenny Grant)]

@adam

What we do have planned are automation tools and the ability to invest in fixed allocation portfolios (and potentially portfolios from other providers). We’re calling it Autopilot internally, what do you think of the name?

Exciting news. I love the name and will look forward to seeing this being added - feels like it could really boost growth and attract some of the money currently sitting dead in Cash ISAs, or overpaying fees for robo-advisors in the belief they offer sophisticated management.

There were some interesting quotes over on monzo forums about this:

Sure as i monitor it and become more knowledgable, I may decide to move away to managing it myself. However as it stand I am very happy with what moneyfarm provides me at what i believe to be a very reasonable cost.

I do think the branding and positioning is so important for autopilot (far more important than the investments chosen), and you’d be competing with robo-advisors and wealth management apps rather than with other stock trading apps. Would be great to see it offered in bank apps to target a different type of saver

[adam]

@saf

There was a mention of a partnership with a challenger bank. Is this still happening? Any ETAs? More generally do you see partnerships playing a big role in growth?

Do you see a aggregation play whereby holdings from other providers show in Freetrade. For example a Vanguard, or PensionBee, or even Roboadvisor portfolios?

How important are traditional metrics like Assets Under Management ( AUM ) for Freetrade?

Are there any plans on introducing a scramble mode for the app? I’m thinking it might make it easier to share/show/demo the app.

No info on what we’re currently working on with banks that I can share yet I’m afraid.

In the future, it would be nice to see all your investments in one place although I’m not sure why you would have anything elsewhere.

Most fintechs/fs firms aren’t trying to do everything so I do think there is scope to be collaborative with other companies that share the same ethos as us.

Traditional metrics like AUM aren’t the biggest deal for us as we don’t charge for custody/earn asset-based fees. A better barometer is how often our customers top up their portfolio, our goal being every month around payday.

What’s scramble mode?

[saf]

@adam

In the future, it would be nice to see all your investments in one place although I’m not sure why you would have anything elsewhere.

For cases where you are effectively locked in and moving would be too much work.

It could be a good growth feature, a way to aggregate your investments before investing afresh on the only investing app you’ll need

@adam

What’s scramble mode?

A mode that obscures the Portfolio values so you can show the app to someone without sharing your total portfolio size.

Would be useful in cases where I want to demo the app to a colleague, or acquaintance without sharing I have £xyz in cash, or that I’ve invested £xyz in a FTSE 100 tracker, instead they’ll just see I’ve invested in the FTSE 100 tracker.

Hope that makes sense.

[adam]

@craigthekiwi

Any advantage of using a different crowdfunding platform to get new exposure in next raise?

Any plans to ‘give credit’ to members who help spread/share the word and get sign ons? I’m singing from the hymn sheet and love the app…but i see more and more of this in new apps driving sign on.

One area that I don’t see transparency on app is the spread on the buy and sell of the share (a hidden commission). Is there a point where this would be visible?

The UK is spoiled for choice when it comes to great crowdfunding platforms (there’s a thread on that) and while we chose to return using Crowdcube for many reasons, the most important is that we’ve been with them from day 1 and all of our crowdfunding investors are already members on the platform.

I’m fantasizing about a Crowdcube x Seedrs x Freetrade in the future, it could be the greatest crowdfunding crossover event in history.

Re the bid/ask spread, there is absolutely not a hidden commission in there. Check out our best execution policy, we go out to the market to get the best price we can for our customers and make nothing on the spread. No payment-for-order-flow or other BS, either. The price we display in the app is an indicative midpoint from our data provider (a dual bid/ask price would be only indicative, too) as we don’t actually know the price we’ll get for you until we go out to the market with your order.

[adam]

@caribo

@adam, any plans to integrate with Monzo?

…

[adam]

@mjk97

Do you have any plans to integrate ‘autopilot’ with other apps? For example, there could be an auto-investing pot on Monzo, powered by Freetrade?

Also, will you be charging any fees for autopilot?

And, will it be part of the current app, or a new, standalone app?

Still early days, but fair to expect something similar to how we have it now where a basic version is free and more advanced stuff comes with the monthly subscription.

[adam]

I think everyone’s questions have now been answered somewhere, or else look forward to next Thursday when we’ll be releasing more info on numbers, stats etc.

Looking forward to it Thanks everyone for the great questions!