Thank you Sergey! I’ve tried to answer your very good questions below.
On your question about hiring local engineering talent I can say that we are currently hiring for a large number of roles in both Sweden and the UK, among them a Director of Engineering in Stockholm who will be building the Swedish part of our Engineering function. As you can see from our Careers page I’m currently hiring for 7 different roles in Sweden and more will be added shortly as we build out.
You asked about an overview of the Swedish and Nordic brokerage landscape. This should be a longer answer but in brief the Nordics have been dominated by a number for large banks for a very long time. A number of online banks have developed in the past decade or so but they for the most part just that, banks. We feel that the Nordics will be a perfect starting point for Freetrades European expansion since investors in the Nordics are both savvy investors but also very early tech adopters with long experiences of managing their investments online.
Hahaha! I don’t think that was driver but I apprecite the compliment!
But there are a number of reasons for picking Sweden as the EU base. Similar regulatory environment compared to UK and a very attractive business climate with lots of startups and scaleups are some of the reasons. You might have heard about Spotify among others.
A deep pool of available talent with both tech and financial industry experience doesn’t hurt either!
I’m happy your exited about the European launch and expansion! So am I
We will absolutely have Swedish stocks in our stocks universe! Our goal is to expand our stock universe as much as we can and our plan definitely include Swedish stocks among many others!
The size of the national population is less important when you factor in the business climate, regulatory complexity, talent pool and also the fact that we can passport with our permission to all EU countries from our Swedish hub.
But I do think that Swedes are savvy investors with a long experience of managing their investments online and a large percentage of Swedes already own stocks directly. The direct ownership of stocks is also increasing among Swedes so I think that Freetrade can help accelerate that and also open up market that have been hard for Swedes to access directly.
On the topic of revenues it still way to early to say anything about this!
I really mostly excited to be part of the journey together with the great Freetrade team!
But I do bring a very broad background in the financial markets and I feel like I can use all of that in establishing Freetrade in Sweden and help scale the business across the rest of Europe.
Hei Karl welcome
Moving to Norway in the next year after having checked out all my options for investing and my what my girlfriend uses, as you said the market is wide open for platform that offers a freemium model.
I’ve noticed platforms nordea and nordnet are accessible in all the nordics, now that freetrade will be launching in Sweden is it easier to launch in Norway?due to the lack of competition on a freemium level will the time line of entering these markets be bumped up to take advantage.
Also can we make our free share friend referrals usable Cross Country platforms can I refer people in Sweden with my UK account?
Hi @KarlB
Very exciting. I have 2 questions that I’m hoping you or one of your teammates could answer.
For the Swedish Launch. Will you be able to offer ISK or KF directly on the launch date? If no - How long do you believe that will become available? If the answer is you are currently not planning to offer ISK or KF accounts please state so as well.
