We loved seeing everyone back at Freetrade HQ for our Spring Meet-Up.
We loved it so much, we wanted to do it again.
This time, we’re going to have our CTO, Shahid, there to give a talk about his plans for the app and his progress to date. And maybe a little surprise or two ….
The event will be on Thursday May 18th. Doors at 6:30pm, with the event starting at 7pm at Freetrade’s HQ in London.
For those who can’t make it into London, we’re also looking forward to announcing when Freetrade meet-ups go on the road later in 2023. If you haven’t voted yet, hop over to the thread here. We’ll also be posting the most important clips to the forum straight after.
@adam@Viktor
Hey! Will there be a live stream tomorrow?
Keen on hearing the updates!
From my side 3 questions for tomorrow:
Will we see an increase in the speed of execution of the “big” consumer facing features releases this year (tax statements / autopilot / fractional UK shares / French stocks / LISA / JISA / multi-currency accounts / employer contributions in SIPPs, securities lending revenue share, etc) ?
Some of these items in the list above have been voted to death on the community forum for years with no or little visible progress.
EU expansion. Adam and Viktor have been selling this since at least 2018 (my first investment in FT) as far as I can remember.
5 years! later we got an iOS only Swedish app which is not on par with the UK version of the app (no Plus subscription, smaller stock universe, for example) Has the development been put on pause to focus on the UK? Are you guys coming to Europe this year?
Could you update, please, on the Hungarian team. Has it already started to contribute to the app development in a meaningful way?
Great questions. I’m hopeful now FT seems to be focusing in on shipping stuff and prioritising often-requested features such as Jisas and autoinvest.
I’m not bothered if it comes at the expense of EU expansion, crypto and a web portal. I’d probably mothball other things like investing content too.
For me, giving users what they want is key to any successful start-up.
Recurring Orders 1.0 to be released by the end of the month. It looks like it won’t include UK fractionals. Proxy Voting should follow shortly after that.
Mutual Funds is the next big feature which they are aiming to release by the end of summer.
They showed a demo/mockup of ChatGPT embedded in the Discovery and Insights tabs.
Break-even will probably happen ahead of their initial Q1 2024 estimate. They just had their best quarter ever (Q1), and are on track for another record quarter.
Next community meet-up to take place in Stockholm. They’ll probably discuss financials then. Someone jokingly asked about share price - Adam laughed.
Securities lending is on hold for now due to regulatory reasons but not too much work left.
Crypto won’t be worked on for now until FT feel like there is some support from regulators.
Swedish stocks not available to UK customers as they require additional work around currency exchange. French and Spanish stocks are not available due to tax implications. All of them can be made available with a relatively small amount of work.
They seem to be running some sort of internal podcast. The learnings from it may be applied to content they’ll start to put out more consistently over the coming months.
Mutual funds is an interesting one. It should make the Sipp more attractive. I’d imagine there are some who won’t switch until FT offers popular OEICs from Fundsmith, Lindsell Train etc.
Yes - agree. Anything that expands the investment universe should be very well received by existing and prospective customers. Adding OEICs, introducing support for employer contributions to SIPPs, and releasing some decent regular investment functionality, and all of a sudden Freetrade starts to look like a real head turner in the SIPP space.
