Forum AMA with Duncan Leslie, Freetrade VP Product, Fri 5th Nov, 1 PM

Thanks so much for your thoughtful answers!

If it isnā€™t too late, a quick follow-up: could you talk a little about how you structure your product teams? From your answers it seems like youā€™re setting up specialist units to address particular problems, or is it more dynamic than that?

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Weā€™re heads down working hard on this right now - itā€™s a key objective for the team. Enabling European stock trading will be a major milestone on the way to launching in Sweden, so look out for news on that in the weeks to come.

We want to make our launch a success, and that means understanding the nuances of the local market, such as how Swedish folk make digital payments. Itā€™s not always the same as the UK. So it takes a little time to adapt the product, but will pay off in the long run.

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Thanks for the feedback. We donā€™t have plans to change the portfolio graph currently, but itā€™s great to hear your thoughts on it. It is designed to represent the total value of your portfolio including your cash over time, rather than only investment performance.

We also show time-weighted rate of return on the Insights tab which shows your investment performance versus an All-World ETF.

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Similar to the JISA question asked earlier, Lifetime ISAs are on the roadmap, and Iā€™d love to be able to add these soon. As you know, we have a difficult job of prioritising where we focus our time, but are discussing Lifetime and Junior ISAs regularly.

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Itā€™s an interesting suggestion and discussion. I donā€™t have any news to share this time. We do of course monitor the forum very closely for anything that stretches beyond healthy discussion.

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How far are we to get uk fractionals

Weā€™ve been working hard this year on both big features and incremental improvements.

Hopefully youā€™ve enjoyed improvements like SIPPs, live prices and instant deposits. These were all widely requested.

Alongside this, weā€™re working on our Swedish launch, and, as mentioned above, a key milestone will be enabling trading of European stocks for all customers. So look forward to that very soon.

And, as we grow, thereā€™ll be much more to come in 2022.

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And the ā€œbig surprisesā€ youā€™ve mentioned above before Christmas too :wink:

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@Viktor is a generous guy, he letā€™s Product have a little of the loose change from his marketing budget :laughing:

In all seriousness, weā€™re growing all aspects of Freetrade and investing into the product and our technology. You only need to check out our careers page to see how weā€™re expanding the whole team.

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Itā€™s a great question. Weā€™re building a sustainable, robust business and technology platform rather than focusing on a thin veneer sitting on somebody elseā€™s tech. Itā€™s a long-term play, but itā€™s time well spent.

I answered a question about the European trading platform here.

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Hi @DirkDickens, thanks for the question.

Trailing stop losses are definitely a feature Iā€™d love to include in future. Theyā€™re not offered by our trading partners currently unfortunately, but as we improve our trading features this is something weā€™ll look at.

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It has to be prioritisation - there are so many things Iā€™d love to do, and I know everyone here would love for us to do. The really difficult job (aside from facing an AMA) is choosing which to do first, as I always know that decision will disappoint someone.

So my aim is to make my job easier by building a team that can take on as many of these things as possible, meaning I have to make fewer difficult decisions!

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Bit late with the question @Duncan so no time for painful Rolling Stones puns.

Once the ā€˜hard workā€™ of building the platform for EU stocks is complete how much work is required to roll this out to Latin America, Asia & to replace partners in the US?

Anyway On with the show (well maybe one pun)

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This is a great question.

Not the most imaginative answer Iā€™m afraid, but I always think one of the biggest problems we need to solve for users is what to invest in next - how to discover the next best opportunity. Everybody needs to solve this problem somehow whether theyā€™re experienced or new to investing, so our job is to make it easier (without providing advice, of course!)

So on that level, something like Spotify has iterated over and over with their discovery features to help its users sift through millions of tracks and find something new and relevant for them. If they donā€™t do this well, people jump to the next streaming service. I think we can learn from this and help customers find the gems amongst the thousands of stocks on Freetrade.

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Hey @Duncan can you open your Spotify and tell us

  • Last song you listen to
  • Next song Spotify recommends for you.

ABBA? Swedish house mafia? Ace of Base? The cardigans?
:sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden::sweden:

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One thing Iā€™ve learned over 15 years working in product roles is that youā€™ll always have someone who doesnā€™t like the way your product works or is designed. Our job is to make our products solve as many problems for customers as possible in a better way than theyā€™re solving it already. But different people have different views and challenges with investing, so one product rarely works for everyone.

So, once weā€™re armed with that knowledge and sufficiently thick-skinned, the easiest trick in our bag is talking to customers as frequently as possible. This way we really understand why they use our product, why they do (or donā€™t) invest, what role Freetrade plays for them in their unique context. Really understanding this makes designing products a whole lot easier than if we just used our best guess or personal views. But sometimes people will still they they donā€™t like it :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks @Pedr

Good question. I canā€™t give you any dates for employer contributions to SIPPs. But I definitely recognise the pension industry today is broken. We want to fix it by giving everyone a better way to save for their retirement, rather than being invested into a choice of two or three funds that charge high fees and deliver average performance. Rest assured, this is on the roadmap for growing the Freetrade SIPP.

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Oops, I may have got to your second point too late, sorry. But you can open the original question from my response :sweat_smile:

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Of course. I recognise how important withdrawals (and deposits) are - people want to feel in control of their money at all times. Weā€™ve made improvements to both throughout the year, but Iā€™d still like to cut the time it takes for a withdrawal.

We donā€™t control settlement times unfortunately, so we make the money available in your account to withdraw as soon as weā€™re told it has settled (and sooner, if you want to that money trade again).

Weā€™re looking at how we can reduce the time to receive the money once you hit withdraw - weā€™re in the hands of the banks at this point, and rely on the speed of their processesā€¦ But theyā€™re gradually improving their tech, so Iā€™ll be first in line to test it out!

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As a 2-year Freetrade veteran, I assume I get a pass for this then? :sweat_smile:

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