They said trades will be free forever when they switched from £1 for a live trade, in line with their name and vision. Costs per trade have been declining in the industry over the years (telephone, dot com internet era, mobile etc).
Market makers have stepped costs (Winterfloods in the UK at least) I.e. the more trades the lower cost per trade. So scale gives efficiency and FT has the second largest volumes on the LSE.
The freemium model is positioned for the above with FT making 80-90% gross margin absorbing any trading fees. On aggregate each customer makes a positive marginal contribution towards overhead costs. I don’t see ‘free loaders’ as a problem as such, share lending will mean most customers have a positive contribution. More conversions to Plus will drive profitability.
Looks like Autopilot, Web and some changes to tiering will be coming. Ultimately Plus will get better relative to the basic account to encourage upgrades. I’d imagine the basic account will improve with more simple versions of autopilot and web…