Thereās a feature request for it, and at one point an employee was working on it in their spare time but has since left. Thereās been radio silence since. I think most of the resources have been on share lending, opening in Europe, and presumably crypto
If Lightyear get this feature smoothly rolled out without issues first the optics here will be awful. This is such a new start up to be showing tangible engineering developments other companies have requested for years
I downloaded lightyear to check it out a couple of months ago. IMO whilst there are some big holes in freetrade it feels miles ahead to me. Thatās not to say they canāt get caught but at the time lightyear only had a handful of well known US stocks and nothing else. I feel like there are a ton of new apps that are offering access to fractional US shares and nothing else. Freetrade does have way more than that going for it.
IMO Sharesies is the best of the new low cost brokers in terms of service and platform but thatās not accessible in the uk.
Now if someone would offer something similar with access to the UK markets that would be really tempting for me.
To be fair, itās easier to go 3x in 5 weeks when you have a small set of Securities to begin with. Itās also easier to look like you are developing aggresively earlier on when there are still big chunks of work to get through.
Anyway, all the competitors are getting some of the functionality members of this community have requested. For example
InvestEngine with their Portfolio Pies/Pots/Buckets and unified ETF Lookāthrough ( see companies and sectors youāre invested in ). Plus, their hands-off, set-and-forget functionality.
But they are also missing key features, for example
Lightyear have no ISAs or SIPPs
InvestEngine has no SIPPs or Instant trades, although the latter is a bit mooted because they are going for long-term ETF investing
The pricing of neo brokers is worrying as in most cases it seems too cheap to be substainable but I suppose you can move away, even if most donāt offer in-specie transfers which might prove costly.
At some point youād expect some consolidation in this space. For now, itās a good time to be a customer I suppose. Also a a good time to be the companies providing shovels like RiskSave Technologies Ltd, and Currency Cloud Limited.
Back to Freetrade. You can request your dividends ( and possibly transaction ) history through support. Maybe the manual requests are managable so they are solving the things that are not for now.
Iāve only noticed a two week period when Freetrade wasnāt in the top 200. This was after they launched, cleared the waitlist down and had their first 10,000 customers. After this itās always been comfortably in the finance charts.
I looked into lightyear awhile back but they only had several hundred stocks so i gave them a miss. With their recent updates and plans to add UK/ European stock plus ETFs in the next 2 to 3 months they will become more competitive to freetrade and trading 212 for GIA.
Invest engine looks good for people wanting etfs only although i aint looked into them much.
If I were FreeTradeās competition I would be an FT forum member and would have noticed how many times financial reporting had been requested, and made it a priority for my platform!
I am surprised FreeTrade have not yet implemented it, but any competition moving faster will give FT a nudge.
I kind of understand where freetrade are coming from. They have a MVP and (as far as i can tell) are prioritising building revenue. Share lending and opening in other countries clearly fits that bill.
Reports donāt make money.
Personally I think freetrade have gone past the point where the mvp wasnāt to minimal. Now itās lagging behind in what are essentially basic features every platform needs (not they their easy to implement).
At some point they have to switch focus or higher more devs. The way the climate is just now for developers, Iām guessing we donāt see major quality of life features until after the European launch. Thatās just my thoughts though Iāve no inside knowledge of their plans
I like to, thereās no harm in having another gia. Itās More out of curiosity than anything to see what else is, or will be on offer. not actively looking to move anywhere
Yes @Eden, reporting does not make money but for those investors without ISAs or topping up a GIA on top of their ISAs, reporting might just keep customers from moving to other platforms.
That said, part of the reason for me getting a plus account and opening an ISA was in order to avoid so much reporting, so maybe not having reporting makes more money?
I started multiple share dealing accounts at once when I started investing and ended up sticking with FT as my main account. When Iām earning and investing more beyond my ISA and CG allowance I may use another platformās GIA for ease of reporting - but that is a little way off!
Iām not sure how typical my experience is but if there may be a cost to not having financial reporting, particularly as others provide it.
100%, when there was some visibility of it I had made a fairly reasonable post on what id like to see on reports and how id like to see it in the UI (with examples). Lack of reporting is really grating for me and makes for a poorer experience.
even in an ISA reporting still has its importance, in giving stats of investments, information on growth etc. its very useful.
I think youāre right in that reporting might keep customers, which is why I think they need to shift focus eventually. but I expect expansion into new markets and other income generation probably sat better on the table in terms of increasing overall revenue. I donāt blame them for that.