I think your question has already been answered really well and it’s amazing that so many points of view have been covered so quickly (on a Friday night!).
In my opinion, and probably only echoing the above:
- Large and clunky incumbents cannot be relied upon to do anything other than what they’ve been doing for decades. That’s true of any industry (Blockbuster versus Netflix) and is playing out in the retail banking sector before our eyes.
- If a competitor did put out a genuinely competitive offering to us (not only ultra-low fees, but as well an engaging customer experience that actually makes investing easy), it would validate our business model to the extent that someone would go to the extreme of copying it. This would create a level playing field for us to prove that the technology can do the hard work and the cost of running the business need not grow linearly as the customer base does.
- With regards to challenger banks and unicorn fintechs (who in my mind are a more natural long term competitor than the incumbents), I think they have many more easier wins on their roadmaps than stockbroking (and indeed the theme at the moment is simply to plug into established investment firms and robo-advisors). You may have gathered from our blogposts that, while the Freetrade experience is extremely simple and beautiful, the stuff under the hood is a magnitude more complex and we are operating in a world where the various other parties that make up ‘a trade’ still have very archaic systems. It’s a deep specialism and investment in people and time to tackle both at the same time. And if they did try, see point 2
On the subject of big companies trying to innovate, I really recommend this tweet thread.
Enjoy the weekend everyone!