I don’t think it’s as drastic but HL and a few others I think are on a similar position as banks. Neobanks I think pushed the big banks to invest in their apps, however the banks didn’t need to rush. They had the money and time on their side, they had no need to raise funds, I always thought that when the time came where the banks decided to push money into their apps it would be like a steam roller and I don’t think I was far off. NatWest for example have been pushing out feature after feature almost every month consistently for a while now and there’s very little difference anymore between a new bank and an old bank.
The difference that does exist at least from current experience is customer service, say what you will, the big banks win hands down.
And I think this is a similar position HL is in. Their app is already pretty decent, and they have a website with a lot of features that freeteade just dont have anywhere, so they’re already in some respects ahead of the game. When they want to ‘modernise’ their apps, they already have the money and devs to do it, they just need to say ‘go’. And freeteade are going to struggle for some considerable time beating their customer service I think.
In some respects then it’s probably a good idea that freetrade isn’t going after the same customers, because I’m not sure they’d be able to compete right now