The issue is more fundamental than age. Traditionally HL was a gold-standard, and I’m sure in their area of focus they still are. But traditionally the barrier to entry worked in their favour. Once a would-be investor had built up a sizeable enough sum that the fees became tolerable, they would typically pick a broker and if they were happy stick with them until the time came to wind the investment down.
Now you can start investing starting from two or three figures with only FX fees to worry about, and by the time you hit the traditional entry-level amount you’re a relatively experienced investor, what is the incentive to then switch to a fee-based provider? Therefore as people start drawing down their investments, which is a normal part of the cycle (if the average investment is 20-40 years then it’s reasonable to conclude that approximately 5-10% of investors would have started to or completely wound down their investments in the past couple of years), where’s the replacement pipeline coming from?
To the extent that the challenges are age-specific, it’s the tech-savvy of the current young generation. What Freetrade lacks in terms of detailed analysis, many can do homebrew and feel that this actually does a better job for them than anything on the market because their custom tracker/programming script does precisely what they’re after.