A year or so a go I thought the same, but they still have issues with ISA stock eligibility being flagged incorrectly which makes me think even the simple parts of tax advantaged account handling like security classification is just done manually ad hoc rather than automated.
My working assumption is that they are a very long way from having something as general as IsEligible([Security],[AccountType]). The fact that even linking dividends to holdings properly seems to be non-trivial suggests they might not even have the sophistication in their instrument database to leverage ISIN/FIGI identifiers properly with something standard like OpenFIGI to pull the necessary information.
This is just an outsiders hunch, I’d love to be proven wrong but from what I’ve seen I can’t really think of another explanation.
there is a complete failure to understand what the tax situation and manner of use of LISAs is and therefore the massive burden that Freetrade will face with LISAs. To be fair to Freetrade one of the presenters did admit that the LISAs had a higher level of complexity. Look on the HMRC site and you will begin to understand what most people use LISAs for and how they “exit” from them - Freetrade better be up to the job or it will find first time buyers pissed off like hell when their house purchase falls through. None of this “oh the dividend is coming soon; sorry we aspire to give you a better service; we will in the future, honest sis/bruv” will work. It is not for no reason that most brokers don’t offer LISAs.
I am puzzled also by the new argument that Sweden is the right place because of “regulatory respect”. I checked behind my ears - they are not wet. Freetrade went for Sweden in the first place because it would be easier to get the licence - isn’t that what used to be said? Which is fair enough - I have no reason to doubt it. But if we are now shifting to “respect”, when faced with arguments about low numbers: are we saying the German one or the French one aren’t just as respected? Yup, it is dry behind my ears.
Personally, I don’t have any issue with Sweden being the first country. Cool. I am objecting to the strange defensive statements that some founder (or other) investors are making. Management evangelises, but I expect investors to be more circumspect or else I think all they are doing is “pumping”.
I am relaying what I’ve seen/heard. They did have job postings in France, Germany and Sweden before deciding to go with Sweden for their European headquarters. They said they were putting the feelers out to decide where to setup the office. So of course Germany/France are respected places for a headquarters! Note Viktor also speaks German.
The Sweden MD joined very quickly after the postings and so part of the reason could have been his immediate start and a quicker time to setup the office.
Nevertheless the Sweden question was well answered on the evening (whether it was the best place to launch or not). Perhaps you can ask a specific question on the Crowdcube forum!
Sweden is formally live as of today. It’s Ireland next before what sounds like a wider rollout across eurozone countries. Probably soft launching and English language app in multiple countries.
There wasn’t much talk for €/£/K spending at the AMA but a company’s CAC (customer acquisition cost) is usually a fairly closely guarded secret. I’d guess they’ll target countries based on traction.
If they were worried about special tax regimes, I wonder why they did not launch in Belgium first. there is no capital gains tax, and no tax on the first 800 euro of dividends so it would be pretty easy to launch here.
Hi there, a few years ago there were plans to include Italians and other European stock markets. I know some little progress has been done on other (very few) European stocks. However, is there any update specifically for the Italian stock market?
An update would be good, it’s a little worrying when I hear nothing for a while. Too many of my other startup investments that do this end up going into administration.
