MEGATHREAD: European expansion 🇪🇺

It’s the middle of holiday season, that will slow things down at the minute

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Hey Brian, sorry for the delay.

Rest assured we are reading every message, as always, so apologies it took us a bit longer than usual to get back to you. As @Raul mentions, there are also quite a few of the team on holiday! Lucky them…

Anyway, we are working behind the scenes to progress our expansion into more European countries and will share an update as soon as we can.

I’m sorry we can’t share any dates or updates quite yet, but you’ll hear it first on this thread.

And in other news, yes as you mention @Jim1, we do indeed have a lot of exciting news coming up including Open Banking which launched today, and some news on SIPP in the not-too-distant future.

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Sorry for being a bit cheeky. Can you clarify the Ireland and Dutch beta, has it been rolled out at this moment and if not when will it be starting. Thanks

Can you update this please Keeping your money safe

It is still showing 100,000 users

Well it hasn’t been announced so I’d imagine it has not started

The ireland one is a closed beta but there’s details here.

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Missed that - thanks!

Hungary, please!
Why? We are all biased and that makes the 2 of us.

Please expand into Germany and Switzerland.
The Germans (some of the younger generation) will embrace this but others are very risk averse. You will need to do a lot of work on ensuring data is not shared with the US unless they are informed and have given consent. The Germans have got a strong sense of what they think about data privacy. It’s huge. I interacted with an accountancy firm there who was pleased to tell me they don’t even use gmail and the Germans care about how they manage clients data. I liked it :slightly_smiling_face:

Re Switzerland- I have a personal interest as I travel there a lot and may be moving there soon. The younger generation could be keen but they can take a while to latch on to new things too (that’s a bit cultural), that said the users there have the potential to invest a lot more probably than the average Brit so it may be worth it. £10k is not much to invest to them whereas I get the sense that in the U.K. the users/clients may be investing less as salaries are also lower and taxes are higher. Taxes there are simple in comparison to the U.K.

Look forward to hearing more !

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From an outset with doing no research, I’m not sure why but the brokers in Switzerland currently would just strike me as being expensive I’m not sure why? If anyone is from Switzerland or knows information about the brokers fees I’d love to know

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Expensive is relative, you earn 60,000 working the tills in the supermarket in Zurich. What are the fees?

The problem with going to Switzerland is that people there don’t want any personnel data leaving the country so the servers for any financial information normally have to be in Switzerland. I presume freetrades are in USA which mean a lot of people would never go near freetrade.

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Ah yeah that’s fair enough

Yes you’re right it’s super expensive and old fashioned in Switzerland. I can recommend Strateo however degiro is new and cheaper.

I hope that helps :relaxed:

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Completely agree.
It’s a similar issue with Germany.

The Swiss banking / stockbroking sector is a lot more protective than the UK‘s. New entrants are discouraged and the government doesn‘t subsidize or encourage innovation in the space, the reason probably being the lobbying force of the big players (banking being a pillar of the Swiss economy - see SMI companies).

Most large Swiss banks and stockbrokers are using legacy technology and are playing catch-up with challenger banks.

Currently, no cheap stock broker exists in Switzerland (fees 1-2 % p.a. usually, min. 15 CHF/trade). Freetrade would have first-mover advantage + people (especially millennials and Gen Z) are aching for a better solution as fees have stayed the same over the last 15 years despite technological advances.

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That is happening in the end - I’m relocating to Spain!

I’ll get in touch with the customer service.

Agreed. Germany never had any English language issues even two decades back.

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Perfect explanation, thanks Lukas

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Based on most recent update, sounds like European expansion is not a strong priority any longer?

I think that’s the case. And as investor that makes me happy. Still a lot of product development required before an aggressive launch to EU in my opinion.

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