Wombat Invest

Saw an ad on Instagram today for “Wombat Invest” https://wombatinvest.com/

Looks like another app that invests your spare change into “themes” which are made up of some ETFs and then charges a platform fee on top.

Seems to be loads of these services appearing right now.

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There’s no platform fee for balances under £1000.

ÂŁ1 a month for balances >ÂŁ1000.

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Limited choice. Very odd names assigned to what are essentially mass market and easily available ETFs. A lot of KIIDs very out of date. Messaged the customer services a few times and got no responses.

All in all. :man_shrugging:

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Even after just a cursory check. £1 a month, how do they intend on making money? Even after the most basic of outgoings, that doesn’t leave a lot left for profit.

That’s £1 a month on top of a 0.45% platform fee.

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Wombat was on Crowdcube, I think it raised £250k or so. It looked like it might not get funded at first but it eventually made it over the line. The founders seemed to have limited experience but to their credit they’ve got a product out there in reasonable time with what looks like a very low budget

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Oh I must have missed that. Looks like they only raised ÂŁ209K of the ÂŁ250K target.

https://www.crowdcube.com/companies/wombat-invest/pitches/Z57P3q

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The concept looks great and interesting… although their latest Twitter post is from August 15th, latest instagram post from August 16th… It’s pretty much the same on Youtube, LinkedIn or Facebook… One could wonder if they are still in business !!

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I just saw Wombat Invest beats Freetrade to launch UK fractional share trading - AltFi

Thoughts?

Fractionals have been available in the UK for a while on adviser (non-retail) platforms. Usually ending up in the custody of Winterfloods Business Services. Or in T212 case Interactive Brokers.

Wombat have built on top of Seccl which looks a reasonable offering. Ultimately ends up routing your order somewhere. My guess… Winterflood Business Services. But, as always, I could be wrong.

Not a pretty service from Wombat. But, yes, beat FT to it. My understanding is FT will clear, settle and have custody of the assets themselves in their nominee. So from that perspective arguably better in the long run. But building is always slower than buying. So it depends what you favour. For the record I’m always a builder.

Not sure what traction Wombat have. Looks like a platform for the very novice. But hey, horses for courses. All part of the investment education piece in the UK.

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Halifax ( via Sharebuilder ) have offered fractional UK shares for years.

Good point.
I should have mentioned them too.
Since I actually have a ShareBuilder account!
Whoops. Sorry Halifax. Clearly don’t use the service enough anymore to have them immediately spring to mind!

Any idea who operates behind the scenes of the Halifax offering? Or do we suspect they run the logic and custody in house? Genuinely don’t know what services they sit on (if any).

Might have to investigate their T&Cs

:nerd_face: