Commission-free trading apps are booming but check before you buy
They say statistically you are more likely to get divorced than change who you bank with. I wonder if the same is true for investment platforms. Hargreaves Lansdown’s (HL) 93 per cent client retention level last year suggests it might be, but admittedly duplicity is more acceptable in the broking world. What is interesting though is where the lion's share of new accounts are being set up.
There’s no doubt Hargreaves Lansdown’s growth last year was impressive: this week it reported 84,000 new customers for the second half of last year alone, a 40 per cent increase in net new business on the same period in 2019. Vanguard’s UK private investor platform doubled its user numbers last year to 200,000 and AJ Bell (AJB) also had strong growth with a 30 per cent rise in customers in 2020.