Freetrade

Freetrade was founded in 2016 by Adam Dodds and Davide Fioranelli.[4] Initially financed through equity crowdfunding, its 2019 round was the fastest campaign to reach £1M on crowdfunding platform Crowdcube, doing so in 77 seconds and later crashing the platform due to high demand. Later that year, it would bring aboard venture capitalist Draper Esprit to complete a $15M Series A financing.[5][6][7] Viktor Nebehaj, an early crowdfunding investor, joined the firm as chief marketing officer. Ian Fuller joined as chief technology officer from Snapchat in 2018.[8][2]

In January 2020, the company was accused of fostering a culture of fear after a City A.M. investigation into staff claims of a toxic workplace.[9] Co-founder Adam Dodds responded, saying it has an honest and candid culture that not everyone is comfortable with.[10]

Freetrade offers a commission free trading app on Android and iOS platforms open to users in the United Kingdom. Users may trade equities and ETFs listed in the UK and the US. For US assets, users may hold and trade fractional shares. Portfolios can be held in a tax free ISA account for a flat monthly fee. Freetrade launched its premium product, Freetrade Plus in October 2020, offering an expanded list of tradable securities and order types.[11][12] The product backend is hosted on Google Cloud Platform, Freetrade operate on a serverless computing model.[2]

Freetrade plan to enter the wider European market, beginning with Ireland and the Netherlands.[13] There is a waiting list for the Freetrade SIPP pension product.[14]

In December 2020 Freetrade began offering 3% AER interest on Freetrade Plus account cash balances of up to £4,000.[15]

Since its launch in October 2018, Freetrade has grown to more than 500,000 registered users as of January 2021.[3] In an early review of the service, Forbes described it as "a challenger stock trading app built for the Instagram age", and commended it on being the first and only challenger stockbroker in the UK, but criticised the poor financial charting, and its then lack of US securities.[16] In a 2019 review for Moneyweek, David Stevenson described the available securities, which by then included both UK and US listed stocks and ETFs, as a "decent slug of the large-cap universe". And while it did not offer the full-service platform such as established competitors Hargreaves Lansdown or AJ Bell, "for those simply looking for regular, low-cost savings I think Freetrade is hard to beat". Stevenson described Freetrade as his favourite fintech.[17] At The Next Web, Matthew Hughes credited Freetrade with "radically [changing] how I manage my money", inciting him to invest more, and increase his knowledge of the markets.[18]

• Official website