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Hargreaves Lansdown joined the host of fintechs to have benefitted from the Covid-19 trading boom.
Listed trading platform Hargreaves Lansdown added over 84,000 new customers during the second half of 2020, a promising indication for fintech trading platforms.
The jump in traders for Hargreaves is likely to be experienced on the other side of the fold too, with the likes of Revolut, Freetrade and Plum riding the trading wave, as large swathes of people took up investing for the first time during the pandemic.
For instance, Plum saw a 180 per cent increase in investors between June and September 2020, with these numbers likely to have risen even further as a result of the Covid-19-related trading boom
Back in October, as part of a survey conducted in partnership with Opinium, AltFi revealed that while Hargreaves Lansdown was the most well-known digital wealth manager, but fintechs were not far behind—in fact, Nutmeg came in just three percentage points behind Hargreaves, with 30 per cent of respondents having heard of the much younger fintech.
The latest figures from the 40-year-old investor can only signal a similar shift for its fintech counterparts.
Hargreaves Lansdown also saw the average age of its users fall to 37 from 42 in 2012, much closer to the average age of its fintech competitors, for reference the average age of a Plum investor is 31.
As a result of its booming business and active younger investors, Hargreaves Lansdown saw record figures in the last six months of 2020.
The firm saw its pre-tax profit leap up to £188.4m for the six months up until 31 December 2020, jumping up from £171.1m the year previous and also saw commission from its stockbroking activities increase to £105.7m, up from £43.2m in the same period last year, highlighting the sheer volume of trading through its platform.
Hargreaves Lansdown’s record results signal a positive shift for fintechs, with the host of new investors flooding the market in 2020, fintechs will no doubt have also seen a similar increase and, in turn, further close the gap between them and their much bigger competitors.
Originally published by
Aisling Finn | February 1, 2021
AltFi
