Irish investors line up for FreeTrade app

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Gabrielle Monaghan

October 24 2021 02:30 AM

FreeTrade, a UK commission-free investing app, plans to launch into the Irish market next year to tap into the cash amassed during Covid-19 lockdowns by young professionals experimenting with investing.

More than 2,000 prospective users of Freetrade in Ireland have signed up to the neobroker’s waitlist ahead of the launch. Ireland is next on Freetrade’s expansion list after Sweden, where the company is in the process of securing an EU licence. Once it receives approval from the Swedish regulator to operate there, Freetrade will passport its services into Ireland in 2022.

Adam Dodds, founder and CEO of Freetrade, said: “Ireland is a key region for us, given its largely untapped population of first-time and semi-sophisticated investors.”

Freetrade this month reached 1m UK customers, more than 40pc of whom are in their 20s and 30s. Some of the growth has been attributed to the ‘meme stock’ trading boom from earlier this year, led by the GameStop short squeeze by day traders on Reddit.

“January was a record year for us, but the month of October, up to today (Wednesday) has blown that record away,” a spokesman said. “That points to this being a long-term trend, not something the legacy brokers think will go away when people go back to the office.”