Trade Republic sees opportunities in Ireland due to attitude towards investment

“Ireland is a very interesting market for us because the social acceptance of investments is generally higher than perhaps on the continent,” said Hecker.

The company was founded in 2015.

“We recognized that as Europeans we face a problem, which is the pension gap, which means that the generational pension system – in Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain – is inherently broken. There is an enormous need for the core of society, the middle income, to create their own wealth.”

He said that the average European household could only save 300 euros a month. “And if you’re paying fees for the investment – say €10, €20 – there’s no point in investing.”

It took the company until 2019 to build Trade Republic and initially found an investment bank in Germany.

“If you fast-forward to today, we offer two basic products – the first is self-directed investing in stocks or Exchange Traded Funds (EFT, a basket of securities). The second is what are called savings plans – which are basically a free monthly subscription to an EFT or stock. And the majority of our customers have such a savings plan.”

The company has raised well over €1 billion, most recently from Sequoia and Canada’s Ontario Teachers Pension Fund.

The customers are mostly young and in their second or third year of employment. While online trading has raised some concerns about exposure to small retail investors, he said his customer base is primarily interested in savings.

“In January, at the height of the meme stock situation (around Gamestop), only 5 percent of our customers have ever engaged with meme stock.”